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Volume 6, Issue 3

November 2016

The week commenced on Monday morning with a Fun-fair style event for S1, with vari-ous games like pin the tail on the donkey, as well as a full year group ‘Musical Chairs’ in the centre of the street (186

chairs!). Tues-day brought a ‘Pot Luck’ stall for S3 to take part in, and a LGS Bake off at lunchtime in the street. Loose change built a giant ‘P’ on the

Street floor on Wednes-day and a three-legged penalty competition took place at lunch in PE.

Thursday was elected

Our annual charity week took place from 7th-11th November 2016. Choos-ing a charity that was both well-known and affiliated with our local community was instru-mental in the decision to choose Parkinson’s UK as our charity to fundraise for. The Clydesdale Parkinson’s Group had begun in October 2015 and had offered support to people in our area who suffer from Parkinson’s. It felt fitting that we show our sup-port for their work by playing our part in it too.

Parkinson’s 1

Parkinson’s 2

Parkinson’s 3

News from the Head Teacher 4

Chritsmas Concert 4

Braxfield Caotains 5

Captains Blog 5

DYW 6

Focus on Skills 6

London Trip 2016 7

Haunted Tower 2016 8

Outdoor Learning 9

S1 Classics Trip 9

Sports Desk 10

Achievments 11

Food Bank 12

Important Dates 12

Inside this issue:

#Pennies for Parkinson’s

Learning Growing Succeeding

Parkinson’s Campaigners Niamh Shanks, Madeleine Millar, Jennifer Cuthbertson, Cameron Steer, Cameron Cairns and Ian Brown.

The final day ended the week with a bang, as the Street filled at lunch to watch the “Are you better than a first year” game show. This was followed by a surprise Sister Act performance by teachers, and a male pupil-teacher dance to end the week of events in style.

Throughout the week, Golden Tickets were sold every morn-ing to tutor clas-ses in order to win a prize for the class with the most tickets at the end of the week. There was also an ‘It’s a Knockout’ Challenge in PE where people donated to compete for house points.

The week was a huge success, be-coming a well and truly en-joyable experi-ence for the whole school , raising over £2700 for the Park-inson’s charity. The mon-ey raised

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#Pennies for Parkinson’s

is to be split equally between Park-inson’s UK and our local Clydesdale Parkinson’s group.

Big thanks to the charity committee for organising all the events and to Mrs Wilson for her help in the pro-cess, to the staff involved in the ac-tivities, and most importantly to everyone who donated to help such a good cause and doing our school and the charity proud.

C Campbell (Vice Captain)

‘Crazy Day’ where people paid £1 to wear uniform backwards, spray your hair, paint your face, or in some cases wear a tutu for the day. At lunchtime members of staff and some of the Charity Committee opt-ed to be victims as people paid to sponge, gunge and glitter them out-side in the school’s quadrangle. This quickly became a popular event and raised a lot of money, including a £21 bid to let Charley Welch pour a full bucket of gunge over Mr Chand.

#Pennies for Parkinson’s

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Images from LGS Parkinson’s Charity Week

New Posts

Two members of staff will be heading off to new posts follow-ing the Christmas Break. Mrs Leck of our Mathematics Department has been appointed to the post of Teacher of Mathe-matics at Strathaven Academy and we all wish her every suc-cess in her new post and thank her for all her work in supporting our pupils since joining the school in August 2007.

Mrs McGinlay, Additional Sup-port Needs and Foreign Lan-

guages has been appointed to the staff of Cathkin High School. Mrs McGinlay joined Lanark Grammar School in August 2010 as we merged with Craighead School and Victoria Park and I would wish to thank her for all her work with our school community during this period.

