Minutes of meeting held on Friday, 24th February

Eight colleagues attended this meeting, with many apologies received (including from SQA). Four attendees were ' first timers', and had time to introduce themselves and meet the regulars. David started the afternoon session by relaying some important news items from the SQA, which had been passed on by our Customer Account Manager.

* Three 'stand alone' Science units at Access level are to be expected
* A major announcement re: Access provision is due
* An announcement regarding Skillstart is also due.

Our SQA contact also requested that colleagues regularly check the SQA website.

Resources

English - we heard about Pete's Stuff, from Portland School. This is a series of stories available via PowerPoint (multimedia). These are/can be 'sensory stories'. We also found out about Chromakey.

Skillswise was recommended for pupils working at Access 2/3 level. This had engaged some reluctant learners and had encouraged the development of core skills.

Copyright-free music is available through the internet from a range of places. This music can be downloaded and used in whichever way in the classroom, without fear of the BMI.

One colleague spoke of his school issuing each pupil with a set of headphones (to be used in a variety of classroom contexts). Each had a 3 metre lead and were available very cheaply from ebuyer.

David recommended www.netsmarzkids.org as by far the best and most up-to-date resource for educating (in an interactive, catchy way) about online dangers (some of which colleagues had never considered before!)

Interactive whiteboards were briefly discussed, particularly those provided by SMART and Promethean.

Issues

We spoke about funding difficulties in certain schools/areas, where a pupil resides in one local authority but is educated in another. This often leads to confusion and competing demands from authorities.

One colleague was interested in finding good quality resources for delivering Access 2 Maths.

Concerns were expressed about there being sufficient 'sideways progression' at Access 1 and 2.

It was felt that there needs to be more resources for Access 1 and 2 available from the LTS NQ library. One colleague said that it would be a great help if some of those resources currently held in the online library were compatible with text-to-speech programs such as WordTalk.

All spoke of the necessity for meeting regularly with colleagues, and wish SQA to continue to facilitate sessions such as the one at Murrayfield, Edinburgh last October.

Supported and 'stand alone' units had been well received, therefore more were asked for, preferrably in practical areas of the curriculum.

The next meeting will take place some time after the first week in May. During part of this session, David will talk about his podcasting project.

Meantime, you can discuss issues with fellow teachers of Access by joining The Access Network Yahoo! Group. To join, send an email to accessnetwork-subscribe@yahoogroups.com .