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Volume 4, Issue 8

June 2015

Howley gives her thoughts

on being part of the show.

When I first heard the school show was going to be Disco Inferno I couldn’t resist

not doing it. It’s got the hu-mour, the songs and it’s all round a really entertaining show. We have had the first performance and I can’t wait for next ones especially after all of the great feedback from everyone. The cast and crew have been really fantas-

This year Lanark Gram-

mar’s fantastic musical

presentation was the com-

edy ‘Disco Inferno’ set in

the 1970’s when flared

trousers and platform

shoes were all the rage.

Principal cast member Lisa

Disco Inferno 1

Engineering Challenge 2

Maximum Merit 2

News from the Head Teacher 3

News from the HT Cont’d 4

Donald Dewar Debate 4

Greece 2015 5

Tinto 2015 6

Athletics Champions 7

Girls Football 7

ASN Football Team 8

Important Dates 8

Inside this issue:

Lucas practices his dance moves.

tic to work with and have made all of the hard work in the rehearsals worth it, without them the show wouldn’t be where it is now. Out of all of the shows I’ve been in at the school this one is possibly one of my favourites be-cause it has just been so fun to be a part of. Lisa Howley

‘Disco Inferno’ ignites Lanark

Principal cast members Tasha Graham, Russell McInnes, Lucas McGinnies, Rachael Allan, Lucas Ander-son, Andy Cummings, Callum Wishart, Lisa Howley, Hannah Ewing and Daryl Walker.

Engineering-based courses at U.K universities and col-leges has fallen quite dramatically over the past few years. It is hoped that the vari-ous activities under-taken by these pilot schools will help to reverse this trend. If it does accomplish this objective, then the intention is to roll out similar initiatives over the whole of the U.K.

The first phase of the competition involved pupils working in their science class in groups of 3 or 4 to

Page 2

Engineering Challenge 2015

The winning team with their engineering excellence.

A number of secondary schools throughout Scotland were chosen to spearhead an initia-tive to help raise the profile of Engineering within schools. Lanark Grammar was one of these schools.

The school were asked to develop some activi-ties which might help encourage pupils to consider Engineering as a career when they eventually leave school. It would seem the num-ber of pupils opting for

S1 Reward Party

On Monday the 8th of June we hosted a’ Rewards Event’ after-noon for the S1 pupils who have worked hard and behaved well this session. Attendance at the ‘Rewards Event’ depended on each individual pupil’s profile on the Merit System. The free

Maximum Merit

build the tallest working lighthouse possible. They were given a fic-tional budget of £20000 to spend on various building materials. Each team had an accompany-ing information sheet with “fake” money to spend. The winning team was then put forward to take part in the “Engineering Challenge Final” which took place in the drama studio in May. Each S1 class com-peted against each other in a Knex Bridge Building

Challenge. The aim was to build a bridge at least 2m wide which could hold the largest mass. The whole venture is relevant not only to Engineering but also to such developments in education as Enterprise, Citizenship and Cur-riculum for Excellence.

The winning team for the Engi-neering Challenge 2015 was 1p6 - Kathleen Ramage, Chloe Forrest, Kerry Noble, Taylor McGuiness. The girls managed to build a bridge which could withstand 5kg. Well done girls! The winners will be awarded the Engineering Challenge Cup at S1 Prize giving.

Mrs J Cummings

‘Rewards Event’ had a party atmos-phere with games and prizes. In-deed the dance floor was full when the Cha Cha slide song was played!

S2 Reward Trip

On Tuesday the 23rd of June most S2 pupils went to M&D’s theme park in Motherwell for our annual Re-

Laura Chekansky, Niamh Megahy, Katie Tennant and Holly Mitchell.

wards Trip. Pu-pils who have worked hard and behaved well this session were in-vited to come along.

Mrs T McWilliams

Welcome to our final newslet-ter of session 2014-2015. Our newsletter is an important mechanism to convey information about our school and the many successes of our pupils. I am ex-tremely grateful to Ms Meechan of our Art & Design Department who leads our work in this area and works tirelessly to produce newsletters of such very high quality.

Bereavement As you may know, the end of ses-sion has brought some sad news

following the be-reavement of one of our School Chaplains, Dan Gafvert. Dan was Chaplain at Christ Church in

Lanark and, over a long number of years, supported our school com-

munity in a very caring and thoughtful manner. The quite unique contribution which he made to our Chaplaincy Team will be greatly missed. Our thoughts are with his family and congrega-tion at this sad time.