Supported Study Classes

Support for pupils through sup-ported study classes is a signifi-cant feature of teachers’ work in trying to ensure that all our pu-pils achieve to their maximum potential at any given point in their learning journey. In addition to classes within the school we are currently deliver-ing Numeracy supported study classes in Carstairs Junction Primary School, Douglas Prima-ry School and Rigside Primary School. Information about school ses-sions and Primary School ses-sions can be found through ‘Latest News’ section of our website through the link below. http://www.lanark.s-lanark.sch.uk/latest-news/

News from the Head Teacher

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Head Teacher Mr Mark Sherry

School Uniform

I would wish to thank all pupils and parents who continue to support school uniform – your ongoing commitment is greatly appreciated and valued by all staff. Obviously, Scottish winters bring long periods of adverse weather therefore, the expectation is that pupils can continue to support school uniform through:

wearing an outer jacket underneath which their

blazer can be worn; folding their blazer into a

school bag and then wearing it in school;

Or storing their blazer in

a locker from which it can accessed each day.

There is no expectation that pu-pils should wear their blazer as an outer garment during the cold and wet Scottish winters but we do feel that pupils, and parents, can continue to support school uniform through the options above.

Christmas Concert Wednesday 14th December 2016 - 7pm

We will be holding our annual Christmas Concert on Wednesday the 14th of December in the Street area at 7pm. It is a fantastic opportunity to show-case our very many talented pupils in the Drama Club, Samba Band , Choir , Wind Band , School Show and many more. There will also be some Christmas, LGS Calendar, raffle and refreshments stalls. £3 entry to be paid at the door.

The Braxfield House Captains for 2016-17, if you were not already aware, are Kenny Jack, Jennifer Henderson, Neve Calvin and Camer-on Cairns.

Our ambitions as Braxfields House Captains are to win the House Com-petition (for the third year in a row) and to make everyone feel involved in the team spirit of Braxfield. To-gether we make up a diverse team of budding teachers, pilots and en-gineers with, we feel, the dedica-tion to guide Braxfield towards fur-ther success.

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Up Close and Personal - The Braxfield House Captains

To date, we have all achieved great suc-cess in various areas of the school and would like to help others do the same. We hope that Braxfield will help support us through-out the year, as we continue to support them.

M McCulloch 6SW3

Captains Blog

Being selected to take on a leading role in our school is an opportunity that I am honoured to have been given. My fellow Captains Ian, Jen-nifer and Cameron have been a great group of people to work alongside when organising various events throughout the school. Of course we couldn’t manage it all without our resilient group of Pre-fects and House Captains who offer help and support whenever needed to ensure that things run smoothly.

As Vice Captain I feel that offering support is essential. Because of this, I volunteer in Science classes to help support those who may need it and encourage people to ask for help. This support is my way of al-most giving back the help I was offered throughout my years at school, making up for it and playing my part in the school community. I find that the social events that take place during the school year really help take people’s minds off the stress of work and allow time to relax, which I feel creates a positive school ethos. This helps towards our school values as people become

more enthusiastic, forming better work ethic and allowing them to attain greater. For example the In-

ter-house Quiz always lifts people’s spirits during revision time. I hope to encourage as many new events throughout the year to keep this positive mindset going and create healthy competition within the school.

Over the past few months I have

taken up various responsibilities in order to get to grips with my lead-ership positions. In recent weeks one of the main focal points was organising the Annual Charity Week along with our committee of pre-fects. The week may have been stressful to organise but was an amazing experience and was hugely successful. I feel that we did the charity proud and am grateful that our whole school supported the week of events. My role also comes with some benefits such as getting to take part in the Ryder Cup putting competition when Mrs Leck withdrew (Lucky me!).

In my final year I wanted to give

back to the school community and

try to make the end of my journey

the best it can be. So far I am suc-

ceeding with my aim and would like

this to continue. I hope this year is a

successful one for the Captains and

myself, and look forward to main-

taining our hard work for the re-

mainder of the session.

Christopher Campbell (Vice Cap-

tain)

Focus on Skills

Mr J Thompson (Lanark DYW Lead), Mr J Gilchrist (GP Plantscape) and Mr R Smith (LGS)

see so many teachers from different

subjects come together to plan, dis-

cuss and deliver lessons which fo-

cussed on skills.

