This document provides information about Highlands School in Edinburgh, Scotland. It includes the school's contact details, staff members, facilities, and class profiles. It then discusses methods for teachers to get to know their students, such as games, letters sent home, and parent surveys. The document outlines an evaluation plan to assess students' social skills, socioeconomic status, personal resources, hobbies and interests, educational needs, and parental involvement. The goal is to help teachers adapt their lessons to best support each student.

1. Highlands School
Getting to know your class
2014
Mosquera Darroza, Paula
Ríos Bergantinhos, Iria
Rodríguez Pérez, Leticia
Seoane Gesteiro, Tamara
Skourtis, Vassia
3º of Primary School

2. School Profile ....................................................................................................................................... 2
Getting information of studients ......................................................................................................... 2
The Game .......................................................................................................................................... 4
Letter and Survey for parents ........................................................................................................... 4
Evaluation ............................................................................................................................................. 8

3. School Profile
Contact information:
 Address: 4901 Craig's Road, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
 Telephone number: 131 539 9001
 Website: www.highlandschool.uk
 E-mail: highlandschool@gov.uk
Members of the English Department:
 Mosquera Darroza, Paula – psichologst
 Ríos Bergantinhos, Iria – counselor
 Rodríguez Pérez, Leticia – therapist
 Seoane Gesteiro, Tamara – headteacher
 Skourtis, Vassia – psychologist
Highlands School is placed in the suburb of Edinburgh. It's a little school in a low-income area so it hasn't got a lot of resources but it has high qualified professionals who can overcome any situation.
Our staff is divided in four departments: english department, phisical education department, special needs department, direction department.
There's only six levels so the're one teacher for each level. In special needs department there are three persons. Two of them are psichologist and the last is the therapist, their function is perform activities which improve student performance and they advise their parents in order to help the children. It is relacionated with phisical education department because these teachers help children with special needs too. It is formed by two members.

4. Our direction department has formed by two persons. The headteacher who is the person that representates the school at the parents of our students, the teachers and the other people who want to know Highland School and the asistant headteacher that help her.
Other people that work in this school are a secretary, cleaning lady and conserge.
The physical characteristics of the school are the following: First of all our school has two floors.
So, there is an elevator which is most used by the students with special needs. In this way it’s easier for them to have access in all the classes and spaces of the school.
In the ground floor there is the school library where there is a big variety of books. The students can read the books into the library and borrow them too. In this room there is a computer and a projector which consist the technological equipment of our school.
Also, there is a gym where all the students can exercise themselves. In the gym there are some exercise mats and balls for different sports (football, basketball, volleyball). Moreover, in this place there is a physio room in which students with special needs can exercise themselves.
In addition, in our school there is a small ceremonial hall where the students display their plays. Except for the scene there are approximately thirty seats for the audience in the school celebrations.
In the ground floor there is a small school canteen where the students and the staff of the school use to eat and drink something.
The school yard is small enough but there is a basketball field. There is also a place in the yard in which the students can plant their trees with the help of their teachers.
In the same floor are located the headmaster’s and the teachers’ offices, while in the first floor there are the classrooms of the school and the toilets.
Our classes have about 20 children, most of them are girls .We separate this classes equally so we can teach the same number of boys and girls and they can learn from each other. They could be brethen in the same class but they can't stay in the same group because we think that it's more appropiate to mix them so they can feel part of the class. We also put our students in alphabetical order. It’s important mention that the class in that we going to do this process of get information about our students is 2º of primary school.

5. Our center is an inclusive school, if one of our students has any handicap we don't separate him or her. That student is part of the group so the other children can support them. Depending on the case we can reformulate some places for the student (like slight autism).
As a consequence of this low-income area, in most of the cases our students don't have parental support to study so it's our duty to encourage them to continue studying. Our goal is to help students to achieve the highest level of development of their skills.
Getting information of studients
As teachers, we have to know our students so we can improve our work with them. For example, we can play games as “Guess who is he/she?”. In this case, one child has to guess the name, brethen, hobbies? Of another classmate, then that classmate has to tell if the other says the truth or not and that child also has to pick one other of the classmates. These games help us to personalize our students so we can work with all this new material.
Another way to get information of our students is asking their parents but you have to be more polite and careful. As we told earlier, our school is placed on a low-income area so we think that the best way in order to get this information is sending a letter, because we can't be sure that every parents have computer at home, for example.
The survey is used by us in order to know a bit more our students and so we can adapt the sessions to them. In this way, we ensured our students can achieve their highest possibilities.
Parents are the people that best know our students, because when they left the school, we don’t know what they do and how they are. So, parents can help us to know a bit more our students.
For that, we send them a letter explaining the objects that we hope achieve in this course and why is so important their cooperation.

6. This letter should be formal and it may have the next qualities:
- It must be precise.
- It must be clear or simple.
- It must be organized.
- It must be careful.
- It must be polite.
- It must be complete.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. ______, this is _______, the school’s principal.
Welcome to the new year of school that we start with a new educative plan full of excitement and commitment.
The reason of mi letter is to ensure that our students can achieve their highest possibilities. For that, I need your support and your collaboration, because the family is an important factor to the for- mation in our school.
To begin this new school year, we need to know a bit more about our students and for that I need your help.
It would be helpful if you could invest a small part of your time to answer the questions that I send with this letter.
With your collaboration, we will do a better diary plan with activities adequate to our students.
Thank you for your cooperation. We look forward to hearing from you.
Yours faithfully.
_____________, the school’s principal.
At the next page of the letter, we send the survey that they have to answer.

