Water Works

Looking for a new idea to enrich the STEM Central water context?

A trickling burn, a flooded street, a horse’s trough or a grand Scottish loch – no matter what comes to mind when you think of water the Water Works competition wants your photographs.

The James Hutton Institute via the Centre of Expertise for Waters  are running a year long competition aimed at raising awareness of water and water-related issues across both primary and secondary ages. The competition, with monthly prizes, aims to encourage learners to think about the natural environment and make the link between CfE curriculum areas Sciences, Technologies and Expressive Arts. The competition page gives background on the competition and entry instructions.

Health and Wellbeing Showcase, Thursday 9th February, Aberdeen

The Health and wellbeing team welcomed over sixty practitioners to our Showcase event. 

We had a packed day celebrating good practice across the health and wellbeing organisers. There was a marketplace where many of our partners were available to discuss how they can support schools, these included Active Schools, British Heart Foundation, The Red Cross, Organ Donation, Sustrans, Health Working Lives and Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency.  

Alison Hammerton from Outdoor Learning enthused with ideas that stimulated how schools can deliver health and wellbeing by taking the curriculum outside. Click here to go the Outdoor Learning Blog for updates.

We finished the day with a keynote speech from Craig Brown, former Head Teacher and current Manager of Aberdeen Football Club.  He shared some tales of football fun whilst integrating the key messages of health and wellbeing and gave us all a laugh too.

We hope our delegates gain a lot from the day and would encourage them to sign up to our HWB Community where we will share the presentations from the day and partner contact information. Click here to sign up to the community.

Also don’t forget to join Education Scotland on Facebook and Twitter.

Entrepreneurship in Enterprise

On Wednesday (08/02/12) I had the opportunity to visit Lauren Hay a Business Education teacher from Kincorth Academy in Aberdeen. She described to me their Enterprise Project with the Wood Family Trust. This programme focused on the entrepreneurship aspect of enterprise and intergrated entrepreneurship across the curriculum.

To find out more about my visit, view the video of Lauren on the Chalkface Blog.

Scottish Schools Adolescent Lifestyle and Substance Use Survey (SALSUS)

The Scottish Schools Adolescent Lifestyle and Substance Use Survey (SALSUS) is part of an important and long established series of national surveys on smoking, drinking and drug use. Information has been collected in Scotland from 1982 on smoking, 1990 on drinking and since 1998 on drug use. The latest survey was carried out during the autumn term of 2010 with a sample of over 37,000 pupils from S2 and S4 classes from across Scotland.

The report provides information on:

Prevalence of smoking, drinking and drug use
Frequency of substance misuse
Sources of cigarettes, alcohol and drugs
Pupils’ attitudes to substance misuse

The report makes very interesting reading and is useful point of reference for practitioners working with children and young people.

A summary of the report can be found at –

http://www.drugmisuse.isdscotland.org/publications/abstracts/salsus.htm