Some teachers

even designed

lessons to allow

pupils to re-

search or learn

about different

careers linked

to their specific

curricular area.

This work was

particularly targeting pupils in S1 to

S3 but we hope to run a similar

week for senior pupils next session

after their prelims.

J Thompson DYW Lead

school and go straight into a job. But regardless of the road they take, on every part of that journey

they have to learn skills and fur-thermore, develop those skills.

In order to raise awareness of skills

and highlight the importance of

skills for work, Mr Robson and I

gathered a group of teachers from

across the school. It was great to

In a recent survey a group of young peo-ple were asked the question;

what do you think employers are looking for in young people? Most of them said; good grades, academ-ic qualifications. Then a group of employers were asked; what is it that you are actually looking for in young people? The most of them said; the right attitude and a good set of skills. The message from em-ployers therefore is this; qualifica-tions will get you noticed, skills will get you employed. The road from education to employment for every young person will not be the same. We see many of our pupils go off to college, university or learn an ap-prenticeship. Some even leave

DYW LANARK Developing the Young Workforce

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GP Plantscape

GP Plantscape is a family owned and managed business focusing on ex-cellent service delivery in landscap-ing services throughout the UK. We were glad to find out that they were keen to approach schools and help to support our DYW agenda. Re-cently Mr Smith and I had the op-portunity to visit Jimmy Gilchrist,

Managing Director GP Plantscape, to learn more about the company and visit their facilities in Kirk-fieldbank. The local company al-ready offer our school an excellent

DYW LANARK

Developing the

Young Workforce

work placement programme for those of our stu-dents that are interested in interior or exterior landscap-ing. The outcome of the visit was very positive and it al-lowed us to create another business link for the school. We are delighted that GP Plantscape are willing to help the school and support our students with employability activities, the Career Conven-tion, future work placements and mock interviews. We look forward to further developing this partnership throughout the rest of the session. J Thompson DYW Lead

We then went back to our rooms to sleep.

We woke up the next morning to the horror of finding out we had to go on The London Bridge Experience (which we had seen advertised the last night as the scariest attraction in the UK)

It started off with a historical tour in which we travelled back in time and met loads of strange characters, who told us stories of

London Bridge. Then we went into a dark tunnel and the screaming be-gan. Most of the screaming was caused by our imaginations but at

the end it became real, when we were chased by a butcher with a chainsaw and hit by decapitated heads, hanging from the ceiling, in a tunnel of strobe lights.

After we had recov-ered we went on our way to the Natural History Museum. Un-fortunately the queue

2016 London Trip

Page 7

was too long and if we had waited we would have missed dinner.

After a visit to our rooms to freshen up, we headed out to dinner at Pizza Hut. We had an all you can eat

buffet, and trust us, everyone did have all they could eat.

Then we went to see Wicked! It was amazing! The theatre was massive and our seats were very comfortable. We got chills when Elphaba and Galinda/Glinda sang.

On our last day we went shopping and bought loads of goodies! After that we got on the bus and left for home.

We arrived back at 10:30pm, and we were extremely tired.

Thank you for reading!

Beth Trainer and Elannah Noonan

The London trip was amazing. We all had loads of fun. We started off our weekend waking up at 4 am to leave Lanark at 5 am. On the way we stopped at many service stations and bought loads of coffee and sweets. Most of us fell asleep, and before we knew it, we were in Lon-don at 1:30.

We were staying at the Ramada Ho-tel, just outside London. We then got ready in our rooms for dinner at Planet Hollywood. After that, it was off to see Matilda, but not before a quick tour of Lon-don’s sights. We saw Big Ben (and Mini Ben), the London Eye, and Trafalgar Square.

We then saw Matlida. The songs were amaz-ing, and everyone loved it when Ms Trunchbull sang her solo. Our seats were in the top circle at the back, so we all had a great view, even if it was far away from the stage. Matilda her-self was adorable and very talented.

