Education & Children’s Services

Scottish Concert Band Festival motion animation advertisement. Art and design skills through using their creativity The Aberdeenshire concert bands to design the logo, poster and wrapper. performed exceptionally well on 30 The children had the opportunity to work November 2014. with a local chocolatier who taught them how to mix and add different flavours to Congratulations to Sarah Gove and Bruce make their own chocolate bars. They Wallace and the team of people who also developed team work skills. supported the bands.

Portlethen Academy Concert Band – Sarah Gove –Gold Award

Mackie Academy Concert Band – Academy Concert Band – Sarah Gove – Gold Award

South Central Aberdeenshire – Music Centre Youth Concert Band – Bruce Wallace Gold + Award

Cosla Excellence Awards 2015

Aberchirder School Congratulations to the Library &

Information Services within HMP & YOI Staff and pupils are working very hard to Grampian for having been awarded a achieve their Level 1 Rights Respecting Silver Cosla Excellence award and being School’s Award. All children must be shortleeted for gold. aware of each other’s rights and try hard

to respect them. It was the 25th Ellon Primary School anniversay of the Convention of Rights of

Children. To celebrate and also raise P6/7 children were challenged to take on awareness of the CRC, pupils planned a an enterprise project which required them “Rights Ballon Display”. Laminated tabs to work in teams to create their own were tied to the balloons and then tied to chocolate brand and product. Throughout railings at the school after which parents the project each team created a unique were invited to listen to the whole school flavour and design of chocolate, along singing the song “Every Child has with a product mascot, logo, wrapper, Rights”. slogan, jingle, advertisement and poster.

Each task required the group to develop a new skill such as technology skills by using IPad software to create a stop-

On 22 January pupils celebrated Robbie Burns by performing songs, poems and dances to an audience from the community. Each class also entered a scottish craft into the craft competition, the winner was announced that evening. Pupils entered the Petrochallenge which is an education event aimed at school pupils aged between 14-19 which uses an innovative web-based learning tool 4W1pupil Brogan Smith has had a very where participants act as energy successful year competing in shooting companies looking for oil and gas in a competitions all over the country. fictitious province, opened for exploration. Gaining three junior cups at the Caithness open, The U16’s cup, junior champion and sharpshooter cup. He also gained Scottish Junior Champion, the Scottish resident cup and the under 15’s cup.

The competition provides all the challenges, opportunities and dilemmas that a real exploration team would face. It is during this process that the students gain an effective insight into the risks and Focus Environment Photographic challenges of oil and gas exploration, as Competition well as exposure to real oil and gas technical processes and terminology such Congratulations to Anna Hiley 3G2 who as magnetic, gravimetric, and seismic won a commended prize in the Wildlife surveys, service providers, the and Habitat completion with her entry environment and net present value “Chance Meeting with a Woodmouse”. calculations. Anna attended the Award ceremony at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh A team of 3 pupils from the Academy won to collect her framed print and £75.00 the Regional competition held in RGU, prize money. The school will also receive Aberdeen, last June. The highest scoring the equivalent in prize money. teams across the UK are entered into the International Final to compete against to come 5th overall, and the fastest non other teams from Canada, Iceland, private school team. They improved their Norway, Greenland, the Faroe Islands time from the trials by 5 seconds. and Denmark. Kieran Ritchie, Ross Davidson and Ben Matthew (all S5) will Rhona Bowie swam in the final for the be jetting off to London to represent the individual breaststroke race and came in UK in the Final this February. We wish 3rd overall. the boys all the best. The boys also did exceptionally well with Bervie School 7th overall and were the 3rd non private school (the private schools all have their Congratulations to P4 pupil Joe Barryl own pools and swim teams). who was one of only 12 winners chosen from thousands of entries from across the Scottish Schools Ski Race at the Lecht UK for a Road Safety Banner competition on 28th January 2015 held to coincide with Road Safety week in November. The competition was run by Brake, a national charity which helps to promote awareness of road safety issues. His winning design has been made into a banner which will be displayed at the front of the school. Joe also received a trophy and every pupil in the school received a high visibility drawstring bag as part of Joe’s prize.

Twelve keen skiers from Banchory Primary found themselves at the Lecht on a wintery Wednesday in January for the first of the Scottish Schools Primary Qualifier ski races. Unfortunately Katie Bruce had to pull out due to illness but the rest of the teams (pictured above) braved freezing blizzard conditions to complete 2 runs of a course set on boiler plate ice. Absolutely everyone skied to a fantastically high standard. Our A team Banchory Primary School came 2nd in the Experienced category while our B and C teams came 2nd and P7 pupil, Rafal Wilowski has received 6th respectively in the Novice category. an official letter inviting him to represent Individually we won a silver and 3 Scotland at table tennis in the upcoming bronzes (Archie Crichton, Neil Pritchett, primary schools home internationals in Hannah Smith and Matthew Leonard). April. He came 3rd in the Scottish Great skiing all round! Primaries champs at the end of November, and the top 4 finishers in that Sunshine Nursery Torphins get to represent Scotland, so that will be exciting. Have been awarded their Green Flag Status by the Eco Schools Assessor. All Eight Banchory Primary pupils took part their hard work over the last two years to in the Scottish Swimming finals. The girls achieve this has been worthwhile. relay team all swam personal best times

On Sunday 23 November, young people from Kemnay Academy gathered together with members of the community and pupils from Alehousewells School to make a difference. With support from Kobi Cooke, a representative of the charity “Fixers” a pupil lead group has worked since June to put the event together.

We want to create a resource to tackle the issue of litter and anti-social Congratulations to the STEM in the behaviour by our students in Kemnay Pipeline team who won the Innovation because we feel strongly that we have a Award for 2014. STEM in the Pipeline is responsibility to respect our neighbours a competition to encourage S6 pupils to and to help being the community together use their Science, Technology and so that pupils can feel more a part of their Mathematics skills in a realistic project community and avoid being negatively based in the oil industry. Teams spend stereotyped. three months working together in their free time and liaising with industry From our initial small steps we intend to mentors to produce a feasibility report for use the results from the Event to: pass a new oil field, learning how the geology, on ideas to Aberdeenshire Council about engineering and finance contribute to the the part they could play to support our overall decision making process. The community; promote a positive litter Banchory Academy team won the message about responsibilities to pupils Innovation Award for their creative at the Academy and; build further bridges solution to finding areas from a geological between the Academy and local residents survey map. to strengthen the Kemnay community. We were treated to some excellent CircoModo 2014 musical performances by Academy pupils after the event, to round off what was a CircoModo is a style of social circus really positive day. which brings together participants from all backgrounds to learn, work and play Bracoden School together while providing a range of positive pathways. The programme was The school secured £3,500 funding from run as a result of funding from the Big the “Food for Thought” fund. This Lottery, Cashback for Communities and enabled the whole school to investigate the support and partnership of the sustainability, availability and Aberdeenshire Council. The programme seasonality of local food and to develop culminated last week in an Awards food as a learning context whilst Ceremony in which 180 accreditations simultaneously developing their Eco and awards were handed out to the School and rights respecting Schools young people who took part in the status. While working with local CircoModo programmes in Peterhead, companies the pupils had great fun in Mintlaw and Fraserburgh this year. More learning the importance of tatties and information is available on the website seafood within the local area and went on http://www.modo.org.uk/downloads/circo to create their own recipe for ‘Bracoden modo-2014-review Soup’ which they hope will one day compete with the famous ‘Cullen Skink’