Tag Archives: Rights Respecting Schools

Welcome Back!

A huge welcome back to everyone today. It has been lovely to hear everyone’s news from the summer and to see how much they have all grown! Dean is very nearly the same height as Miss Jamieson!!

We have had a very busy day creating our class charter. First we went over our rights and why we have them before splitting into groups and reading through the 42 articles and highlighting all the ones we think were appropriate for school. We then fed back to the class before returning into our groups to select what we thought were the 4 most important articles for our class charter. We had 24 to choose from so we held a vote to narrow this down. There was some great discussion and some arguments for and against why we should or shouldn’t have them. We ended up with 5 articles for our class charter as we thought they were all important.

Our next step was to design our class charter! We all had the chance to design our own class charter before taking a vote on which one we thought would like to make. Everyone thought really hard about how they could add the article, right and responsibility into their design. I think you will agree there were some fantastic designs to choose from.

We all had 3 pom poms which we then placed on our ‘top’ 3 choices. Everyone got to vote, even the staff! The winning design was Jasmine’s island.

After dinner primary 7 decided on what needed to be done and split us all into groups so that we all had a job to do. We had one group measuring the wall to see how big the charter had to be, decide on what the responsibilities were, people making the sand, the tree trunks, the palm trees, the sun, the buckets, the heading, etc. It was a very busy and productive afternoon! We all worked really well and helped each other. We are very close to finishing so hopefully by tomorrow we can share a photo of the finished display!

 

 

First school in Shetland to get their RRS Level 2 Award!!

We would like to share with you the fact that we are the first school in Shetland to gain our Rights Respecting School Level 2 Award!!! Over the last year we have been working very hard towards this award. We were assessed on Friday the 10th of March, Frances Bestley and Gerry McMurtrie skyped us so that we, the Rights Respecting steering group, could talk them through our displays and other work that we have been doing. We also showed them our Rights Respecting School folders and talked them through everything in this. We discussed our rights and some of the articles we knew. They also spoke to Mrs Lawson (head teacher) and Louise Tulloch (parent) Once our assessment was finished we had to wait a whole week to find out whether or not we passed so that Jerry and Francis could discuss everything they saw/heard with a committee and come to a decision on whether we had done enough work to be awarded our level 2 award. Last Friday just before we went to leave for the weekend Mrs Lawson came in to share the news that we achieved our level 2 award! There was great excitement and we are absolutely delighted that we have achieved this award! We will be sharing this report soon.

By Tali, Ben and Ruby

OutRight Certificate!

We took part in the UNICEF OutRight campaign 2016 at the end of last year.

We also sent Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary for the UK, a letter explaining about our learning on the refugee crisis and how it effects their rights.

We received a letter from the UNICEF UK Senior Campaign Adviser.

The letter said well done on our learning and thank you for taking part in the UNICEF OutRight Campaign 2016.  They said that hundreds of people send letters, pictures and videos everyday of them learning about The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. They also sent a certificate for us that can be seen on our achievements wall.

 

Cooperative learning with Fetlar Primary School

During Term 1 and 2 Fetlar Primary School came in to work with us about Rights Respecting Schools as we both have our level 1 rights Respecting School award and are working towards our level 2 award. We did different activities all to do with why the war in Syria started, what is going on now and how this affects refugee children and their rights. It was really interesting and generated a lot of discussion which was great. We looked at various articles from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and thought about how these are being met/not being met for the refugee children, for example: article 9 states you should be looked after by your parents, unless this would not be best for you – it is sometimes in the children’s best interest to flee Syria (sometimes without their parents) for their own safety so this right is being met in a way. It is sad that their parents cannot go with them though, they must be scared and lonely. Article 10 states if a child lives in a different country  to their parents, they have the right to stay in touch with them and to apply to live with them. But this cannot always happen as some children have either lost their parents due to the fighting or do not know where they are as they have had to flee too/maybe gotten separated when getting out of Syria. Article 6 is about having the right to be alive and being the best that you can be – sadly not all children in Syria has this right as a lot of them have been killed due to the war or have sadly died trying to flee Syria.

Here are some photos from our cooperative learning days:

We have added our work from these days onto our Rights Respecting School wall:

Letter to the Home Secretary

As part of our journey towards our level 2 Rights Respecting Award, we have been working on UNICEF’s Outright 2016 pack. We have been learning more about the refugee crisis in Syria.

We recognise that many children’s rights are not being met and think that something needs to be done about this… and QUICK!!

To ensure our voices are heard, we have written a letter and sent it to our local MP Alistair Carmichael. He will pass this on to Amber Rudd our Home Secretary.

We have attached the letter if you would like to read it.
letter-to-amber-rudd