

Global Citizenship blog
The start of the lunar ‘Year of the Ox’ was welcomed last weekend at street parties and displays all over the world. A BBC story describes the Glasgow celebrations and links to resources such as photos from activities at Kelvingrove Museum.
LTS has updated its ‘Confucius Classroom’ website, which forms the public-facing side of our online hub to support the teaching of Chinese language and culture. Teachers who want to share resources and ideas can do so through the Confucius Classrooms group on the national schools intranet Glow.
MoreCelebrations of the 250th anniversary of the birth of poet Robert Burns took place all over Scotland last week, and kicked off the year-long programme of events for Scotland’s 2009 Homecoming festival.
The programme of events has been organised around five main themes - Burns, whisky, golf, great Scottish minds and innovations, and Scotland’s culture and heritage. The Homecoming Scotland website offers lots of information about the background to the programme and the events planned for the months ahead.
Learning and Teaching Scotland is supporting the educational dimension of Homecoming Scotland through a new website and production of resources on Scottish cultural heritage.
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A new CPD opportunity for Scottish education professionals will enable a group to visit Oslo in March 2009 to investigate the Norwegian ‘Cultural Rucksack’ programme. They will spend four days studying the operation and benefits of this government-supported initiative. The initiative aims to ensure that school pupils are offered cultural activities in partnership with professional arts companies and venues, to enhance their learning and understanding of the arts.
Full details of this SCIPD group visit are available on the LTS International Education website.
MoreLTS is inviting applications from Scottish teachers for a group study visit to Dublin in late February 2009. The theme of this CPD opportunity is the Transition Programme which runs in secondary schools in the Republic of Ireland, offering a flexible curriculum which emphasises the development of personal and social skills and a range of competencies for life.
Full details are available on the LTS International Education website.
MoreThe BBC news story “Pupils witness Obama inauguration” covers the visit of two Dundee City school students to Washington D.C. The pupils from St.Paul’s RC Academy will observe the ceremony at which Barack Obama will be sworn in as President of the United States of America.
More Assessment is the theme for two new SCIPD group study visits being offered to Scottish education staff by Learning and Teaching Scotland. One group will visit New Zealand in March 2009, and the other will visit Manitoba in April 2009.
Both groups of professionals will investigate innovative approaches to the assessment of literacy, numeracy, and health and wellbeing in the context of Curriculum for Excellence.
Details of both professional development opportunities are available from the LTS International Education website.
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