Samaritan's Purse - Shoebox Appeal
This month some children visited St John's Church in Ipswich to deliver the shoe boxes. We took 47 in total, our new record (was previously 44). Isaac, Phoebe, Aiden and Chloe were very well behaved and worked hard sorting a shoe box to make sure the contents were alright for a 10-14 year old boy and packing it in the large cardboard boxes ready to load onto the container. They were rewarded with chocolate coins, orange squash and a biscuit!
Philosothon
Pupils from Tattingstone School were invited to take part in a Philosothon at St Andrew’s Church on Thursday 8th February.
A Philosothon is a competition wherein students explore philosophical and ethical issues. At a Philosothon students are assessed and score highly where they demonstrate rigour and clarity of thought. An essential component of a Philosothon is the pedagogical model for teaching Philosophy to young people called ‘Community of inquiry’. The rationale for the Philosothon methodology is based on evidence that teaching children reasoning skills early in life greatly improves other cognitive and academic skills and greatly assists learning in general.
The pupils participated in a series of Communities of Inquiry which are facilitated by teachers. While participating in this process students are scored. The scores are then collated, ranked and at the end, certificates, awards and/or prizes will be given to pupils.
One of our year 4 pupils, Wilf, writes about his experience at the Philosothon below.
“On Thursday 8th February, we were invited to take part in a Philosothon. There were three schools involved, six children from Tattingstone went but there were 70 children altogether.
When we arrived we were split into three groups and given a picture of a child, working in an Indonesian factory, to discuss. We had to come up with questions that could be asked about the picture. The idea was that after you answered the questions they would give you more information than just looking at the picture on its own. The teachers then chose one of our questions as we had to debate what the answer could be.
The day made us think and question in a different way. It was exciting being able to share our thoughts and opinions with other children. “