The Haunted Tower Project 2016

The Faculty of Creative and Aesthetic Subjects was proud to present our annual Interdiscipli-nary Project again this year. We had all of S1 competing to attend the final and staff had an incredibly difficult job of deciding on the final-ists for this.

The project was based on the poem entitled ‘The Haunted Tower’ . Music pupils were asked to create a piece of music which used a variety of sound effects and compositional techniques. Art pupils were asked to produce an illustration based on the description of a haunted tower which had to be true to the description as much as possible, but also show individuality and imagination in its execution. Drama pupils were asked to devise, rehearse and present a Halloween drama which had a clear beginning, middle and end.

The winners in the subject categories were as follows:-

DRAMA WINNERS - Alister Black , Jamie Brown , Jamie Mitchell , Connor Potts

MUSIC WINNERS - Lucy West, Page Millar, Cerys Forrest , Nicole Goodwin , Sydney Pinkney

ART WINNER -Aileen Orr

Page 8

Outdoor Education

Page 9

claimed Edge of Empire film.

There was just time for some souve-nir shopping before the packed

lunch at the Roman Army Museum.

Next stop was the civilian settle-ment and garrison fort at Vindolan-

da. The resident archaeologist gave the group an introductory talk on the site before “letting the group loose” to explore. The highlight of

the excursion for every-body, staff included, was watching the archaeolo-gists bringing out finds from the ground as we watched: shoes, boots, bones.

The site at Vindolanda is massive so the group had to really keep mov-ing to see as much as possible including civil-ian houses, reconstruc-tions of kitchens, shops, temple, wall turret, the fort and the museum.

A busy day!

S Harrison

S1 Classical Studies Trip

We have been successful as a school in securing opportuni-ties for targeted pupils in S2-S4 to participate on a range of outdoor learning programmes throughout the session.

The activities are provided in partnership with Outdoor Re-source Base, part of South Lan-arkshire Culture and Leisure, and are multi-activity projects ranging from archery, bush-craft, hillwalking, mountainbik-ing, snowsports and water-sports.

The aim is to promote young people’s confidence and resili-ence when faced with chal-lenges, as well as encourage

36 S1 pupils travelled to Hadrian’s Wall Country in Cumbria to visit two sites: The Roman Army Museum and Vindolan-da, a World Heritage Site.

At the Roman Army Mu-seum the pupils learned about Roman Life and Latin in the setting of a traditional Roman schoolroom. The pupils were captivated by the holographic Roman teacher. Following the lesson, it was time to look round the museum completing worksheets before heading to the 3D cinema and watching the ac-

leadership, teamwork and problem solving skills. Young people will work towards gaining accreditation in Youth Achievement Awards.

One of our S4 pupils who took part was Nathan Thom-son who enjoyed the moun-tain biking, in particular ,and felt he had made more friends through the team building tasks. He also be-lieved, overall, he and the rest of the group were more motivated to do their schoolwork as they had faced some hard challenges together but had been suc-cessful in everything.

D Falconer

Sports Desk

Showjumping Shamrock

Many congratulations to Rory Davidson 4J1 who has continued his successes with the Lanark and Upper Ward Pony Club. In October Rory travelled to County Kildare, Ireland to compete in the International Curragh Horse Show at the Curragh race-course. The team, including two mem-bers who had never participated in com-petition before, performed very well against very experienced competition and finished a very credible 3rd overall. Very well done Rory.

