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HEAD TEACHER'S NEWSLETTER
Thank you to pupils and staff in our History and Music Departments for such thought provoking and poignant Remembrance assemblies on Friday and giving the context to our minute’s silence at 11am.
Wishing you all a lovely weekend.
Jodie Hannan
Key Dates:
Sunday 13 November: Remembrance Day ceremony at 12.30pm at The Fountain. Rory Steedman and Kayla McKinnie, Head Pupils, and J Hannan, Headteacher, will represent our school.
Tuesday 15 November: Future Pathway Employability Evening 6-8pm in school. No need to book, please just drop in.
Kayla and Rory's Weekly Rundown
Hi guys, welcome back to another one of Rory and Kayla’s weekly rundowns. We hope you have all had a good week and that all our seniors are feeling prepared for their prelims coming up.
We also want to remind you about remembrance this weekend as we think about loved ones who were lost and everything they did for us. We will be down at the memorial service on Sunday at 12:30 to lay a wreathe and pay our respects. We hope to see some of you there!
Have a great weekend as we close in on these dark and colder nights! :)
House Points - Weekly Total
Visit from Scottish Refugee Council
On Thursday, pupils who played a key role in organising last week’s Dress Down Day had a visit from the Scottish Refugee Council. This is the charity that pupils chose to donate the money raised from. This was a fantastic experience to celebrate all of the hard work pupils put into running this event, learn more about the charity and find out exactly how the money raised at Musselburgh Grammar School will be spent. We had some very interesting discussions about the work carried out by volunteers, the communities supported by the Scottish Refugee Council, and how our school community can continue to support this charity and refugees in East Lothian.
Remembrance Assembly
On Friday, a group of History and Music students presented a very poignant Remembrance Assembly for all students. They discussed the reasons why we remember, the relevance of the poppy, some of their own personal stories of remembrance, and a unique story about a soldier from Musselburgh. The musicians played excellent renditions of hymns throughout the assembly.
Book Week Scotland
Next week marks the beginning of Book Week Scotland and Team English are planning lots of fun tasks for English lessons throughout the week. Research proves that reading for pleasure is central in supporting equity and wellbeing, positively impacting learners' attainment across the curriculum, critical thinking, creativity, empathy and resilience. We at MGS see the value, enjoyment and importance of reading and we want to celebrate that. Therefore, we have arranged for some fun ‘book based’ activities commencing the week of the 14th of November:
Lesson starters will aim to develop a reading culture within the school.
There will be a video highlighting how staff at MGS have developed a love of reading and what they see as the benefits of reading.
Some classes will watch ‘Authors Live’ from the Scottish Book Trust – this will help us see the thought process and creativity implemented when writing a novel.
A new list of reading recommendations will be issued.
Monday lunchtime: Creative Writing Club in B4.
Wednesday lunchtime: book swap in B8.
Thursday lunchtime: join the Readaxation group in the Library.
Study Support and Revision for Prelims
The Study Support Timetable is below. It can be accessed by students via their year group Google Classroom. If they do not have access to this, please direct them to Ms McCrorie who will add them in.
Next week’s newsletter will have some useful tips on how to best support your young student as they prepare for the prelim exams. In the meantime here is a useful leaflet from the National Parent Forum Scotland: https://www.npfs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/pointersforparents_E1.pdf
Burgh Baristas
It has been an exciting couple of weeks for our Burgh Baristas! We have successfully hosted another Parents Evening, this time the S1 and sold many hot drinks over the course of the night - so we would like to thank you all for your custom and feedback.
The Burgh Barista will be attending the Future Pathway event on Tuesday evening and again will be serving Barista hot drinks. This will be cash only at this time, so if you wish to purchase a drink we would be grateful if you could bring cash.
In other news, the teaching staff (Mrs McElhaney, Miss Andrew and Mr Lee) successfully passed SQA verification on Tuesday and have the green light to present pupils for the SfW Barista Skills, allowing them to gain a National 5 Skills for Work unit this year. This also means we can create Baristas for the next few years, helping to give vital employability and life skills to the young people of MGS.
The last piece of good news is that 2 of our Burgh Baristas have now secured Part Time employment as Baristas within our local community, since beginning the course in August. This is fantastic news and shows the real value of the course for our young people. A massive well done to Erin (S5) and Oliwier (S6) for your success and good luck in your new roles!
Our Baristas will be attending Edinburgh University next week to help show them real life Barista settings and allow links to be made in our local area. Watch this space next week for some pictures and a review of our visit!
Ocean Youth Trust Scotland (OYTS) - Sailing Adventure
And MGS are ready to go sailing.
What an experience we had aboard the Alba Venturer with the amazing OYTS.
On arrival we were kitted out with sailing personal protective equipment (PPE), given a safety talk and a tout aboard the Alba Venturer, a 70ft yacht docked at Greenock.
From there we sailed to the Holy Loch, which was a challenging sail as it was dark, raining and the sea was choppy. We were relieved to go below deck to an amazing dinner cooked by crew members.
After dinner we had some Halloween fun and finally fell into our bunks exhausted.
Next day we were up early and sailed to Loch Riddon where we anchored for the night, thankfully it was calm. Nice early morning view from Loch Riddon.
From Loch Riddon we sailed to Tarbert, despite the weather, with storm force 10 gusts we made it. The Alba Venturer was like an A&E department with lots of pupils feeling worse for wear. At one point we ran out of sea sickness pills. All returned to normal when the sea was less choppy and the sailing commenced.
This voyage was hard work for everyone. It was a physically and mentally challenging fun packed week, with many good experiences and memories. MGS pupils were perfect ambassadors and a credit to the school.
