P4-7 Assembly UN World Day for Cultural Diversity

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Sciennes World Culture and Diversity P4-7 Assembly 20.5.16 from Sciennes Primary School

On Friday 20th May at our P4-7 Assembly we celebrated all the fabulous Language learning that has been happening at Sciennes, so ably led by Ms Bethan Owen, and thanked our three wonderful Language volunteers, Isabel, Sergio and Miguel, as well as our excellent final year Bilingual Primary Education student, Ana Vidal, from Madrid University.

We made suggestions for cultural activities that our children might get involved in over the weekend to celebrate UN World Day for Cultural Diversity on May 21st and were delighted to note so many of our children already take part in similar activities to the ones suggested.

We also looked forward to Sciennes Parent Council's exciting International Fair on SATURDAY 4th JUNE 12pm-3pm and found out more about the mysterious yarnbombing phenomenon, which has decorated our playground overnight!

Next week, each class will contribute to City of Edinburgh's 1+2 Twitter campaign and we used some examples of Tweets already happening this week, to give everyone ideas!

We started the day at 8am with a 'Walking Bus' and ended it at 12pm with an ECO Schools Clean Up Campaign. P6 pupils Laura and Arooj explained very clearly and confidently how these two events helped us make a difference in tackling Climate Change (Global Goal 13).

It was wonderful to welcome the team from Nourish Scotland to school on Thursday 19th May, who were gathering children's views about The Right to Food' for Tam Baillie, the Children and Young People's Commissioner.

Unfortunately we ran out of time to hear from our Sports Captains on the presentations they have created about Olympic Values and Fencing, and the Day for Change count is still ongoing! Another very busy week at Sciennes!

Article 30

The right to enjoy your own culture, practise your own religion and use your own language.

Languages Partnership Project with Madrid

Article in City of Edinburgh 'Bright Futures'

For the past two years, schools in the James Gillespies’ cluster have been involved in a partnership with schools in the Comunidad de Madrid in Spain. The partnership has offered the teachers the chance to share good practice and enrich their lessons through the exciting cultural experiences gained when visiting the partners’ country.

The schools in the James Gillespie’s cluster are:

• James Gillespie’s High
• Sciennes Primary
• James Gillespie’s Primary
• Preston Street Primary
• Royal Mile Primary
• Taobh na Pàirce
• Tollcross Primary

This month teachers from Madrid visited Edinburgh and were treated to a range of activities and experiences by our 1+2 Language team. This visit comes ahead of a group of primary school pupils from Madrid visiting Tollcross Primary in May 2015.

Sarah Spiller, 1+2 Development Officer, tells the full story:


City of Edinburgh 1+2 Languages team were delighted to welcome our partners from Comunidad de Madrid to Edinburgh in March as part of a two year-long project linking schools in Spain with our schools in the James Gillespie’s cluster.

The European-funded project has focused on building partnerships and identifying and sharing best practices in learning and teaching, particularly in how we teach languages. Teachers from the James Gillespie’s cluster schools have travelled to Madrid on two separate occasions. Firstly to observe the Madrid bilingual education program, then during the second trip our teachers taught students using strategies including cooperative and active learning styles and innovative approaches to planning. These strategies have been highlighted as a strength of our teachers and were delivered to pupils in the partner schools in Madrid completely in English. On their visit to Scotland the Madrid teachers taught our primary school learners’ lessons entirely in Spanish.

The visiting teachers also enjoyed a range of Scottish cultural events, such as a number of wonderful Gaelic performances and a ceilidh at Taobh na Pàirce and a fantastic international tapas evening at Sciennes Primary.

The teachers engaged in rich professional dialogue around language learning.  Existing partnerships between pupils and schools in Scotland and Madrid were strengthened as a result of the project . Pupils have been emailing, video conferencing and writing to their new friends in Spain and in the final stages of the project, Tollcross Primary School will be welcoming a pupil group from their partner school, Colegio Joaquín Blume, in May 2015.

Liz Gray, Quality Improvement Manager, said,

The people have made the project and our Madrid partners could not have asked for a more welcoming, capable and reflective group of teachers.

We would like to extend a huge gracias to all the schools involved for their hard work and enthusiasm during the course of the project.

P5 Mandarin Workshops

Thank you so much to Audrey Blake (Scottish Opera), Judith McKerrecher (SCILT Professional Development Officer) and to her colleagues from the Confucius Institute for Scotland’s Schools (CISS) for providing such high quality language learning workshops for our P5 pupils on Monday 30th March. Judith began by sharing Scottish Opera's Warriors! ebook and it was wonderful to see how many lyrics and how much Mandarin pupils have already picked up. 

We were then treated to three fantastic language workshops:

Numbers 

Colours - Beijing opera masks

Calligraphy 

Families are in for a real treat on Wednesday 6th May when our P5s team up with our friends from Scottish Opera for 'Warriors!'

More photographs on the P5 Class Page.

Comenius European Partnership

 

Meeting room of the Town Hall, Madrid

"We are all citizens of one world."

Ms Bethan Owen and a colleague from Preston Street School represented James Gillespie's High School Cluster in a recent European Comenius project funded by the British Council. Both had opportunities to visit schools in Madrid, meet with European colleagues and compare educational systems and language learning.

The project linked DG Quality and Improvement of Education, the City of Tres Cantos, the Rey Juan Carlos University,  five schools from the Community of Madrid, City of Edinburgh Council and Edinburgh University, Sciennes and Preston Street Primary Schools. Representatives from ten primary and secondary schools will meet again next May in Edinburgh.

			The Comenius Programme is named after Jan Amos Comenius (1592-1670), often considered the father of modern education
			Comenius is aimed at schools, colleges and local authorities across Europe

Comenius has two main objectives:

			to develop knowledge and understanding among young people and education staff of the diversity of European cultures and languages, and the value of this diversity
			to help young people to acquire basic life skills and competences for their personal development, for future employment and for active European citizenship

Russian Language Taster

Sincere thanks to Jenny Carr, Chairperson of the Scotland Russia Forum, for her engaging presentations to both Assemblies on Friday 9th March. She introduced the pupils to Russian culture and language and brought along many interesting artefacts. We are very grateful to Jenny for her time and enthusiasm and also for arranging the exciting visit from a Russian cosmonaut last year.