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HEAD TEACHER'S NEWSLETTER
We all thoroughly enjoyed welcoming and meeting a Hall full of parents and carers of our P7 pupils to the Grammar on Wednesday night to meet our teachers and visit each department in the school. It was a very successful evening and the next stage of the P7 transition is the three day visit in June 2024.
Huge thanks to all of our prefects for doing such a good job chaperoning the groups across school- you are all a real credit to us.
We’ve thought about Mr Gray all week, walking 500 miles and 500 more for him with the grand finale today. We think we’ve done him proud ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V7NYX1TOgs
Wishing you all a lovely weekend.
Jodie Hannan
Key Dates
Tuesday 3 October: Prize Giving Ceremony 7-9pm.
Week beginning 9 October: S2 tracking reports sent home.
Thursday 12 October: Parent Council AGM in school 7-9pm. All welcome.
As well as the Head Teacher’s Report, the Chair’s Report and Pupil Voice Report, Mrs Donnelly, Curriculum Leader of the Technologies Faculty, will be sharing the work she is doing in school and with businesses in the local area to develop our pupils’ employability skills.
Monday 16- Friday 20 October: Holiday week
Monday 23 October: Inservice day for staff only
Tuesday 24 October: all pupils return to school
Wednesday 25 October: Musselburgh Learns Study Skills S4-S6 6-7pm in school
Tuesday 31 October: Musselburgh Learns S1 Maths 6.30-7.30pm in school
Tuesday 7 November: Musselburgh Learns N5 and Higher Maths 6.30-7.30pm in school
Staff
We say farewell to Mrs McElhaney in Home Economics who leaves us for maternity leave today. We look forward to hearing news of her twins and seeing photos of them soon!
Dr Robertson has joined us as a supply teacher in Mathematics until the October Break.
Musselburgh Learns Study Skills
Musselburgh Learns is our approach to learning in and across our school community. Learning is not just for the young people at the Grammar. Learning is vital and lifelong for all us adults too, whether teachers or parents and carers.
We know how much parents and carers want to help their children learn, and how difficult this can be sometimes as school has changed a great deal since we were teenagers!
We want to work with you and support you to support your child’s learning, so to that end we are offering a number of Musselburgh Learns family learning sessions this term. These events are for parents, carers and pupils to attend together. In addition to the Musselburgh Learns Maths sessions noted above, we are holding a Musselburgh Learns Study Skills session on Wednesday 25 October 6-7pm. This is for the parents and carers of all S4-S6 pupils to support study skills not just before prelims but across the year. Study skills will also be taught in PSE (Personal and Social Education) in late October, and study resource packs distributed to all Senior pupils before prelims to help them prepare.
We look forward to seeing you at these events and will be asking for your feedback so we can keep improving what we do.
Musselburgh Learns
Our staff have been busy researching current educational theory and practice to ready themselves for sessions of small scale improvement over session 2023/24. Drawing from research methods about marginal gains theory, all staff are taking on areas for improvement in their teaching practice and in their classrooms.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll share some of the ideas staff have. So far, Modern Languages have shared a department approach to setting up clearer routines in class for starter tasks to promote an increase of knowledge through repetition of exposure to essential vocabulary. By using common vocabulary more regularly, such as days of the week, describing the weather and going over classroom routines, all in the language being studied, learners will be able to recall words more easily in assessments and in general conversation. Feel free to test your young person’s knowledge on this to see if it’s working. Es un hermoso día soleado para aprender!
Parent Council
Please join us at the Parent Council AGM due to be held on Thursday 12 October, in the school from 19:00 – 21:00. The PC is going to treat all visitors to a drink made by our Burgh Barista team (the hot chocolate is delicious!). We’re hoping to have some nibbles available too. Ms Hannan will give her annual update, representatives from Pupil Voice will share about their work over the past year and the Chair will share an annual update. Then there’ll be some quick business approving volunteers in roles like Chair, Vice-Chair (or Co-Chair). You can come and visit and learn all about what’s going on without volunteering…so please don’t let that put you off! 😊 If you do fancy putting your name in for a role, please do. It’s a great opportunity to support the school, learn so much and make a difference for every young person at the Grammar.
Please give this event a click https://www.facebook.com/events/1194194704870085/ if you can come so we’ll know how many to cater for. Fingers crossed we see lots of you there. 🤞🏽
If you ever want to be paid for attending our regular meetings, we do have a clerk vacancy.
In other news we’re planning something slightly different in November – watch this space!
Shona Blakeley
Chair
‘The Wrap Up, with Charlie & Eva’
Welcome to another edition of ‘The Wrap up, with Charlie and Eva’! We hope you’ve had a fantastic week, and are ready for the weekend! Now without further ado let’s get into it!