VIDEO-2022-11-10-12-05-40.mp4After a hard day sailing and after dinner we had several competitions on board from the 2 watches, The Spicy Girls & Co versus Oasis, this competition was for the speed dish washing and I don’t need to say who won, the video reveals.
Comments from pupils:
Lucy – loved learning to sail and tying knots. Her challenge was the extreme weather conditions.
Abby thought the trip was amazing and loved putting the sails up. Her toughest challenge was sea sickness.
Kai’s highlight was steering the boat but he found winching the sails quite challenging.
Marcas’ highlight was playing the games in the evening and his challenging part was fitting into his bunk.
Damien’s highlight was visiting Tarbert and his biggest challenge was sailing in a force 10 gusts.
Evie’s highlight was when she was making lunch and served 17 people her biggest challenge was in the storm and being sick.
Robyn loved steering the yacht but did not enjoy the choppy seas.
Iona and Esme both the dolphins but sea sickness was a problem for both.
We are so proud of the pupils, they all made it to the end proving they had DETERMINATION and they also had the stamina to see it through to the end.
VIDEO-2022-11-10-12-12-58.mp4BEBRAS Challenge
S2 & S3 Computing classes have been preparing to take part in BEBRAS Challenge next week. They will be competing against students from 50 countries around the world, solving puzzles and learning about Computational Thinking.
Pupils who score in the top 10% of entries get invited to take part in the Oxford University Computing Challenge. This is an excellent opportunity for our pupils. Anyone who wishes to get some practice in before the competition can visit https://bebras.uk or search for BEBRAS in your favourite App store.
EDM Competition
Last term S2 spent six weeks creating their own Electronic Dance Music tracks. Pupils were given the opportunity to put their work forward for the music department’s very first EDM competition. We received lots of incredible submissions, but there can only be one winner! The music team narrowed down all of the entries to a top 5. The whole school was asked to listen to all 5 entries and vote for their favourite one! Prior to the vote, all participants were kept anonymous. The music department are very proud to announce all five of our candidates were:
Candidate 1: Zoe Turnbull
Candidate 2: Ella Main
Candidate 3: Sarah Jessup
Candidate 4: Ilyas Naumann
Candidate 5: Molly Lambert
We are delighted to announce that our winning candidate who will receive 50 house points for Caird is… Ilyas Naumann!!
In second place and earning 25 house points also for Caird is… Ella Main!
Our other three candidates will receive 10 house points for their house for making the final five!
Excellent work S2’s and many thanks to all those who voted!
S6 Prom
We are delighted that we are able to have the S6 prom up and running again this year!
All details of location/time and payment instalments can be found on the S6 Google Classroom. The first instalment of £20 to secure your place should be paid by both staff and pupils by Friday 18th November via school pay.
Any concerns, please see Miss Holmes in PE.
Pupil Support News
Another great piece of news in Pupil Support. In September, Mr Lee, our Inclusion and Nurture Teacher applied for a grant from the Red House Home Trust in the hope that we could receive some funds to further support the learning of our young people in the Inclusion space, specifically those who take part in our cooking group twice a week. We recently received a cheque for £670 from them and we could not be more thankful to the Red House Home Trust for supporting the work we are doing. This money will go a long way and will allow us to purchase some much needed kitchen utensils, a storage cupboard, staple ingredients and allow all our young people to have their own personal equipment to work with. The idea of these lessons is to teach about healthy eating, home cooking from scratch and life skills. We have been focussing this term on the cost of living crisis and how we can make healthy and hearty meals on a budget.
Simply Soup@MGS
On Thursday 11th November, a new Health and Wellbeing initiative was introduced at MGS - ‘Simply Soup’.
‘Simply Soup’ consists of a team of young people and Mr Lee making soup on a Thursday morning. Staff can pay £1 to have soup for their lunch and this money helps fund the project and allows young people to take a free portion of soup home with them at the end of the school day.
Soup can be collected from B24 (Nurture Room) every Thursday after school.
Geography
Advanced Higher pupils welcomed Rob Primrose from Scottish Water to talk to them this week about wastewater management in Scotland and hydraulic modelling for flood prevention as part of their investigation into Geographical Issues. We were delighted to have senior pupils from Preston Lodge High School join us too. Rob also informed pupils about potential geography-related career options in Scottish Water in areas such as hydrology and GIS. We would also like to thank Sara McCann, an MGS parent, for suggesting and setting up this session.
Literacy
The Super Power Agency got through a power of work with pupils from S2 and S3 on Thursday this week. Ahead of their final week next week pupils voted on the name of their books, wrote their own author bios, had their photos taken and put the finishing touches to their creative and non-fiction pieces of writing. A job well done to all involved.
MGS Christmas Fayre
Future Pathways Evening
Raffle Donations
We are delighted that the MGS Christmas Market has got the go ahead this year and will take place on Saturday 10th December. Pupils in the Inclusion space have been given the task of arranging the raffle for this event and we are in the process of handing out letters to all local businesses to ask for donations. We would also be very grateful to receive any prizes that parents and carers may be willing to donate. Last year, we were very lucky to receive some excellent prize donations from local businesses, parents and carers and raised over £200 in the raffle alone. If you can donate anything towards our raffle, please hand it in to the school office and let the staff know it’s for the Christmas raffle. Thank you for all your support.
Medical
If you are unwell during the school day please see Ms Harvey in the Medical Room. Do not text your parent from the classroom to pick you up. We have a duty of care as a school to look after all pupils. Thank you, C Harvey
Lost Property
There are lots of jackets, water bottles, glasses and pencil cases. Come and see if they belong to you. Thank you, Ms Harvey.
Newsletter Archive
There's an archive section on the newsletter site with all of the previous newsletters organised by date. It can be viewed by clicking on 'Archive' in the menu or using this link: https://bit.ly/ht-newsletter-archive.
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