Lan

ark

Gram

mar

Sch

ool

Volume 4, Issue 5

27 February 2015

Over the past few months staff and 6th year students have been meeting weekly to learn how to knit! The long term aim is to be good enough to help me make up to 1000 Christ-mas stockings that I can sell in school as next year’s fundraiser to help the Kenyan orphans we support. The group meets once a week and huge progress has been made evidenced by the fact that the first staff and students are ready to give the pattern a try. New members arrive every week but as yet I have been unable to attract any boys to the group despite the lure of chocolates! I’m hop-

ing to extend the group to include 5th year stu-dents soon.

A huge thank you to all

the staff who support

the group and are my

“Army of Knitters”. If anyone has any double

knitting wool (all col-

ours welcome) and

would like it to go to a

good home, I would

love to receive it. I cur-

rently have approxi-

mately 400 stockings.

Not bad for the end of

February!

Thank you Mrs Melvin

Knitting Club 1

Captains Blog 2

The Big Debate 2

News from the Head Teacher 3

Burns Supper 3

Values Victor 4

Games Master Exhibition 4

Swim Stars 4

Badminton Success 5

Computing Challenge 6

Important Dates 6

Inside this issue:

Pupils deep in concentration working on their knitting skills to help pupils in Kenya.

Knitting for Kenya

Captain’s Blog

Page 2

the last sixteen of over one hun-dred High Schools that entered the competition, which is a phe-nomenal achievement. For the Semi-Final Rachael and Rhianna will only have one hour to prepare their case for the debate but as both young women intend to

study Law at University it is, no doubt, good practice for the future. Good Luck to you both.

Lanark Grammar School also had a Debating Team take part in the Edinburgh University Schools De-bating Competition on 24 Febru-ary. The team included Rachael Miller, Marie-Claire Hilland, Rachael Murray, Liam Wilson, Ca-lum Hall and Stuart Wood.

The Great Debaters

that be an incentive to work hard

and meet your target goals. You’ll be skiing in the sun before you

know it! In addition, many of the

senior pupils ended January on a

high, with the Burns’ Supper. This was a fantastic success, as teach-

ers and pupils really did come to-

gether to not only celebrate

Robert Burns himself, but also the

S6 pupils’ time at LGS. It was a fun-filled afternoon, with plenty of

laughter and “top class banter.” So, to all pupils of LGS, keep work-

ing hard at your studies, and al-

ways set yourself high targets. It

will be well worth it in the end.

Gemma MacIntyre Captain

lims … Eiffel Tower, the Treaty of Versailles, and more. I can prom-

ise all pupils who are going – you

will have a super time. There is

also the trip to Austria in April –

so to all those who are going, let

Rachael Miller, who is a member of both Lanark Grammar School’s competing teams.

Hello everyone. I hope you’re all happy to be back, and to all the

seniors – I hope your prelims

went well. January can be a hec-

tic month for all, and it can be

challenging at first to get back

into a studying routine – after

spending two weeks in bed,

with selection boxes and frozen.

However, pupils across the

school have come back with a

positive attitude to learn, as

well as enjoy their time at

school, and make the most of it.

Although exam time can be

stressful, it’s important to re-member that there are rewards

coming your way – if you work

hard and keep up the motiva-

tion. For example, the annual

history trip to Paris was a great

way to celebrate the end of pre-

Donald Dewar Memorial Debating Tournament Sponsored by the Law Society of Scotland

Recently our debating team of Rachael Miller and Rhianna Knight-McGrath won their latest debate held at Douglas Academy beating Merchiston Castle School, St George’s School for Girls and the Mary Erskine School. The debate topic was ‘Should we abol-ish immigration controls?’ for which Rachael and Rhianna were able to prepare for, prior to the event. However, they are now through to the semi-finals in March which means they are in

Burns Supper 2015

Staffing

Ms Sturgeon, currently Acting De-pute Head Teacher, will move to a substantive DHT’s post in Johns-tone High School from 23 March 2015. In her substantive post as Principal Teacher of Mathematical Applications, Ms Sturgeon has led significant change in the Depart-ment in addition to the skilled

implementation of new courses associated with Curriculum for Excellence. She has also worked extremely closely with the Head Teachers of our associated Pri-mary Schools in ensuring a greater similarity in pupils’ Numeracy ex-periences prior to coming to Lan-ark Grammar School.

Ms Sturgeon has also been Acting DHT on two occasions holding posts with very diverse remits. In both instances, she has carried out her duties with great skill and expertise and enhanced provision for our pupils. In addition, Ms Sturgeon has also led the develop-ment of our core values and en-sured that they are a much more central and vibrant aspect of our school culture.

We all wish her well in her new post.

On 30 March 2015, Mr David Fal-coner, currently Principal Teacher of Language and Communication at Whitehill Secondary School in

News from the Head Teacher

Page 3

Head Teacher Mr Mark Sherry

Glasgow, will take up the perma-nent post of DHT for S3 and S4. With the recent appointment of Mr Munogee to the permanent post of DHT for Additional Sup-port Needs, this means all posts within the Senior Management Team are now filled on a perma-nent basis.

Assessment Diet

With the recent Assessment Diet now being complete, we are in the process of analysing with both students and staff, how well stu-dents have attained in their indi-vidual courses. We are also en-gaging with students and staff about the extent to which stu-dents used the lead in the diet to study and prepare in a systematic fashion. Any lessons learned will be used to advise students in the lead up the SQA examination diet which begins on Tuesday 28 April 2015, and for next session’s As-sessment Diet.

