What a stunning showcase of the terrific musical talents of the
young people and staff of James Gillespie's High School at the Usher
Hall Christmas Concert on Tuesday 19th December 2017! Cluster Primary
Seven pupils from Sciennes, Tollcross, James Gillespie's Primary,
Preston Street, Royal Mile and Taobh na Pairce Primary Schools
rose to the occasion, sang beautifully and made everyone so proud. Thank
you to JGHS Performing Arts Faculty Leader Mrs Deirdre O'Brien and her
team for inviting the children to participate and organising the whole
event.
Ninety of our own P7 pupils took to the stage
and we commend their confidence and their 'can do' attitude, bolstered
by lots of hard work and rehearsal with their Class Teachers. We are
very grateful for the tremendous parental support in enabling so many of
our pupils to participate this year.
Wonderful to see
so many of our former pupils also shine on stage. A memorable, exciting
way to end the year that also gives our pupils a flavour of the vast array of musical possibilities that await them at secondary school next year.
We are tremendously excited about an upcoming return visit to Sciennes on Thursday 15th June from WE Movement, again kindly arranged for us by London based Schools Co-ordinators Harriet Morgan and Louis Sherman,
Speakers from WE Movement have visited Sciennes twice to work with current P7 pupils, providing a wealth of opportunities for our children to embrace pupil leadership. Thursday 15th June will mark a return visit from the charity, where Speaker and Facilitators will work with P6 pupils from James Gillespie's High School Cluster: Tollcross Primary, Taobh na Pairce, Preston Street Primary, Royal Mile Primary and 24 representatives from Sciennes P6 classes in an Edinburgh Youth Summit to promote social action.
We are delighted to welcome Jesse Mintz, Senior Writer based in Toronto, who will join us on the day.
P6 pupils will take part in a special assembly at 10am and then split into three groups for workshops.
Team Building/Issues Module – exploring prevalent issues in society, and globally to build confidence,
identify leadership skills and also get pupils thinking about issues
they care about. Reflective Module - enabling pupils to think how they can use their skills for
issues that are important to them. Action Planning - putting pen to paper to create a
tangible action plan for children to develop and put into practice.
WE Movement - From ME to WE - is an
international charity and educational partner that believes in a world
where all young people are free to achieve their fullest potential as
change-makers. Over the last 20 years, Free The Children has grown into
an international movement supporting youth empowerment through
educational service-learning initiatives in North America and the United
Kingdom, and a holistic and sustainable international development
model. It is supported by the Queen's Trust, the UN, Virgin Atlantic and
has many international supporters - Malala, Desmond Tutu, Prince
Harry, Oprah will give a flavour. Their model is 'children helping
children' and they promote pupil
leadership and taking action, here and abroad. The scheme began in
Canada, initiated by one of the CEOs when he was 12, and is a social
enterprise
endeavour.
For more information about WE Movement visit their website.
The 'WE Movement' programme fits extremely well with our well established Junior Awards
Scheme Scotland (JASS) programme in P6 and P7 where pupils are asked to
take their own action to achieve a 'Me and My World' element. JASS is a
children's version of The Duke of Edinburgh Award, and the idea for it
actually came from Sciennes! It is now adopted throughout Edinburgh and
beyond so has been retitled Junior Award Scheme for Schools.
The Junior Award Scheme Schools
(JASS) is an accredited learning programme, celebrating wider
achievement, for young people (P6-S2). Sciennes and Tollcross Primary
Schools have been implementing this scheme since we piloted it in 2009. The concept emerged from a discussion during a Sciennes P7 visit
to Lagganlia between Alice Brown, Gael Logan and Barry Hewitt who came
up with the idea to set up a 'Duke of Edinburgh' style award scheme for
upper primary pupils. The scheme has since been developed from a city
wide, to UK wide to international programme.
There are three levels (bronze, silver and gold), each requiring a
higher degree of commitment. Each level also includes four sections to
be completed:
My interest - a hobby or interest
Get Active, Stay Active - involvement in a sport or physical activity
Me and My World - a community or environmental project
Adventure - a teamwork challenge through involvement in an outdoor activity (e.g Benmore and Lagganlia)
Sciennes helped develop an online version - eJASS.
