Highland school wins national Sky Rainforest Rescue Challenge
Pupils at a school on the Isle of Skye are Scottish winners of the national Sky Rainforest Rescue Challenge Competition.
Staffin Primary School Gaelic Medium pupils in years 4-7 were awarded first prize and £1,000 which they hope to spend on something of lasting benefit for their whole school.
The Sky Rainforest Rescue Schools Challenge is part of Sky and WWF’s three-year project to save one billion trees in the Amazon rainforest and tackle climate change. Schools explored rainforests, online and discovered how the food they eat, products they buy and energy they use affects the rainforests, and what they can do about it.
Head Teacher Margaret Nicolson said: “The school community and I are so proud of how well the children have done in this competition. They and their teacher worked very diligently for this. The skills they acquired will be useful to them all.”
The small class of nine pupils completed a series of tasks linking with curricular areas such as technology, science, language, computing, religion and mathematics. The children also learned about Fair Trade and had to undertake a minimum of five tasks but chose to complete eleven. They recorded in excess of 80 blogs about their work and investigations. Their project involved consultation with pupils, school staff, families, neighbours and the local community.
Councillor Alasdair Christie, Chairman of The Highland Council’s Adult and Children’s Services Committee congratulated Staffin Primary on their achievement, he said: “This is a fantastic result for Staffin. There are almost 1,200 schools taking part in the Sky Rainforest Rescue Challenge throughout the UK and Ireland. It is extremely commendable that Highland pupils are considering the influence that they have in their daily lives on global climate matters of extreme importance like the world’s rainforests.”