Stranraer Academy Newsletter All the Latest News from in and Around the School
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Stranraer Academy Newsletter All the latest news from in and around the school... Issue 36 www.stranraeracademy.org.uk Stranraer Academy Awards Ceremonies Stranraer Academy held their annual awards ceremonies between Thursday 9th and Wednesday 15th June. The ceremonies were attended well by award winning pupils and parents / carers. The Students of the Year Awards are shown below. Congratulations to all pupils who received awards this session. S1 Student of the Year S2 Student of the Year S3 Student of the Year S4 Student of the Year Anna Ramsay Heather Nicol Fiona Ramsay Matthew Tait S5 Students of the Year (shared award) S6 Student of the Year Lachlan Caulfield & Hannah McCrone Jack Dunn Page - 1 - School News Pupils Visit DGRI Construction Site Pupils from Stranraer Academy were on the construction site of the new Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary being built in Dumfries. Pupils were given a tour of the site and were also involved in a variety of activities - taking part in a construction activity of their own. Young Writer of the Year 2016 The winner of this year’s writing competition is S2 student Tommy Kerslake for his hilarious, and topical, short story “Are We There Yet?” about a disastrous family holiday. Congratulations Tommy! Tommy will receive the Writer of the Year shield and a £30 voucher. The runners up, who will all receive a £10 voucher, are: Katie Milby for her entertaining and inventive story “Just a Regular Day” about a rather different kind of superhero; Finn Welsh for his atmospheric story “Thud,” which contained some ‘cracking’ imagery; Meghan Croucher for her evocative poem entitled, “Farewell” written from the point of view of a dying soldier. Anton Simpson will also receive a voucher for his intriguing article on the mystery shrouding Edmund Hilary’s final attempt to reach the summit of Mount Everest: “Mallory’s Expedition”. A special mention goes to stories by Erin Howatson, Yasemin Siret and Kyle Brownley. Thank you to all those who entered the competition; we enjoyed reading all of the stories. And, many thanks to Des Dillon for assisting with the judging and providing helpful commentaries. S1 Earth Day! As part of a project for Geography, S1 pupils took part in an assembly in relation to Earth Day on Friday 22nd April. All S1 pupils attended morning assembly for the presentation. Earth Day's mission is to broaden and diversify the environmental movement worldwide and to mobilise it as the most effective vehicle to build a healthy, sustainable environment, address climate change, and protect the Earth for future generations. The Earth Day Network is the world’s largest recruiter to the environmental movement, working with more than 50,000 partners in 196 countries to build environmental democracy. They work through a combination of education, public policy, and consumer campaigns. For more information about Earth Day, please look up the following link: http://www.earthday.org/ Page - 2 - School News Technology Challenge Success! On 9/3/16 Mr Cameron took a group of students to a Technology Challenge competition at the Douglas Ewart High School. There are three categories of students, Juniors, intermediates and Seniors, pupils from Stranraer Academy entered into each category. The challenge increased in complexity at each level but involved producing two working bridges one stationary which allowed cars to travel over but rigid enough to allow a boat to pass under. The other bridge had to open to allow a tall ship to pass freely past the bridge. The intermediate group won a trophy for Stranraer Academy as their design and model was the best in this group. Stranraer Academy often win an award in this PSYV Defibrillator Donation! PSYV Stranraer have been busy raising funds to purchase a Defibrillator to donate to Stranraer Academy. The group raised over £600.00 by organising raffles and other fund raising activities. PSYV Coordinator for Stranraer Constable Ronnie Boyce commented "I am delighted by our teams efforts in raising the funds to provide a very important life saving piece of equipment to Stranraer Academy. Our group is less than one year old and we have raised almost £2000.00 for important causes". Depute Head Teacher Helen-Marie Bradley commented "We are extremely proud of the PSYV volunteers, they have shown what it really means to be a caring and responsible young citizen. Our school has been saddened recently by the loss of a pupil due to heart failure; this makes the donation of the defibrillator all the more significant." All the PSYV team have been trained in First Aid and how to use a defibrillator and staff from Stranraer Academy will also be provided with training