WE Movement also fits well with our Unicef Rights Respecting Schools programme. We achieved Level One in May 2016 and our next
steps are to continue to extend knowledge of UNCRC and to expand
global citizenship. The WE Movement programme assists us with that. We
have highlighted the relevance of the Global Goals for Sustainable
Development since their launch in September 2015 and the programme also
supports this extremely well.
On Friday 19th May P7 House and Sports Captains explained the Junior Award Scheme for Schools (JASS) programme and Sciennes' involvement in it since it was developed.
The Junior Award Scheme Scotland (JASS) is an accredited learning programme, celebrating wider achievement, for young people (P6-S2). Sciennes and Tollcross Primary Schools have been implementing this scheme since we piloted it in 2009.
The concept emerged from a discussion during a Sciennes P7 visit to Lagganlia between Alice Brown, Gael Logan and Barry Hewitt who came up with the idea to set up a 'Duke of Edinburgh' style award scheme for upper primary pupils. The scheme has since been developed into a city wide, then a national and now UK programme.
There are three levels (Bronze, Silver and Gold), each requiring a higher degree of commitment. Each level also includes four sections to be completed:
My interest - a hobby or interest
Get Active, Stay Active - involvement in a sport or physical activity
Me and My World - a community or environmental project
Adventure - a teamwork challenge through involvement in an outdoor activity (e.g Benmore and Lagganlia or ski-ing or horseriding or forest walks).
P6 and P7 pupils have been asked to prepare a short 5 minute talk outlining what they have done this year to achieve their award. Volunteering at the Summer Fair on Saturday 3rd June 12.30pm-3.30pm can still count towards JASS, if anyone needs to make up hours for 'Me and My World.'
We celebrated James, Alice, Hamza and Ali's fantastic achievement in winning Third Place, representing Edinburgh at the national Euroquiz Final, held at the Scottish Parliament on Monday 15th May. We played excerpts from the event (available in its entirety on YouTube) and the team challenged everyone to answer some of the (tricky!) questions. A fantastic achievement.
Mylo and Christopher in P6 explained their new Code Club and thanked parent Tim Pask for his support.
Well done to the netball team and to P5 on excellent homework produced for their China project. Congratulations to P5B who came 9th out of 2335 schools in a recent national Sumdog competition. A number of our classes has used Sumdog over the years and P5 have recently been piloting this maths website as a year group with hugely motivating results, which we aim to roll out to other year groups in time.
The Eco Group were thanked for a successful Litter Pick on Friday 12th May, led by Mr Hutchison, and Caitlin asked for donations of seashells for the Playground.
We wished everyone a safe and happy holiday on Monday.
Great skills and excellent sportsmanship from our fantastic netball team who played very well, winning two games and losing two games in their fixture. They may not have made the Finals, but they thoroughly enjoyed the competition and were superb ambassadors for the school. Many thanks to coaches Class Teacher Miss Daryl Gladstone and parent Lisa Morgan for accompanying and supporting the team.
Celebrating #iwill Week, our three P6 Junior Road Safety Officers, Amelia, Declan and Josh, showed how they can step up to serve our school community by planning and leading a Road Safety session for Assembly. They invited all pupils in P4-7 to dress up brightly in luminous, reflective clothing and gave prizes in each class for the brightest clothing to get across their message of 'Be Bright, Be Seen." They performed a stunning trick using 'Magic Thumbs' that lit up as they 'threw' lights to one another. Fantastic! Many thanks to friend of Sciennes, City of Edinburgh Road Safety Officer Mark Symonds who kindly gave each of our JRSOs a high viz vest and shone torches on pupils' clothing to re-enforce the point about being bright, day and night. Everyone was invited to think about what they could pledge to do in Active Travel to fight Climate Change.
The new P7 House and Sports Captains confidently introduced themselves and we were delighted that almost half the year group showed interest in stepping up to take on additional responsibilities, as role models and ambassadors for Sciennes. All who applied were entirely capable of taking up the posts so it was a very difficult decision but there will be lots of opportunities for all Primary Sevens to take the lead.
