Celebrating achievements

At today's Maxwell assembly 2M4 were asked to share their achievements over the past few months. I'm sure all in attendance were very pleasantly surprised at how much had been achieved by so few!

Included in their achievements were successes in:

1. Chess
2. Water Polo
3. Taekwondo
4. Piano
5. Violin
6. National choir
7. Building computers
8. Writing an anti-viral computer programme
9. Reading tea leaves
10. Learning to knit
11. Palmistry

Ms Kinnear, who led the assembly, emphasised the importance of all aiming to be the best they can be in both their academic and wider interests.

It was a delight to hear of their wider successes this morning and I'm sure those in the audience will look forward to sharing their successes at future assemblies.

Exam guides

National Parent Forum of Scotland

New Higher Revision guides

These resources provide a clear, straightforward explanation of what learners need to know in order to prepare for the new Higher exams. For each subject, there are links taking you directly to specimen papers, exemplar question papers and sites where you can access other useful information. Please note that these resources are for the new Curriculum for Excellence Highers only.

 

Link to New Higher Resources

 

National 5 Revision Guides

These Revision in a Nutshell National 5 subject guides supplement learning and revision in class. They are organised alphabetically, by subject, covering 20 subjects which have exams and for which the SQA has provided relevant past paper questions. Please check with your teacher to ensure that the guides are relevant to you.  The SQA Specimen Paper and the marking instructions are the most important documents to look at – the BBC Bitesize guides are also really helpful and provide different revision materials.  See our Pointers for Parents and Pupils for more information.  Feedback on these is very welcome.   Good luck!

Link to National 5 resources

Solar eclipse

Earlier today, pupils and staff marvelled at the wonderful (almost full) solar eclipse that peaked at around 9.35 am.  Various handheld devices were used to view this phenomenon so as to minimise risk to eyesight. Fortuitously, some of the best views were afforded when the cloud cover was sufficiently transparent.

Well done to Kyle Crawford

Congratulations to Kyle Crawford who joined the army last year when he left Gillespie's.

As part of a cohort of 800 trainees, he not only graduated from training college but was also awarded the trophy for best soldier. Well done from all at Gillespie's.

Cross country success

JGHS had great success at the recent Edinburgh Cross Country Championships held on Monday 16 March.

Lucia Montgomery in S1 won the girls' race as well as Tom Ireland in S1 winning the boys' race.

Both the boys and girls teams also came first resulting in JGHS winning both the boys' and girls' team events. A wonderful achievement.

The teams were:

• Lucia Montgomery
• Octavie Touffat.      
• Lucy Warlow
• Tom Ireland
• Arif Mohd Faisal
• Isam Mohammed
• Joey Turner-McGowan
• James Kerr.    
• Joe Scott-Hobbs
• Aidan McCann

Warmest congratulations to all of them!

Gaelic book on Mary Queen of Scots

Well done to our S3 pupils who, working in collaboration with Historic Scotland and ably supported by Seonaidh Charity (Gaelic teacher), wrote a book on Mary Queen of Scots.

Pictured at the launch of the book at Edinburgh Castle are Euan Macdonald and Jenny Macdonald who were members of the S3 writing team.

Community service and Skillforce

As part of our curriculum for S3 and S4, ‘SkillForce’ (*) takes pupils towards an award with the Prince’s Trust which includes community work as one of the required elements. On Friday 13 March our S4 Skillforce class gave Liberton cemetery a facelift by repainting fences and giving the area a general tidy up. 

(*)  (A charity that works in partnership with schools, drawing upon the skills of ex-Forces personnel, to inspire young people to succeed)

Well done to all who took part in quite challenging weather conditions!