On Friday 30th, Lanark Grammar held their annual 'Burns Supper' for the fifth and sixth years, to celebrate the life of Robert Burns and to raise money for this year's Prom. All of the pupils smartened up in their fanciest tartan, prepar-ing for an afternoon of dancing, eating and entertaining. The meal consisted of a four courses, pro-vided by the school's cafeteria staff, and afterwards each pupil took home a delicious cupcake made by the cake club. The im-mortal memory was performed by our very own Ms Clingan, the toast to the lassies made by School Captain James Barr and

Vice Captain Cam-eron Peters, and the toast to the laddies made by School Captain Gemma MacIntyre and Vice Captain Eve McShannon. There was also a pre-meal perform-ance of 'My Love is Like a Red Red Rose' by Megan Gill and the meal was followed by a ceilidh. The event has raised money for the prom and was a definite success. Well done to

everyone who made it so much fun!

Emily Booth S6

Values Victor

Recently the ICT department set our S1 pupils the task of designing a poster to publicise our School Values. The School Values were chosen following extensive con-sultation with pupils, parents, staff, and our wider community. The idea behind the values is to prepare young people for life be-yond school, for jobs that don’t yet exist, enable them to contrib-ute positively to society as well as being confident and skilled.

The pupils were given a period to come up with a good design for the poster. Two winners from each class were chosen and the Pupil Council were asked to select the winning poster. The overall

Page 4

to the Game Masters exhibit. The first game that we played was a fighting game. I nearly won this game but kept loosing over and over again because I was kicked off the edge of the map. Then we

played a rock band game, at first I played the drums (I was really bad at it) then I played the guitar and

surprisingly was really good at it! Finally we played the Dance Cen-tral game. I played against my friend and she claims that I was “very enthusiastic”. When our time was up we went to the gift shop but the prices were ridicu-lous! The other shop down stairs was a little bit better. After we bought our stuff we got on the bus and headed back to the school.

By Hannah Sharpe & Kieran So-mers (S4)

Katie Donald, Shiona McClafferty, Robyn Patrick, Finlay Patrick, Euan McComish, Kyle McEwan, and Hannah Keenan. Good Luck to all and Well Done for getting to the Fi-nals.

winner was Sophie Shannon. Well Done Sophie!

After recent success in the South Lanarkshire Schools Swimming Championship Lanark Grammar’s Swim Team are participating in the Scottish Schools Swimming Championship Final in Aberdeen on Saturday 31 January. Our Fi-nals Team includes Erin Snow,

Game Masters Exhibition

On the 17th of December a large group of S3 to S6 Computing Sci-ence students went to the Na-tional Museum of Scotland to visit the Game Masters Exhibition. The exhibition hosted over 100 play-able games. My group was the first to explore the museum, we saw a skeleton of a dinosaur and a mega sloth. There was also models of sea life creatures, in-cluding a skeleton of a sea cow. We saw other things like rocks from volcanoes and space. We had our lunch before we headed

Sophie’s winning poster design.

Swim Stars

Winners Ben Strang and Sarah Kennedy Runners-Up Eilidh Miller and Sophie Miller

Page 5

Up Sarah Kennedy

Under 16 Boys Singles – Winner

Ben Strang, Runner-Up Owen Robson

Under 16 Boys Doubles – Winners Ben Strang and Owen Robson

Under 16 Mixed Doubles – Win-ners Ben Strang and Sarah Ken-nedy

Under 19 Girls Doubles – Runners-Up Eilidh Miller and Sophie Miller

Particular congratulations to Ben Strang who achieved the Grand Slam of three victories, something which has only been achieved three times in the last forty years of the competition!

In January at Ravenscraig in Motherwell, the Lanark Gram-mar School Badminton Squad were, yet again, very successful. Each one of our pupils achieved success at the Lanarkshire Schools Badminton Champion-ships and the results were as follows:

Under 14 Boys Singles – Winner Calum Strang, Runner-Up Danny Robson

Under 14 Boys Doubles – Win-ners Calum Strang and Danny Robson

Under 16 Girls Singles – Runner-

Badminton Success

Winners Ben Strang and Owen Robson Winner Calum Strang, Runner-Up Danny Robson

Ben Strang Grand Slam Champion

Computing Challenge

V O L U M E 4 , I S S U E 5 Page 6

Kirklands Road

Lanark

ML11 9AJ

Phone: 01555 667520

Fax: 01555 667521

Head Teacher : Mr. Mark Sherry

Please find below, information about important dates in the school calendar. I hope that you find it helpful.

Important Dates

In November all of S2 took part in the ‘UK Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge’ which intro-duces Computer Science to stu-dents. The Challenge is designed to get students excited about com-

puting and computational thinking. The complete the Challenge each pupil responded to a series of fif-teen problem solving puzzles within a forty minute period. Well Done to all pupils who took part

Parents Evenings

S1/2 Information Evening Tuesday 3 March 7.00pm

S1 Appointment with Teacher Thursday 12 March 4.30-7.00pm

In-Service Days

No.6 Thursday 7 May

Holidays

Spring Break/Easter Thursday 2 April 2.30pm

*re-open Monday 20 April

May Day Monday 4 May

Local Holiday Thursday 11 June and Friday 12 June

Summer Break Wednesday 24 June 1.00pm

McLean and Jordan Fraser who will receive Certificates of Distinction.

and special recognition goes to Tom Crawford, Finlay Steer, Hazel

Hazel McLean, Finlay Steer, Tom Crawford and Jordan Fraser.