Grange
House: Rose and Sam
Sports: Molly and Cameron
Lauder
House: Chloe and Chris
Sports: Rachel and Cole
Sienna
House: Samrah and Chirag
Sports: Erin and Cai
Tantallon
House: Ellen and Gulliver
Sports: Rose and Robert
Our wonderful Primary Sevens have also been working hard as young entrepreneurs, using Virgin Money's' Make £5 Grow' and funds loaned by the Parent Council to plan, design and create an array of exciting stalls for the Winter Fair on Saturday 26th November 12pm-3pm as part of their Silver Junior Award for Schools (JASS). A representative from each P7 group spoke at Assembly to explain and publicise their event. Loads happening tomorrow! Come and check out what they have on offer in the new Dining Hall.
P4 stars, Molly, Rosa, Joesph, Cara and Scarlet finally got to perform their fabulous dance routine with music! They wowed the audience with their moves and confidence. Great job!
P3 have been rehearsing and performing their Dance Show in the Hall recently, so there has not been an Assembly for a few weeks. Several huge achievements to celebrate within that time, including phenomenal success in Chess, P6 Amelia being chosen as overall winner in Ian Murray MP's Christmas Card competition (from 2000 entries!) and P7 David achieving an extraordinary two gold medals in the Edinburgh and Midlothian Swimming Championships! Well done to all our high achievers who know that hard work pays off!
We hope to see everyone at the amazing International Winter Fair on Saturday. Many months of effort from Jay and Aileen in leading the Parent Council Events and Fundraising Group and an army of volunteers saying "#iwill!" are tremendously valued by the school. Come and see a Magic Show, bid in the Silent Auction, browse CDs, books and toys, take a chance with a Tombola raffle ticket and enjoy lunch and a mince pie. Just some of the many activities and events on offer! Check out the Parent Council and school websites for details.
Please also support our bids to win thousands of pounds for technology (see emails for information). Thank you very much to P2 Dad, Colin Sim, for all his efforts in submitting funding bids on our behalf and to everyone who has supported by voting. We are now Finalists in the Aviva Community Fund bid, beating hundreds of other bids, and have a 1 in 4 chance of gaining £5000! We would be very grateful for your continued support in voting for us again in the Aviva bid and also in the One Family Foundation bid.
We are tremendously excited about an upcoming return visit to Sciennes on Wednesday 7th December from WE Free the Children, again arranged for us by Schools Co-ordinator Harriet Morgan.
Jacob, from WE Free the Children, visited in June to work with half of our (then P6) pupils and it was a superb and inspirational day, providing a wealth of opportunities for our children to embrace pupil leadership. Wednesday 7th December will mark a return visit from the charity, where a Speaker and Facilitator will work with the remaining half of our P7 pupils.
P6 and P7 pupils have been invited to a special assembly at 9am and then half the P7 year group will take part in Free the Children workshops throughout the day, while Ms Sellar will lead the remaining pupils in a repeat of her excellent Global Goals workshop, focusing on Gender Equality.
Team Building/Issues Module – exploring prevalent issues in society, and globally to build confidence,
identify leadership skills and also get pupils thinking about issues
they care about. Reflective Module - enabling pupils to think how they can use their skills for
issues that are important to them. Action Planning - putting pen to paper to create a
tangible action plan for children to develop and put into practice.
Free The
Children is an
international charity and educational partner that believes in a world
where all young people are free to achieve their fullest potential as
change-makers. Over the last 20 years, Free The Children has grown into
an international movement supporting youth empowerment through
educational service-learning initiatives in North America and the United
Kingdom, and a holistic and sustainable international development
model. It is supported by the Queen's Trust, the UN, Virgin Atlantic and
has many international supporters - Malala, Desmond Tutu, Prince
Harry, Oprah will give a flavour. Their model is 'children helping
children' and they promote pupil
leadership and taking action, here and abroad. The scheme began in
Canada, initiated by one of the CEOs when he was 12, and is a social
enterprise
endeavour.
For more information about Free the Children, visit their website.
The 'Free the Children' programme fits extremely well with our well established Junior Awards
Scheme Scotland (JASS) programme in P6 and P7 where pupils are asked to
take their own action to achieve a 'Me and My World' element. JASS is a
children's version of The Duke of Edinburgh Award, and the idea for it
actually came from Sciennes! It is now adopted throughout Edinburgh and
beyond so has been retitled Junior Award Scheme for Schools.
