S1 One Planet Badge Design Competition

All S1 pupils were asked to design a badge which illustrated and raised awareness of Global Citizenship, as part of their Art & Design homework. We received many excellent designs and found it very difficult to choose a winner! On the judging panel were Mrs McKinnon, Dr Nind, Mrs Steel and some of our discerning Advanced Higher Art & Design students. Runners up were Sarah Brown, Peter Sawkins, Nicola Crowe, Jenni Baillie, Rebecca Drever, Jack Gold, Charlotte Brock, Abigail Odetayo, Craig Haggart, Mairi Mitchell, Jenny Park, Asha Mullen, Zelal Amir, Nasra Masoud and Katie Wicksted; well done! Lauren Flint of 1K2 won the competition with her bold and effective design. Her image was then printed and turned into 200 badges with the help of S4s Christine Combe and Claire Twist. Thanks to Dean Park Primary for the use of their Badgemaker! The badges were sold to pupils and staff at One Planet Market Stall by Eco Committee members. The proceeds went towards the fees of pupils at Chogoria High School. Thanks to all involved!

One Planet Week

From 4-8 March, we celebrated a whole-school ‘One Planet Week’, looking at many aspects of Global Citizenship. There were relevant learning experiences across many departments and a fantastic ‘One Planet Marketplace’ in the Assembly hall on Thursday lunchtime.

Pupils learnt about International Women’s Day (8 March) in RME, learnt how to reduce food waste and make tasty Bubble & Squeak out of leftovers from home in Health & Food Technology and wrote letters in Modern Languages to pupils in our partner school in Chogoria, Kenya. S1 pupils in Art designed a ‘One World’ badge, and Lauren Flint’s winning design was made into badges and sold to raise money for the pupils we sponsor in Chogoria. The school canteen did themed dishes from a different country each day of the week, and all S1 and S2 pupils had an assembly from the Refugee Survival Trust about the life of refugees and asylum seekers in Scotland.

 

 

The lunchtime marketplace was really buzzing, with stalls and activities from pupil groups and external organisations. On stage, pupils performed drama skits relating to human rights, and the school choir did a fantastic rendition of Gary Barlow’s ‘Rule the World’. 

 

The Amnesty International group organised a fun quiz on the right to education and a giant visual petition for the ‘Enough Food for Everyone IF’ campaign. Hospitality pupils served tasters of food from around the world, and others organised games based on geographical knowledge of countries. Joe Hind from the Soil Association had a stall raising awareness of our Food for Life project in the canteen and attracted lots of attention dressed as a huge carrot (it’s a seasonal vegetable!). Other organisations providing stalls and activities included LGBT Youth and Transition Edinburgh Pentlands. 

 

Many pupils and staff participated in the CCHS ‘Fair Trade Bake Off’ as part of our Fair Trade Fortnight festivities. Judges were wowed by the inventiveness and artistic nature of many of the entries. Sophia Purcell in S4 won first prize with her extraordinary chocolate cake, and Mrs Mulvey won the wooden spoon prize for the least edible entry! All the cakes were then sold to raise money for Comic Relief. The Fair Trade group also ran a tombola, a human slot machine and their normal weekly tuckshop.

A huge thanks to all the pupils and staff involved in making One Planet Week such a success.

How Could Our School Be Made Even More Eco-Friendly?

At the Eco Committee at Currie Community High School, we were recently given a massive grant of £3,500 by Parents in Partnership to spend however we thought best to help make our school more eco-friendly. Rather than coming up with ideas by ourselves, we ran a scheme within the school where we asked pupils and teachers to make suggestions as to how they thought the money would best be spent. At a recent eco meeting, we discussed all the responses we received and decided which suggestions were most appropriate, taking into consideration our overall budget and what could realistically be achieved. We had some excellent responses, and have decided to use many of them. Some such ideas included:

• Large stickers encouraging people to dispose of their litter properly, designed by pupils to be stuck onto school litter bins, as suggested by Gemma King (S6) with the S2 JASS Litter Group.
• Native wildflowers planted in Roley’s Wood to create a wetland area to encourage local wildlife, an idea brought forward by EDGE Explorer Scouts.
• Two or three A0-size posters depicting eco-themed artwork to be professionally printed onto boards and presented as a permanent display in the school foyer, a suggestion made by Mrs Steel and her Art and Design pupils.
• A simple automatic watering system to be installed in the school greenhouse so that plants don’t die over the holidays. This would mean we could grow more fruit, vegetables and other plants in the greenhouse, an idea of Rachel Avery, Environment Project Worker.

There were many other interesting suggestions made, too numerous to mention in this article. After deciding which ideas we’re going to go for, we still have around £400 available to spend on eco-related projects. If anyone within the school has any further suggestions on how they would like to see the remaining budget spent, they shouldn’t hesitate to approach anyone from the Eco Committee to share their ideas – they will be considered in a future meeting. We are particularly keen to hear about projects related to our 3 main Eco-School topics for action: Litter, Food & the Environment and Global Citizenship.

If anyone is interested in finding out more about what the Eco Committee has been up to in the school, there are full details available on our regularly updated blog, at www.currieco.blogspot.com.


Hanne-Lisbeth Paterson, Eco Committee member, S5.

Pupil-run anti-litter campaign for next term

Currie High has entered a City of Edinburgh Council anti-litter initiative for High Schools. The project will start with assemblies about litter and its impact by the environmental organisation Changeworks. Two S2 English classes will have the opportunity to work with a professional media company to ‘story board’ a litter campaign video and develop a whole-school campaign targeting littering. A group of pupils with the best storyboard will work with the media company to actually create their film idea.

The Eco-Committee has developed a survey on litter for pupils that will be used before and after the campaign to see how effective it has been in changing behaviour. If Currie High’s film and other campaign materials are judged to be the best of all the High Schools involved, they will be used by the Council for a city-wide campaign. Watch this space ………..

New CurriEco Grant Scheme Launched!

The school has been fortunate enough to receive several thousand pounds for environmental projects – and the Eco Committee wants pupils and staff to decide how it is spent! Ideas for a project – whether it be a community litter pick or a system to harvest rainwater – as long as they work and aim to improve the environment of the school, are being generated at present! The deadline is Friday 12th of October.

Currie supports Earth Hour

We will be joining over 450 schools in Scotland by having our own Earth Hour in school today when we’ll be asking everyone to turn their lights off for Periods 1 & 2.

Earth Hour is not about saving an hour’s electricity, it’s much bigger than that. It’s about realising that the actions we take, from the energy we use, to the food we buy and water we drink has an effect on the world. We all depend on our amazing planet and need to look after it – not just for an hour a year, but every day. So Currie is make a statement that we do care and  is turning the lights out for one hour – and remember Our World is Brilliant, let’s help keep it that way.

Africa Week trailer 2011

Check out this trailer for Africa Week. It gives a flavour of the activities that were on offer.

A 'fruitful' venture

Pupils from Currie Community High School and Woodlands School have come together to plant 8 new fruit trees in a shared orchard. Pupils from the Eco Committee at Currie High supported young people in the Woodlands Eco Committee, who all have complex learning difficulties, to plant the apple and plum trees.
The orchard area now contains 13 apple and plum trees, of 11 different varieties. The fruit will be used in cooking lessons for both schools, and will also be available for community use. Funds to buy the fruit trees came from the Central Scotland Green Network Orchard Grant Scheme.