The first pupil voice council meeting of the new structure unfortunately did not go ahead this week, and has been temporarily postponed until some things have been sorted out. This does mean however there is still a chance to suggest areas of discussion through speaking to your regi teachers, so if you have anything (preferably to do with learning and teaching) you’d like to discuss, please speak to your registration teacher when you can!
This week on Tuesday we saw the European Day of Languages! We celebrated this through fun language based activities we did in registration classes, such as guessing the language being spoken/sung and guessing how many languages are spoken across MGS!
Yesterday we had a dress down day as a chance to celebrate the life of Mr Gray. Live music was played in the hall throughout the day by some of MGS’s very own pupil bands, a raffle for 2 football shirts was done with tickets being sold throughout the week, and there was a bake sale to raise money for CHAS. Exercise bikes were also brought into the hall to allow everyone to get a few more miles on the last day to add to their houses total. It was an absolutely fantastic day and we hope everyone had a great time, especially the pupils and staff who worked to help set it up and provide cakes for the bake sale!
We’re also very happy to announce that all 3 houses have managed to smash the 500 mile goal over the week!!! Congratulations to everyone who logged miles this week and helped their house reach that truly impressive milestone!
It’s been a big week here at MGS, so we’d like to wish all of you a nice, restful weekend, as well as once again thanking and congratulating all the pupils and staff who helped yesterday’s events in honour of Mr Gray. Thanks again for reading this week’s ‘The Wrap up, with Charlie and Eva’, we will see you again next week!
European Day of Languages
This week in the Modern Languages Faculty, to celebrate the European Day of Languages, all of S2 were invited to the hall to participate in a range of different language games and activities. The tasks were all ably prepared by our dedicated group of Senior Language Leaders. The S2 pupils had a superb time and worked hard at all the stalls.
Furthermore, some S1 and S3 classes were able to listen to Sandie Robb from the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS) who delivered a session on science in modern languages, with a focus on Spanish and Mandarin. The pupils got to see different types of animals. They learned about where they originated, what their names were in different languages, and got to hold some of the replicas that Sandie brought along with her.
Finally, Mrs McIntosh organised a daily quiz for all pupils to take part in during registration class this week. Pupils have been taking part enthusiastically and we have enjoyed seeing all the responses come in. We will announce the winner of the £10 Amazon gift voucher next week.
Edinburgh College Cabin Crew Training Day
Thank you to the Travel and Tourism department at the Granton Campus for training up 24 of the N5 Travel and Tourism students for cabin crew! As part of their Employability unit, the students had the opportunity to find out more about what being cabin crew entails. They all had to take on a role as part of a flight crew and either greet and seat passengers, perform the security demonstration and checks or run the trolley service on the REAL plane (complete with drinks and snacks). The students ran a professional flight service and would be an asset to any airline.
e-Sgoil
E-Sgoil is an online education resource offered by Education Scotland. Registration for e-Sgoil’s Evening Webinar programme is now open. There are 50+ weekly webinars to choose from. Watch the video to see how e-Sgoil supports your learning, check the timetable for your subjects, and complete the form to register. The webinars run weekly until the SQA exams.
Maths Study Support Next Week
Monday - National 5 Applications only with Mr Devine
Tuesday - National 5 Maths with Mrs Lyall
Wednesday - National 5 Maths with Mr Harpham
Thursday - Higher with Mrs McKechnie
Thursday - National 4 Maths and Applications with Mr Harpham
Sports Achievement
A huge congratulations to Asia & Zander Donaldson who placed in their age groups at the British Gymnastics Inter -Regional Challenge Cup Final 🏆
Asia secured first place in DMT and Zander second place in Trampolining. A huge well done to you both!!!!
You can check out their routines below:
Young Scot Big Survey
Young Scot are running a survey to get a better understanding of what life’s like for a young person in Scotland in 2023. As part of this survey they are asking what things in life, community and Scotland make them feel good, what things they might worry about and the issues that are important to them. All of the information they provide in this survey is completely anonymous.
After each young person completes the survey, they will get a code for 150 Young Scot Rewards points. If they redeem that code, they will also be entered into their draw for a chance to win an Apple Watch SE!
Direct link to the survey:
Employability Pathway 2023
Please save the date, all welcome. If you are a business or know of any businesses who would like to secure a spot. Please contact the school or alternatively email, employability@musselburghgrammar.elcschool.org.
Medical
All flu forms need to be handed in as soon as possible. Please check your register class' time outside Ms Harvey's room. Vaccinations will take place on Wednesday 4th October and Thursday 5th October.
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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