on how to use the vital life saving apparatus. The photograph shows the Stranraer Academy Senior Management Team along with the PSYV Stranraer Team. Page - 3 - School News Rachael Raises Funds With Charity Swim Rachael Baird, 2CD, celebrated her 13th birthday in May by raising money for a charity close to her family’s hearts. Rachael and her twin brother, Fraser, were born premature and spent the first six weeks of their lives in the neonatal unit of the Simpsons Centre at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Rachael set herself a challenge to swim a mile and regularly trained herself to achieve this. Staff at the Ryan Centre helped verify her sponsored swim of 64 lengths. Due to the generosity of family and friends, and teachers and pupils at Stranraer Academy and Rephad Primary, Rachael raised a total of £665.00. With Gift Aid the total was almost £850. Rachael presented a cheque to representatives of Simpsons Special Care Babies Charity who, unbeknown to Rachael, had arranged for a tour of the neonatal unit and she and Fraser also met with three staff who had cared for her and her brother thirteen years ago. The pictures show Rachael completing her 64th length and handing over the cheque in Edinburgh. Well done Rachael! S4 Trip to Logan Botanic Gardens Mr Halliday and Mrs Ramsay would just like to highlight how pleased we were with the behaviour, attitude and levels of participation on last week’s S4 trips to Port Logan Botanical Gardens. Pupils promoted themselves and the school in a very positive light – and this was very much appreciated! Logan Botanic Garden staff members Richard Baines and Colin Belton were very impressed with our pupils, especially in terms of the questions being asked and answers provided. The participation in the practical sessions was also excellent. Well done and thank you to all S4 pupils who attended! Summer Fun Day - Da Vinci Decathlon Thanks to everyone who came along to help out or attend the summer fun day, as well as those who bought raffle tickets in the school. The Fun Day raised a total of £622.22 for the Da Vinci Group. Page - 4 - School News S1 Rocket Seeds! S1 Pupils have spent time recently planting seeds for a national experiment - to see if zero gravity has any effect on plant growth. The hope is that this experiment will allow astronauts to conclude whether food can be grown in space - allowing manned-trips to Mars in the future! Pupils are now to look after the seedlings for a period of 6 weeks, noting changes in growth. Pupils are comparing seeds that have been in the international space station with Time Peake and those that have remained on Earth. Watch this space!" Lauren Wood Hosts Graduation Gallery! Lauren Wood (S6) held a very successful exhibition of her photography to mark her graduation from Stranraer Academy. She put on quite the show, with drinks, nibbles and sweets on offer to those lucky enough to be given an invitation! Every person who visited was given a slip to vote for their favourite photo in the gallery! Lauren’s favourite was of her “wee pal” Po, who was often spotted in various parts around the school! Lauren would like to thank everyone who came along to her successful exhibition and voted. Stranraer Academy would like to wish Lauren all the best for the future! We will miss her smiles! Here is Lauren in her gallery along with some of her photographs! Page - 5 - School News Erasmus+ Exchange Trip to Kassel, Germany. On Tuesday 7th June, four students; Mae Baillie, Ashlyn Kinahan, Hazel Brown and Harry Glasgow, along with Miss Moffat, travelled from Edinburgh Airport to Frankfurt-Hahn airport in Germany to take part in the second half of the school foreign exchange. This is a project within the our school run by Miss Moffat and in Germany by Herr Küch and Mrs Toulose. On the night we arrived, we stayed overnight at a hotel at the airport before travelling to the Johann Comenius Schule in Kassel from the train station in Frankfurt on a double decker train. When we arrived at the Kassel- Wilhelmshöhe train station, we were greeted by out hosts and some of their families who took our luggage and delivered us to the school. It was much different to ours, with three separate buildings, no uniform and a different structure to the day – the school commencing at 8am and finishing at 2pm for most and 3pm for some. Christoph and Yanna took us to the cafeteria, a different building itself, and we ate some food with our hosts who were more than eager to ask about our journey and how things were back in Schottland. After we had finished eating, we were taken on a quick tour of the buildings of the school, before being picked up and taken to the homes of our host families for the night. Mae and Hazel stayed with Isabel Pohl, Ashlyn with Laura Hatterscheid and Harry with Enes Turhan.