Retirements The end of session will see the retirement of two very long stand-ing members of staff. Both Mr McCrindle of our English Depart-ment and Mrs Jackson, Business Education/Behaviour Support will be retiring after, respectively, 39 and 38 years of service to Lanark Grammar School. They have both made very unique and noteworthy contributions to the school over career-spanning periods of time and we are very grateful for the excellent support which they offered to our school community.

SQA Examination Results Pupils will receive their SQA re-sults on Tuesday 4 August 2015. In order to assist pupils who may wish to make option choice changes in the light of their re-sults, senior staff will be available on Wednesday 5 August from 10:00am - 2:00pm. Where possi-ble, this will enable us to make changes to options prior to the start of session. Finally, I hope that all members of our school community have a very enjoyable and productive summer

News from the Head Teacher

Page 3

Head Teacher Mr Mark Sherry

break. School reopens for staff on Thurs-day 13 August and for pupils on Monday 17 August 2015.

School Captains Many of our young people have shown exceptional leadership throughout this session but none more so than our 2 School Cap-tains Gemma McIntyre and James Barr. To become Captains they went through an extremely rigor-ous selection process involving application form, interview, and speech making. Both Gemma and James have ex-

celled in their personal leadership and in motivating and supporting others to lead and develop school provision. During interviews last week for next session’s Captains, it was clearly evident the legacy which Gemma and James have left and the degree to which they have created a strong culture of leadership among our pupils based on serving our school com-munity.

School Uniform Recently, a letter on school uni-form was issued to all parents explaining the uniform require-ments for session 2015-2016. The core content of the letter can be found below. School uniform consists of the following: white shirt; school tie; black jumper or cardigan; black trou-sers or skirt; and black shoes.

News from the Head Teacher Cont’d

able for schoolwear: clothing or scarves which feature football favours or slogans; tracksuits; denim clothing (jeans or jackets); leggings; baseball caps of any description; shorts; and sheer blouses Where pupils arrive at school without appropriate uniform they will be provided with a tie and/or a blazer to wear for the day.

In addition, from August 2015, all Lanark Grammar School pupils should also wear a blazer which may be purchased from ALJ Work-wear in Lanark. In adverse weather an outer piece of clothing can be worn with the blazer underneath. All pupils will have access to a per-sonal, secure locker where they may keep an outer jacket, books and equipment.

All parents are asked to note that the following clothing is not accept-

Lanark Grammar finalists in the Law Society of Scotland Donald Dewar Memorial Debating Tour-nament 2015 Restricting media cover-age of terrorist attacks was the subject of debate at Holyrood last Thursday, 4 June. The final was the culmination of a tourna-ment which involved 128 teams from schools across Scotland. Chaired by Deputy Presid-ing Officer Elaine Smith MSP, the final saw four teams battle for the first prize. The teams taking part were: · St Mary’s Music School (Edinburgh) · Lanark Grammar (South Lanark-shire) · Madras College (St Andrews) · Prestwick Academy (Ayr) Speaking ahead of the final, Dep-uty Presiding Officer Elaine Smith MSP said: “It is fitting that the final of the Dewar Debate takes place in the

Chamber of the Scottish Parlia-ment, where laws are scrutinized and issues affecting the lives of everyone in Scotland are de-bated”. Pupils from around Scotland, who had been involved in the earlier rounds of the competition, filled the Scottish Parliament Debating Chamber to listen to the finalist debate and take part in an open debate. Although Madras College eventually went on to win the de-

Donald Dewar Memorial Debating Tournament 2015

Page 4

bating title, Lanark Gram-mar pupils Rachael Miller and Rhianna McGrath need to be com-mended for reaching this prestigious final and their outstanding performance. Other mem-

bers of the

Lanark Gram-

mar Debating

club were given the opportunity

to take part in an open debate

during the final, which saw Craig

McCulloch, from Lanark Grammar,

winning the prize for ‘best contri-

bution to the open floor debate’.

Mrs L Reilly

Phenomenal debating duo Rhianna McGrath and Rachael Miller.