The Junior Award Scheme Schools
(JASS) is an accredited learning programme, celebrating wider
achievement, for young people (P6-S2). Sciennes and Tollcross Primary
Schools have been implementing this scheme since we piloted it in 2009. The concept emerged from a discussion during a Sciennes P7 visit
to Lagganlia between Alice Brown, Gael Logan and Barry Hewitt who came
up with the idea to set up a 'Duke of Edinburgh' style award scheme for
upper primary pupils. The scheme has since been developed from a city
wide, to UK wide to international programme.
There are three levels (bronze, silver and gold), each requiring a
higher degree of commitment. Each level also includes four sections to
be completed:
My interest - a hobby or interest
Get Active, Stay Active - involvement in a sport or physical activity
Me and My World - a community or environmental project
Adventure - a teamwork challenge through involvement in an outdoor activity (e.g Benmore and Lagganlia)
Sciennes helped develop an online version - eJASS.
Free the Children also fits well with our Unicef Rights Respecting Schools programme. We have recently achieved Level One and our next
steps are to continue to extend knowledge of UNCRC and to expand
global citizenship. The Free the Children programme will assist us with that. We
have highlighted the relevance of the Global Goals for Sustainable
Development since their launch in September 2015 and the programme also
supports this extremely well.
Thank you very much to Joan Alexander and all at the Junior Award Scheme for Schools (JASS) team as well as Friends of the Award (FOTA) for inviting Sciennes to the FOTA Annual General Meeting on Thursday 10th November.
P7 pupils Anna and Cameron received a special certificate on
behalf of the school, in kind recognition of Sciennes' ongoing
contribution and commitment to JASS and eJASS.
Anna's sister, Sarah, also attended with their mum, Mrs Aileen Nimmo. Thank you also to Mrs Claire Marshall for accompanying her son Cameron to the event, held in the prestigious European Room of the City Chambers. Councillor Elaine Aitken, deputising for the Lord Provost, presented our pupils with the certificate and they were also congratulated by MSP Miles Briggs.
What a wonderful celebration of volunteering, pupil-led social action and wider achievement! Many adult volunteers were recognised and celebrated for their contribution, as well as the young people they have supported in achieving both Duke of Edinburgh Awards and the Junior Award for Schools. A lovely evening and we were very proud of all three of our pupil ambassadors.
Superb P7 Sciennes' ambassadors, proudly sporting their Bronze JASS medals and already aiming for the Silver JASS award
Councillor Elaine Aitken, deputising for the Lord Provost, presents Anna and Cameron with a special certificate for Sciennes
Ailsa with her winning poster entry for the Virgin Money Fireworks Concert 2016
Huge congratulations to P6 pupil Ailsa on being one of three winners in this year's Edinburgh International Festival Virgin Money Fireworks poster competition! What an exciting, fantastic achievement! Very well done, Ailsa! She was a finalist last year and decided to give it another go this
year, so perseverance paid off! This year part of the prize is a behind
the scenes tour of the fireworks a couple of days before the event so Ailsa can see what is involved with the set up - and then tickets to the
event itself. A superb prize!
Ailsa very kindly brought in her special celebratory cake to share with her classmates.
The Prize As well as seeing their designs throughout the city, winners will enjoy an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of the Fireworks set-up site at Edinburgh Castleand win four tickets to see the concert in Princes St Gardens on Monday 29 August 2016. The winners and other shortlisted entries will also be celebrated with an event at the Virgin Money Lounge in St Andrew’s Square, Edinburgh, taking place on Tuesday 28 June at 6pm. This
is a special event at the Lounge for the winners and their families,
where they will be joined by our Forth 1 judges and invited guests,
hosted by Virgin Money with the Edinburgh International Festival and
Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
The EIF Fireworks Concert featuring the Scottish Chamber Orchestra takes place on Monday
29 August at 9.30pm. All our P7 pupils, including Ailsa, have been invited to
attend a special concert performance for schools at 11am at the Ross Bandstand on the same day, sponsored by Virgin Money.
