Primary 5/6/7 were delighted to welcome Miss Mairead Mackechnie, Education Officer from the Scottish Parliament, into the class for an afternoon workshop. They have been learning about the topic for the last two weeks and this workshop was very helpful.
Category Archives: Debate
DGS Debates on Trident
On Friday the 18th December, the pupils of Dunoon Grammar School took part in a whole school debate on ‘should the UK government renew Trident?’ This was the culmination of three weeks of preparation, research and speech writing for everyone involved.
Essay Success – What does ‘sustainable living’ mean to you?
Each year the Trust for Sustainable Living organises a global essay competition, which this year invited schoolchildren to outline their ideas for sustainable living and the steps needed for societies to achieve them. This year 73 countries participated and essays were received from 1,094 children. We had several finalists from Port Ellen and in July Asher travelled down to Oxford to attend the international schools debate, which was attended by children from 23 countries.
Continue reading Essay Success – What does ‘sustainable living’ mean to you?
Jackie Baillie MSP visits P7 of St Joseph’s
Monday 31 March 2014 saw P7 children of St Joseph’s welcome a very important visitor to their class, Ms Jackie Baillie, MSP. Jackie was there to bring a personal dimension to P7’s Interdisciplinary Learning Study, ‘The Scottish Parliament’. But if Jackie thought this was to be an easy question and answer session, she was to be surprised! P7 asked several deep and searching questions and their teacher, Miss Claire Boyd, was delighted with how eloquently the children addressed their questions and how they also came back at Ms Baillie on her responses.
Continue reading Jackie Baillie MSP visits P7 of St Joseph’s
Dunoon Grammar School – Modern Studies Trip to Westminster
At 11.45pm on the 16th of December, Dunoon Grammar School’s Modern Studies Trip commenced. Those involved (Mrs Hunter, Mr Clark, Mr McNeilage, and 26 pupils from DGS) embarked that evening upon an exciting adventure. During the trip the group would get to visit the Houses of Parliament and experience London during Christmas time, but first they had to endure on an 8 hour bus ride to get there.
Continue reading Dunoon Grammar School – Modern Studies Trip to Westminster
ROSNEATH’S ELECTION FEVER!
P6/7 at Rosneath held their Team Captain Election on MONDAY 7TH OCTOBER. The children had worked very hard on their individual campaigns and Jackie Baillie, MSP kindly came to school to watch the Election process from START to FINISH. Jackie commented very positively throughout the morning. The whole school was involved in the process. Some Candidates made a grand entrance to music, one had a trumpet fanfare, one had a drum roll! Then the ALL IMPORTANT campaign speeches.
Election Fever
S1 pupils recently held their own mock elections in school as part of their learning in the “Living in a Democracy” unit in Social Subjects. Pupils were divided up into 6 groups, each representing a political party and had to elect their own candidate. The groups organised their own campaign, canvassed support around the school and made their own campaign posters. A husting was held, where each candidate was able to deliver their parties manifesto of policies and promises. This was followed by questions from those in attendance.
Continue reading Election Fever
Ultimate Questions!
S1/2 students of Tobermory High School met for their latest RME Conference Day. The day’s theme was Ultimate Questions and involved a lot of deep thinking for students and staff. Listening to Johnny Nash the group reflected that there are indeed “more questions than answers” as they began the first task of the day which was to build a tower in their groups – the catch was they were allowed to communicate only by questions… Although all groups produced towers all admitted that the task had been very difficult, especially as there were time penalties when statements were made, in fact some students were reduced to silence and mime for some of the time. Continue reading Ultimate Questions!
Tarbert Academy Moral Conference
Senior pupils in Tarbert Academy took part in a Moral Conference at the end of October. This ‘Question Time’ style event found pupils asking questions about Scotland’s future, footballers’ wages, the issues surrounding foreign aid at a time of recession and current debates on marriage. Pupils achieved highly in setting questions, taking part in debate and listening sensitively to a wide variety of views. Anne Paterson praised the pupils highly – as did the panel members. Pupil feedback is highly positive regarding our Moral Conference. Continue reading Tarbert Academy Moral Conference
SAL DEVELOPMENT
Now that SAL has settled in to our schools and has been widely embraced as a platform for sharing, we would like to develop the site to accommodate any additional uses that you might find practical. Please click on the ‘SAL DEVELOPMENT’ post title above to access the full post and then use the ‘comment’ facility to express your development ideas. (Suggestions welcomed from all pupils and staff).
Tiree High School Councillor Visit
The S2 class have been looking this term at how we make decisions in a democracy. We have focused on local democracy and discussed our representatives and what they do for us. We have also looked at the various things that are provided for us by our council and finished off with a role play task where we looked at the difficult decisions councils sometimes have to make, due to lack of funding. The pupils took on the role of parents, staff members & local shopkeepers in ‘Avridge Council’ and prepared speeches, which they delivered to Avridge councils’ ‘Education Committee’ (Mr Campbell & Cllr Fred Hall!). Continue reading Tiree High School Councillor Visit
Definitions of Creativity
Creative Questions #1
Are we more creative when we focus on solving a problem?
Definitions of Creativity
Definitions of Creativity
#2…..Imagination
“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.”
Carl Sagan
What do you enjoy doing that uses your imagination? Continue reading Definitions of Creativity
Definitions of Creativity
Definitions of Creativity
#1…..Inventiveness!
“Necessity… the mother of invention.” (Plato)
The story of human progress has arguably been a story of inventiveness. Where there was no wheel, there came a wheel. Where there was no printing press there came a printing press. Once there were no schools and then we invented schooling.
How have you been inventive recently? Continue reading Definitions of Creativity