6 Days and 5 nights were spent travelling through Greece, stay-ing in a different place every night.

After a really early start, we all headed off to Glasgow Airport where the sophisti-cated check-in system didn’t work! We flew KLM, luxury leg space, to Amsterdam Airport to catch the connect-ing flight to Athens.

On arrival at The Atrium Hotel in Ath-ens we had time to get ready for a terrific buffet dinner before a night coach tour of the sights of Athens. The highlight of this was standing on the Hill of Mars on the slopes of the Acropolis taking photos of the Parthenon all lit up. It was early to bed, 10.30pm. In reality it was only 8.30pm in the UK but nobody complained.

Day 2 of the tour began with a 4 hour guided tour of the Athens taking in the Olympic Stadium, Parliament Building, The Acropolis and the Parthenon. The guide was very knowledgeable – maybe a bit too much, as one person said in their excursion diary. Lunch was taken in the Plaka district of Ath-ens before boarding the coach and heading north to Mount Par-nassos and Delphi, the centre of the world. The modern town of Delphi was amazing. Lots of shop-ping was done after dinner!

Day 3 We spent the morning with our guide on the slopes of Mount Parnassos before making our way up to the Temple of Apollo, home to the oracle, past the well pre-served theatre and up into the clouds to the ancient athletic sta-

dium at the top. The ancient Greeks must have been fit to com-pete there after climbing all the way up there! The views were amazing and it was easy to see why Delphi is viewed as the cen-tre of the world or “navel of the universe”.

Lunch followed at a beach sea-food restaurant on our way south west to the ancient site of the Olympia. We crossed the amazing Rio-Antirrio bridge over the Corin-thian Gulf and our driver stopped to al-low us to take photos from the viewpoint. This bridge is one of the modern wonders of the engineering world. The village Olympia was our next stop and hotel with a not so wonderful din-ner before free time in the village to shop, again!!

Day 4 Our guide was Elena and

Greece Trip April 2015

Page 5

she took us through the ancient site of Olympia, the original home of the Olympic Games showing us the temple structures, “hotels for athletes”, explaining “winners and cheaters” before finishing up at the stadium. Here LGS pupils had a race on Olympia’s sacred track. David Bennett was literally crowned the victor with an olive wreath. After a

lovely lunch in Olympia we boarded our pink bus again to head east and across the whole country to Tolo. Our fourth hotel in four days and they just kept getting better. We arrived early and had time to relax and soak up

the sun before an-other amazing buffet dinner.

Day 5 This was the

BIG day: - 3 sites to

be visited before

heading north again

to Athens over the

Corinth Canal. Epi-

daurus, Tiryns and

Mycenae all impor-

tant and ancient

sites in Greece are

“home” to legendary

figures of Asclepios,

Hercules and Aga-

memnon. Our guide

was knowledgeable ..too much

again?... but achieved legendary

status again in the theatre at Epi-

daurus and LGS pupils warmed to

her and she became “one of our

own”! A tiring day!

Lion Gate at Mycenae

Theatre at Epidaurus

Tinto 2015

Page 6

closely followed by Mr Goldie well

done to both of them.

Unfortunately this year because

it was so windy we were

not allowed to have our

lunch at the top but had

to wait till we arrived

back at the car park. I

have spoken to lots of

the participants, pupils

and teachers, they all

said they thoroughly

enjoyed the experience

and felt a great sense of

achievement on reach-

ing the summit and

were all delighted to be

rewarded at the bottom

of the hill with a medal.

This was a great experi-

ence for all involved and

so far we have raised £2,272·50

with around 50 children still to

bring in their money this is a great

total so far.

Mrs P Russell.

On the 21st of May 120 first year

pupils and 10 staff set off to climb

Tinto Hill in aid of St Andrew’s

Hospice. Tinto (Fire Hill) stands

711m high on the west bank of

the River Clyde some 8 miles west

of Biggar. It falls into the Graham

mountain category, hills between

609.6 and 761.7 metres in height.

St Andrew’s Hospice has a 30 bed

palliative care unit in Airdrie

which offers multidisciplinary sup-

port for patients and their families

with life limiting illnesses. The

hospice’s running costs mean £67

000 must be raised every week by

public donation in order to be

able to provide all its patient ser-

vices. The Tinto Hill climb is a 4

day event organised for local

school children

every May and

this is the sixth

time Lanark

Grammar pupils

have taken part.

Setting off from

school it was dry

but very windy,

well at least any

rain would get

blown away

quickly I thought.