On a sad note, this was Rory’s last ever mounted games competi-tion as he is now too old and too tall. Again, many congratulations on all your individual and team successes over the years. Be very proud of yourself Rory. C Goldie

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Medal winning swimmers Shiona McClafferty, Lewis Campbell, Erin Snow and Kyle McEwan

South Lanarkshire Schools Swimming Championships 2016

A selection of our young people competed in the recent afore mentioned event. This took place on Wednesday 9th November at Larkhall. I am pleased to report that they did very well, with the following pupils winning medals;

Erin Snow – 2 Silvers and 1 Bronze

Kyle McEwan – 1 Gold, 1 Silver and 2 Bronze

Shiona McClafferty – 1 Gold and 2 Silver

Lewis Campbell – 2 Golds and 1 Sil-ver

Many others placed just outside of the medals and a congratulations goes to them too. Well done!

A Campbell

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Tae Kwon Do Titan

What a magnifi-cent achievement by Robert Easthope 3J1 who is a British Cham-pion in his chosen sport of Tae Kwon Do.

On Saturday 1 October Robert travelled to Stratford Upon Avon in England to compete in the Tae Kwon Do British Champion-ships.

Competing against opponents from all over Britain, Robert won Gold in the Black Belt Sparring event for the 13-14 age Group.

Absolutely superb stuff Robert. We are all incredibly proud of you!!

C Goldie

Achievement

Open Mic Uk

Congratulations to Ewan Legg who made it through to the National Final of the Open Mic UK competition. Open Mic UK is a national music competition, which has over 10,000 entries every year. Auditions started in August to search for the UK’s best singers, singer/songwriters, rap-pers and vocal groups. The music competition is also a fantastic opportunity to not only show off your talent to industry professionals, but also to develop as an act in a highly competitive industry. Well Done Ewan . A star in the making!!!

Girls Brigader Gabriella

Recently Gabriella of 6SB2 achieved her Bronze Duke of Edin-burgh at the end of the Girls Brigade session and was also pre-sented with the Brigader Brooch, which is the second highest award in the Girls Brigade.

For the Bronze award, she had to walk 9k over 2 days camping with the other girls and go a second hike and camp out again. This was particularly challenging for Gabriella but she coped remarkably well.

Gabriella has been in the Girls Brigade since age 6 and will leave this year. She has attained the 12 years of Service Award for attending church each week and a number of other badges for achieve-ments. The officer in charge Christine hopes to enrol Gabriella in her officer training programme for the 2017 session.

The Girls Brigade can be a great place to meet other young people on a weekly basis, to learn new crafts, develop social skills and friendships. It is a vibrant organisation which is volunteer led and based on Christian principles.

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Phone: 01555 667520

V OL U M E 6 , I S S UE 3

Kirklands Road Lanark

ML11 9AJ

Head Teacher : Mr. Mark Sherry

Monthly Food Bank Collection

Important Dates Christmas Concert Wednesday 14 December 2016 7.00pm

Last day of term before Christmas Thursday 22 December 2016 2.30pm close

First day of term after Christmas Monday 9 January 2017 8.45am

Senior prelims begin Monday 23 January 2017

Senior prelims end Monday 30 January 2017

support to members of the Clydes-dale community; delivering food and household items to those who are having to rely upon the generos-

ity of others to get by.

Beginning in January pupils will be asked to bring in one item during the food bank collection week and hand this to their tutor teacher. The pupils will be made aware of which items the Food Bank is in need of

We are pleased to announce that, beginning in January, Lanark Gram-mar School will be running a monthly collection for the Clydes-dale Food Bank. As some of you may be aware, the number of people living in the UK who rely upon food banks is alarmingly high. The Trussell Trust reported that 1,109,309 three day emergency food supplies were provided to people in crisis by the charity’s network of 424 food banks in the 2015/16 fi-nancial year, compared to 1,084,604 in 2014/15. Of this num-ber, 415,866 went to children.

The Clydesdale Food Bank is based in Carluke and provides invaluable

each month at the beginning of the collection week. However, items which are always welcome are non-perishable foods (tins, cereals, rice

biscuits etc.) as well as toiletries and cleaning materials.

This will be a fantastic opportunity for pupils of Lanark Grammar School to contribute directly to members of their community in a

very positive manner. We look for-ward to your support in this initia-tive.

R Blaney