Whole School Debate

I have organised a whole school debate for December 6th.

There will be eight teams, with all students competing in the first two debates.

These will be:

"This house believes in a universal language"

and

"This house would reintroduce national service."

For the semi-final and final students will find out the topic 20-30 minutes before hand.

Those students who don't make it through will be busy interviewing each other, filming the debates and taking part in some other activities! I am very excited.
Students already know what teams they are on and have started researching. They have also started picking out their costumes/uniforms and team names!

I created these using Smore - and was even featured on their website!

Smore is a fantastic website for making beautiful flyers!

Debate Club UPDATE

Debate club has been really successful!

Recent motions include "This house would legalise cannabis" and "this house would enforce child curfews" and "This house would ban violent video games."

We now have so many members that we will have to have two debates each week and four teams!
Next week the two debate topics are "This house believes that university should be free" and "This house believes you should have to take parenting classes before you can have a baby."

I am organising a whole school debate, with eight teams. All eight teams will take part in two debates in the morning, but only half will make it through to the afternoon. In the afternoon we will have a semi-final, followed by a final, viewed by the whole school, including parents, the board and teachers. Students not involved in the semi-final will be writing up reviews and creating videos for our schools new TV channel!

Wish me luck!

Next Terms Courses

I have been working on creating my units for next term.

My plan is:
Grade 6 - BBC School Report - creating a news report
Unit Question: "What is the news and who decides it?"
Grade 7 - Coding - creating coding lessons for grade 6
Unit Question:"How do you learn?"
Grade 8 - Coding - creating coding lessons for primary school students or staff/parents
Unit Question: "How do you learn?"
Grade 9- Fantastic Feast - creating a science themed meal/event/party for the school
Unit Question: "Are you what you eat?"

I am also working on a Guerrilla Gardening unit I hope to deliver in the March-April term.

All my units will include a debate:
Grade 6 - This house would deny terrorists the oxygen of publicity
Grade 7 - This house believes coding should be taught in all schools
Grade 8 - This house believes coding should be taught in all schools
Grade 9 - This house would ban the development of genetically modified food

I have created iTunesU courses  for all of these and I am happy to share them. iTunesU now let you also share the template, so you can edit the courses yourself. Please leave a comment, send me an email or a tweet if you would like to the view the courses.

If you have done any similar courses, please share your resources with me.


Thanks
@missedutton

Product Design

My Product design module is going very well - the students seem to love it!

Students started off by researching different charities and pitching them to their class. Each grade then voted on the charities they want to raise money for. Grade 6 will be raising for Great Ormond Street, Grade 8 for Stonewall and Grade 9 for Cancer Research UK.

The next lesson students learnt about Pinterest. They first watched this video:

Students then created their own Pinterest page, using the school's email address and started pinning to get ideas. They also followed each others boards and my Product Design board. The grade 6s did a slightly different task, as they are not old enough to have a Pinterest account yet.

The next lesson students pitched their ideas to the class. They had to pitch three ideas, and had to include how many they could make for £10, how much they would sell them for, how they would make them, who would buy them, etc. The class then voted on the products, selecting what other students would make. We had some fantastic ideas ranging from plushie tacos to bath bombs with plastic dinosaurs hidden inside of them! 

The next stage will have students planning their product and creating it. We will then move on to advertising and creating campaigns to raise awareness of our three different charities. Students will also be making a few products as a class. In December we will have an open day for parents, where students set up their stalls to sell their products. There will also be a stall for the products students have made as a class - these will include dinosaur and lego brooches, hair combs and pompom headbands - I'll post some photographs once we have a few more made!

I am loving this unit before and am excited to show you some of the fantastic things students make.
Grade 7 are working on creating music videos using claymation. Currently they are designing their set and story boards. I'll post photographs as we progress!

Children in Need

We are raising money for Children in Need today. This bathrobe and slippers day has been organised by grade 7. I am enjoying wearing my jammies and doing some marking from my classroom's beanbags!