Having been

given our safety

talks by St An-

drew’s Hospice

and St John’s Am-

bulance staff we

set off up the hill. Most of the pu-

pils seemed to be enjoying the

experience of being out in the

fresh air and away from class al-

though there was one or two who

I don’t think will be venturing up

Tinto again in a hurry. After a cou-

ple of stops on the way up to re-

fuel almost all our pupils reached

the summit covering a total dis-

tance from base to summit of 3.5

km in an average time of 1 hour

and 15 minutes. Elannah Noonan

was the first pupil from Lanark

Grammar to reach the summit

Tinto Hill climb co-ordinator and Maths teacher Mrs Russell with S1 pupils.

Biology teacher Miss Dean with some intrepid S1 fundraising climbers.

On 16th June South Lanarkshire Leisure and Culture hosted a Girl’s Football Day playing for the Sum-mer Cup at Hamilton Palace. The event is a positive demonstration of ‘Girl’s in Sport’, staffed by a large proportion of female play-ers, volunteers and coaches.

The event is open for all High Schools in South Lanarkshire to enter girl’s football team(s) and Lanark Grammar was the only school to field two teams. Whilst we did not win the cup our two teams were a credit to the school and one of our teams did actually

beat the eventual winners Dun-canrig High School in the initial rounds, so well done to all of our

spirited players.

Ms E Meechan

SOUTH LANARKSHIRE ATHLETICS CHAMPIONSHIPS

Page 7

On Tuesday 9th June, a number of pupils from S1-6 travelled to the John Wright Sports Centre in East Kilbride to compete in the finals day of the South Lanarkshire Athletics Championships 2015. Pupils origi-nally were chosen to represent Lanark Grammar School as a result of their Sporting Achievements both in school and within Athletics Clubs. Competi-tion was fierce (who brings their own blocks?!) but Team LGS were

triumphant with a grand total of 17 individual medals (7 gold, 9 silver and 1 bronze) and a gold medal for the girl's S3 relay team! A special mention to Ewan Hornell who se-cured two medals, one gold and one silver, Morgan Hillier who se-cured two golds and one silver and Cameron Cairns who secured two silver medals.

Huge congratulations to all who participated, their effort, behav-iour and attitude was exemplary! Miss L Rankine.

Relay team Morgan Hillier, Elizabeth Martin, Katie Donald and Christina Eadie won gold.

SOUTH LANARKSHIRE SCHOOLS GIRLS FOOTBALL DAY2015

Team LGS at John Wrights Sports Centre, in East Kilbride, for the Championships.

SCOTTISH F.A. LEARNING DISABILITIES SCHOOLS LEAGUE NATIONAL FINAL

Page 8

Phone: 01555 667520 Fax: 01555 667521

E-mail: office@lanark.s-lanark.sch.uk

Important Dates

RAVENSCRAIG 20TH MAY 2015

During this school year Lanark Grammar ASN football team had com-peted in the Central Schools Regional Tour-nament. This involved competing against other schools from both North and South Lanarkshire and schools from the Central region in a league type competition on five occasions throughout the year. The team qualified from this tournament to rep-resent South Lanarkshire Schools in the National Finals Tournament.

Schools from all of the regions of Scotland were competing in the National Finals. On the day of the tournament, our team won their group winning four games and losing only one. Unfor-tunately after a very close game

Summer Break Wednesday 24 June 1.00pm

Start of School Session 2015-16 Monday 17 August 8.45am

out the year were su-perb. Their teamwork , effort and behaviour were all excellent and for a team competing in a league for only the second year, to not only qualify for the National Finals but to then narrowly lose in the semi-final was a fan-tastic achievement.

Congratulations also go to four of the boys who have been invited to the Scot-tish Under 19 National Learning Disability Football Squad trials being held in August this year. The boys are Cameron Steer , Cam-eron Pollock , Callum Wishart and Nathan Fleet-wood.

Also a special thanks to Patricia Miller and to all of the par-ents who came along to all of the games to support the boys.

Mr J Gardiner.

against Hollybrook we lost the game 1-0.

The boys in team were a credit to themselves , their parents and the school. Their performances through-

V OL U M E 4 , I S S UE 8

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

Kirklands Road Lanark

ML11 9AJ

Head Teacher : Mr. Mark Sherry