7. The survey has got 10 questions, for example:
- What does your children in their free time?
It’s an important question because in this way we know in what spend time the children when they left the school and we know what is their favourites activities. We also could guess if this student has any handicap with social skills or not.
- Are you children talkative at home?
This question is very important because maybe the children don’t speak at the school but they do it at home, so the children could be shy or quiet. Then you have to promote that this children speak at class.
But if the children don’t speak at home and school, they could have a handicap and he/she isn't able to be in contact whit other people so you have to do a special edu- cative program to him/her.

8. Questions Answer Does your child have any handicap? How much time do you spend with your children? In this time What does your child in his/her free time? Where does your child his/her homework? How many people live in your house? Some of them are her/his brethren? Does your child help you at work? Are you applying for a scholarship in this course? Are you children talkative at home? What do you expect your child to learn this year? Have you noticed any strange or unusual behavior in your child?

9. Evaluation
Finally, we have to do an evaluation. The most important aspects that in our opinion we should evaluate are the following: socio-economic status, social skills of children, the educational needs of the children, personal resources to help the children with special educational needs, the involvement of the parents in the education of their children and the hobbies and interests of our students
For us, at the beginning and also during the course is important to know the personal, family and socio-cultural characteristics of the students. Moreover this will facilitate us the development of a programming that is suitable and conforming to the characteristics and needs of the students. These evaluations can also help to understand the changes in the behavior that our students can show during the course.
It is very important that we use different methods to evaluate these aspects, we can use: questionnaires, tests, interviews, games, analysis of student work, observations. The evaluation method will depend on what we want to evaluate.
Below we present our ideas to evaluate these aspects.
EVALUATION OF SOCIAL SKILLS
Social skills are connected with the cognitive development and learning that will be carry out in the school. Moreover, these are necessary for a good socialization of children and their peers so we think that an attitude that favors the occurrence of positive behaviors is necessary. For this we must assess the degree of development of these skills in our students. We can analyze these skills using a game. For example:
The teacher can ask to the students that they sit down in a circle, then between all you must develop a story, each one has to say a word. Someone starts with a word, then the next student adds another word to continue the sentence. Of this way children should create an interesting story, which children can tell their parents or others.
Then the teacher can ask some questions for the children to speak. The questions can be: Who wants to say something?, Who did you like this activity?

10. EVALUATION OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS
Among the factors that hinder the achievement of effective equality of opportunities in education are those that stem from the characteristics of the family background of the student. It is necessary to know the socio-economic status of the student in order to assess what their needs or gaps. For this we can make a survey in which is can included the following points:
 Educational level of the parents.
 If they have computers, televisions or other technological devices in the house.
 Occupation of the parents.
 If the child has a place to study, study table, reference material or educational support.
EVALUATION OF PERSONAL RESOURCES
When planning must take into account the functions and tasks that the various professionals develop in different teaching situations, especially if we have in the classroom pupils with special educational needs because the tutor will need the help of other professionals at certain times. It is therefore necessary to plan in detail the role of each person at the time of the intervention. Answering the following questions may be helpful:
 Who is involved? Tutor classroom, another tutor, teacher support, other professionals.
 Who? With the whole group, with a group of students, with a particular student.
 When? Group work, individual work, cooperative learning.
 Where? Regular classroom, special classroom, other spaces.
HOBBIES AND INTERESTS OF OUR STUDENTS
The teacher should know the interests and hobbies of the students since that this can help us to plan the activities that we are going to make. Keep in mind that a motivating activity for the student always is related to their daily life and their hobbies. To evaluate this aspect, we can do an interview where we ask our students directly what their hobbies. But we can also make a game to help us find out what are your hobbies. We can use a play like “Guess who is he/she?”(explained above) or other game like the following:

11.  We can give kids a ball, a student grabs the ball and says his name and his hobbies, then throws the ball in the air, another student picks up the ball and does the same. During the game the teacher can go on a leaf pointing hobbies.
THE EDUCATIONAL NEEDS OF THE CHILDREN
We must do an evaluation that help us to determine the degree of mastery that one student can have about his capacities. This assessment allows us to adapt the planning of teaching, a key element to promote the learning of pupils with special educational need.
Is necessary to determine the most appropriate procedures and instruments. It is recommended the development of tests and instruments adequate to reality of the class: educational tests, observation records, tracking sheets, etc
If in doubt, teachers can ask for help to experts like pedagogues, psychologists, teachers who have students with special needs, etc.
THE INVOLVEMENT OF PARENTS IN THE EDUCATION OF THEIR CHILDREN
It is important to know the degree of parental involvement in the education of their child, this knowledge will serve us to know when and how we can take the help of parents. You can also help us to better understand the characteristics of our students. To evaluate this aspect we can do a survey that includes points like these:
 How much time do you spend with your children?
 Do you help your child with their homework?
 Do you know the subjects that your child has?
Moreover we also should do periodic interviews to the parents and this permit them involved more in the education of their children.