Join
the City of Edinburgh in a celebration of summer festivals,
inspirational music and breathtaking fireworks as the Virgin Money
Fireworks Concert brings the 2016 Edinburgh International Festival to a
resplendent conclusion. Set against the iconic backdrop of
Edinburgh’s historic Castle, this spectacular event brings together
stirring orchestral music from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra
and magnificent pyrotechnics, specially choreographed by international
fireworks artists Pyrovision to enhance your musical experience. Around a
quarter of a million people gather across the city and beyond to share
in this annual grand festival season finale each year.
Ross Theatre and Princes St Gardens
At 11am on the same day, schoolchildren from across the city will come
to the Ross Theatre for a very special Schools Concert, sponsored by
Virgin Money, with music from Scottish Chamber
Orchestra’s VIBE project, a fusion orchestra open to young
musicians aged 11–18, in the run-up to the Fireworks Concert.
Congratulation to P6 pupils Martha and Evelyn who did the Moonwalk on Saturday night (finishing at 2am) and were the youngest to take part. Above are some before and after pics. They . So far they have raised well over £600 and they have a few more pledges
to come in. They not only trained for it but they did literally go
knocking on doors and in one weekend managed to raise £160 in hard cash
with the rest in online donations.
Many thanks to parent Fiona Denvir for news and great photos. Well done, girls!
Congratulations to our three P5 pupils Sam, Isaac and Nils who competed in the Scottish Schools Orienteering Festival at Dalkeith Park on Friday 3rd June. http://ssoa.org.uk/2016.html
They all did really well and all completed their courses. They were the 8th team in their category of P5/P6 (competing against lots of bigger boys!) Sam was 6th
overall in his age group and Isaac and Nils also did very well, especially as they were new to the sport. They
were also delightful boys to look after and a credit to their school and
parents! Parent Su Twissell
Grateful thanks to Su for supporting the pupils' participation in this event.
Good luck to our three P5 pupils Sam, Isaac and Nils who are competing in the Scottish Schools Orienteering Festival at Dalkeith Park on Friday 3rd June.
June Underwood's Parent Council Highland Dance Club troupe performed for the residents of Camilla House on 20th May.
Thank you to all the families who came along to the performance on
Thursday to mark the end of term for the club. We are so very fortunate
to have June Underwood as Dance Teacher and for the many opportunities
she provides for our dancers to perform and demonstrate their skills.
Recently the dancers performed for the residents and staff at Camilla
House and St Raphael's Care Home and their visit was a real highlight.
Congratulations to Saul in P7 who won a fantastic medal and the title of Scottish Champion in his category at a recent Tae Kwon Do competition in Edinburgh. A superb achievement!
On Thursday 17th September we held our annual P7 Conference, designed to
welcome pupils to Primary Seven and to challenge them to make the most
of the many opportunities for wider achievement available throughout the year.
The theme for the event centred on the Junior Award Scheme Scotland (JASS) programme and we were delighted to welcome Ian Forder from FOTA to launch our use of eJASS.
Pupils got to experience each of the four elements of the award scheme at the conference:
Get Active, Stay Active – a Dance workshop led by Dance Division.
Me and My World
– Victoria Telford from MercyCorps led a workshop to explain the work
of our City of Edinburgh partner charity and its work in supporting
refugees
My Interests – Mr McKenna led a STEM workshop using K'nex
eJASS - Introduction and Planning Session
Pupils also took part in a planning workshop, in which they used
iPads to plan how to complete 12 hours of activities in each of the four
elements to achieve a Silver award and were introduced to eJASS.
Sciennes and Tollcross were part of the initial pilot for JASS a number of years ago. Last year, we began working with
Ian Forder from JASS
software developer Steve Moore
the Digital Learning Team
Alice Brown, Headteacher at Tollcross Primary
Barry Hewitt from Outdoor Learning
Claire Cooper from Drummond HIgh School
to take part in a pilot of the online version - eJASS. We are delighted
that Alika's design (now in S1) is being used for the official logo.
At the conference, P7 pupils used an online planning tool to help them begin to think about ways to achieve the award by the end of the Easter holidays. Each pupil has also been given access to eJASS where they will be able to record their progress and upload evidence of their achievements. In May next year, pupils will be asked to give a five minute presentation to their classmates describing what they have done to achieve the award.
