Balfron Matters
Congratulation Matt! Active Stirling's Staff Volunteer of the Year for Football Coaching at Balfron
Congratulation Matt! Active Stirling's Staff Volunteer of the Year for Football Coaching at Balfron
16 June 2025
Weekly communication for staff
Building Futures Together
Dear colleagues,
Last week boasted a wonderful week of diverse adventures and successes for Balfron High School. It is both impressive and breath-taking to see the range of achievements and experiences that our young people and colleagues had in just one week. I am very grateful and proud! #findyourthing
We had great achievements in a number of categories in the Active Stirling Awards. Congratulations to Matt Campbell who won the School Staff Volunteer of the Year award for his work with school football. Congratulations to Lucy Walkup who won the Sportability Volunteer of the Year. Congratulations to new S6 pupil, George Thomson who won the Young Coach of the Year category. Balfron parent, Thea Meridith won the Parent Volunteer of the Year category for her work in promoting cricket at Balfron High.
Thanks to Amna, Mark and S6 pupil, Adam Mackay, the culmination of a year's work saw our STEM On Track team compete in our own Balfron High kart against 45 other UK school teams. Thanks for the updates over the weekend. My heart was in my mouth when I saw we finished 4th in the heats. Brilliant effort and a truly unique experience for our young people. Video and summary below.
Thanks to Oonagh for leading the very well organised science trip to London last week. Another amazing opportunity to take field work to a new exciting environment, experience culture and have fun with peers and staff. There is a photo montage video for you to peruse below.
Grease was a massive success. While the best part for me was to see our performers clearly enjoying themselves, it was wonderful to get such positive feedback from parents and visitors about the high quality of the performances and live music. Thanks to Grace, Anna, Cairi, Stephen, Ansley and Emma for their leadership, inspiration and organisation in pulling every aspect of the show together and to all of the staff who gave of their time front of house and behind the scenes to make the performances a big success.
Just when you think there can't be more to do, we have another busy week ahead. Form Class Leaders, please show the Head Prefect candidate videos on Monday at form time. There are eleven great candidates competing for six places. To ensure easy viewing, please download the videos to your PC in advance. As per the email, Phil has placed all of the videos in the Google Staff Shared Drive here, and on the school network:
Staff shared Prefects 2025-26 Head Prefects Videos S:/_Shared/Prefects/202526%20Head%20Prefects%20Videos/
The link to the voting form is here: https://forms.gle/XC91qMVuZ63xPLga7
Those who get through the voting stage will be invited for interview on Thursday morning. Joining Phil and I on the panel are Tessa Knowles and Robyn Youens and Penny Bath. We wish them all well.
On Wednesday, Michelle has organised a lunchtime professional learning session to share our use of ActiveInspire, the promethean software. Do try and get along if you can. More details in the professional Learning section below.
Massive thanks and good luck to Alistair and Rachel who head with a group of new S6 to Zanzibar on Friday for some volunteering. The group will be working as a team on a sustainable community project. We wish them a safe and fun packed adventure and look forward to hearing all about their travels on return.
Meanwhile Friday is sports day for the rest of the school. Thanks to Neil and the PE team in advance for the organisation of the track and field events and to Lesley and the S1 Form Class Leaders who have some fun stalls planned to run in the afternoon as a fundraiser for next year's S2 YPI.
Thank you for your input in another busy and fantastic week ahead. I hope you feel as proud as I do of the work done collectively for the young people of Balfron. #buildingfuturestogether
As always, thanks for your hard work and professionalism.
Have a great week.
Elaine
This week at Balfron:
Team Meetings
Mon: Head prefect Videos
Tues:
Wed: Health Open Doors
Thurs: Head Prefect Interviews
NHS Careers Event
Fri: Sports Day
Music interviews
Zanzibar Trip Leaves
#findyourthing
Build. Learn. Race.
Balfron High at the STEM Prix project grand finale.
We have had an accelerating time here in Northampton. The event itself was absolutely fantastic. It was well organised and professional.
Our young people have demonstrated the best problem solving skills, teamwork and passion I have ever seen in my teaching career. Their eagerness and knowledge about engineering is incredible and to see it in the preparations for the race itself has been surreal.
Amna Nadeem
Photos & videos from last week include:
Senior Science London Trip
Active Stirling Awards - Congratulations to Lucy, George, Matt and Thea!
STEM On Track trip to the STEM Prix
S2 FEL Roadshow
Grease 2025
S2 Geocaching on campus
Ellagh Howie achieves the Dynamic Youth Award
Please take photos and share with me directly via email or Whatsapp (with each pupil's permission). Let's recognise and celebrate all the good stuff. We will also share in the Parent newsletter, Balfron Highlights. #wearebalfron #buildingfuturestogether
Thanks to everyone in the Technologies Team who welcomed Neil and I to observe lessons.
Inhouse CLPL 24-25
active learners - active thinkers
This term we'll continue to explore techniques to add to our repertoire to keep our BGE learners Active!
Most can be added into lessons for a 5-10 min activity to boost engagement
Find lots of ideas previously explored this session in the Active Learners Classroom: 6a7mbjk
What's coming up at Lunch n Learn?
ActiveInspire:
Tapping into the power of our interactive white boards
Lots of people have requested this session so come along and watch a simple demo of how to use ActiveInspire, the software built for meeting the needs of the classroom teacher.
If you've never used ActiveInspire, come along and see how simple it is to use and the advantages it has over other presentation softwares.
The Walkthrus Series
As a school, we have purchased the excellent Walkthrus series.
The full collection can we viewed on our BHS L&T website.
As our seniors move onto study leave, its an opportunity to grab a bit of time for professional development, and the self-study nature of this resource is perfect for this.
The Formative Assessment and Relationships & Behaviour Clusters are shown here but there are many more to choose from
Focus on Feedback
We continue to discuss strategies around feedback, one of our most powerful drivers of improvement for learning
Have a look at our discussion so far on the slides and come join us for more sharing of great practice around feedback
Key Messages Around Feedback
Adaptive Teaching is simply our
Everyday Excellent
Scaffolds:
A temporary support to reduce
the complexity of a task
writing frames ◾word banks ◾ structured study mats ◾help sheet how-to◾ number lines◾ worked examples ◾graphical organisers
Scale:
Flexibility within the scale of output required
Can build this up over time
Challenge:
Meaningful ways to extend learning that isn't just 'more of the same'
All resources in the Classroom
code to join: 6a7mbjk
Promoting Study Skills
Head Prefects will be promoting all things
Good Study this week at lunchtime
Direct your seniors to the stall for:
BHS Core 4 steps to Study Success
QR links: How-to Techniques
QR links: e-sgoil support pages
Grab n Go Study Planners
Grab n Go Flashcards
Top tips on the best Study Apps
Positive physical & mental wellbeing
Powering up our seniors for successful studying
Quick links for form and class resourcing
This Week: Display in S4/5/6 Form Class
Sharing our Resources
Feedback from our festival was super positive, it was clear we all enjoyed sharing and learning from one another
Accessing our digital resources
Professional Reading Library - Strathendrick Suite
More Digital CLPL
always available through the links below:
Education Scotland:
Professional learning modules
to work through at your own pace.on Scotland: Professional Learng Modules
Increased consistency in Learning & Teaching
Improved Wellbeing & Inclusion of all young people
Increased offer in Curriculum
Increased Attainment & Achievement
Increased influence of Pupil Voice on Improvement
Elaine J explains the cooperative strategy:
Stand and Delivery
and its use in engagement and building in accountabilty into group tasks in her higher class this session.