Excellent Work Celebration Gallery, 5th February 2021

These are a few screenshots from 8A ICT for unreliable /suspicious websites, websites or adverts. Goes to show… you can never be too sure! – Mrs McIntosh

Well done to Alexandra Liddell in 8B who had a great idea of taking screenshots of Google Maps to support her examples of local settlement patterns. Great work! – Mrs Armstrong

Excellent English work from Joshua Ihnat in 8D and excellent History work from Sarah Speer in 8E.  Joshua’s work is excellent because he has explained the effect of the language and the impact on the reader in excellent depth.  Sarah’s work is excellent ( Sarah Speer’s Excellent History Work) because it is very detailed and there is clear evidence that highly effective research has been carried out to help her to include greater detail.  –Mr McMahon

Year 8 Drama Competition winners – All the Shakespearean insults that year 8 pupils created last week were entered in an online secret Ballot via Google Forms.The original task was to choose three words from a selection of Shakespearean adjectives and put them together to make a cutting insult.The pupils came up with 85 different insults. After two rounds of voting the winners were:

1^st Karina Budriute 8B – Thou art a dizzy-eyed, elf-skinned, pignut., 2^nd Robert Balfour 8E – Dog-hearted, dismal-dreaming, scut., 3^rd Sarah Gallagher 8A –Thou art a gorbellied, guts-gripping, footlicker.

The winning insults are being made into badges. All of year 8 will get an insulting badge. The winners will each get the full set of four badges. Well done everyone. – Mrs McDowell

following on form the Drama theme of ‘interesting’ names…..As part of their PD lesson 8C did some catching-up and talking about Cup-Cakes using Kahoot – If your feeling inspired to do some baking this weekend  try Using Harry McKenzie’s fantastic recipe – Mrs McIntosh

KS3 Music pupils have been learning about African Music. This week the pupils were tasked with creating their own traditional African instruments from materials at home, and I think you’ll agree that they are just outstanding. Such imagination! A big well done to you all. Here are just a few for you to enjoy. – Miss Rasdale

9C Art silhouette portraits by Marina Bell, Morgan Graham, Ryan Graham, Anna Little, 0dhran Little, Daniel Rowsome, Ben Shaw, Carla Smith, Justin Smith, Lorcan Sreenivasan, Ryan Topping and Hannah Tubman. – Great work everyone!! – Ms Stephenson

In Yr10 Art , 10E and 10C have been looking the concept of line within photography – click on the links below to see two exemplar Galleries of their work. – Ms Stephenson

10C Line Photography Gallery

10E Line Photography Gallery

Thank you for the excellent participation (and doodles) from Year 11 LLW pupils this week. We used ‘Jamboard’ to discuss how the Government can support migrants and develop a more inclusive society. – Mrs Armstrong

Yr11 GCSE RE pupils also used Jamboard this week to look at the paragraphed construction of GCSE essay questions to meet L3 assessment criteria in their hunt for top marks. The sides below demonstrate the results of collaborate work  recording their initial ideas for each paragraph, developing these ideas and then peer assessing.  A really enjoyable and productive lesson! – Mr Beddard

KS4 pupils had the opportunity to take part in a series of workshops offered by Now and Beyond as part of the UK’s first ever mental health festival for schools and colleges on Wednesday 3^rd February 2021. They tried out Teen Yoga with the Yoga Crow, Edinburgh, an Introduction to Mindfulness with The Wee Retreat, Glasgow and Practical Tools for overcoming Anxiety and Depression facilitated by Dr Hayley Watson from California. The pupils who took part found the sessions very beneficial in helping them to understand their thoughts, feelings and behaviours and taught them strategies in how to cope with these better. Thank you to all the facilitators, to Now and Beyond for the opportunity and to the pupils who took the time to invest in themselves – Ms. Goodman

The Year 12 Drama class are about to start rehearsing a NEW radio play, written especially for them by Mrs McDowell.  Following on from the success of the Erne Emergency, this latest play, Janus, is set in modern times, with flashbacks to the World War II as the characters unravel the mysterious powers of Boho’s Janus figure. Tying in with our focus on positive mental health, the Year 12 got a surprise package in the post with their copy of the play, a sweet treat and an inspirational quote.  Watch this space for updates on when you can tune in to the radio play. – Mrs Rees
Some great work by  Year 11 Mathematicians who have been doing work on Volume and Surface Area. – Mrs McCordick

This week for Children’s Mental Health week the Drama department took some time to reflect on our Lockdown experiences.   Taking inspiration from the INISDE OUTSIDE YOUTH FESTIVAL’s video FLIPSIDE,  the pupils were asked to write a word in response to LOCKDOWN and share it on the screen.  We then talked about what the flip side of this might be, and the pupils wrote something positive that had come out of Lockdown. This led to us sharing ideas about things we can do to keep positive, even though it can be hard going sometimes.  You can see their responses in the short film, Flipside. It is underscored with an original composition from one of our Year 14 Performing Arts students, Harry Rees. 

The A Level Performing  Arts and GSCE Drama classes also talked about the power of music to lift our mood or help us to let go and vent our feelings, with the classes sharing their favourite songs and Mrs Rees complying them into Spotify playlists to be shared in their Google Classroom.  She was delighted and surprised to discover that the Year 12 are secret 80s and 90s fans, whilst the Year 13 named their soundtrack ‘ Music to redraft by’! – Mrs Rees

I’m sure you will agree that despite the obvious challenges posed by COVID, the quality of work on display ,which represents a small cross section of the learning and engagement across school, is testament to the tremendous efforts of the teachers and young people in our school community.