St. Joseph's College Easter 2020 Newsletter

www.stjosephscollege.co.uk A Message from the Head Teacher

Well here we are at the end of an unprecedented term which finished very abruptly indeed. I hope that you will enjoy reading this newsletter and reflecting on some of the good times. If you have not already done so please log on to our virtual End of Term Service at http://youtu.be/GbsignmklH4.

Throughout my career as a Headteacher I don’t think I ever heard a pupil complain about there being no exams—but I certainly have now ! Please be assured that we will continue to work with the SQA to ensure that learners’ hard work is rightly and fairly recognised.

During this closure period many of the school community have volunteered to assist with the provision of Emergency Childcare, the production of materials required for the manufacture of protective equipment and indeed the distribution of hundreds of foodpacks per week. We are grateful that they are in a position to be able to carry out this essential work and wish them well. It is fantastic to see what a willing and flexible workforce we have, however we all very much look forward to returning to our usual roles and welcoming everyone back to St. Joseph’s College.

My very best wishes are extended to you and your families.

Mrs Jones

Message from the School Chaplain As school terms go this has obviously been one of the strangest. The arrival of the Coronavirus (I promise that is the last I will mention it!) has meant drastic changes to how we all live our lives and conduct our business and learn. The premature ending of the school term with home learning and the upheaval in the country has been a challenge for everybody. However, we do arrive at Easter, the culmination of the Church’s worshipping life. Again this will also be a strange remote experience rather than a community coming together to celebrate.

There is one aspect of the passion story that we hear on Palm Sunday and Good Friday and that I wish to highlight. At Jesus’ trial Pilate offers the people the choice between Jesus and Barabbas. This is actually a play on words, a pun, because the name Barabbas translates as “the Son of the Father”, so the choice is between a criminal called “The Son of the Father” and the one who truly is “The Son of the Father”. All our Christian journeys are series of choices and decisions as to what we do and how we live our lives. Constantly God invites us to ever closer union and harmony with Him and our lives of faith are our responses. So, regardless of the unusualness and strangeness of this Easter that invitation is still there, to follow Jesus with our life, the Son of the Father.

Saturday 25th January: Ski Trip to Sestriere departs

Friday 24th January: S4—S6 Prelims end

Tuesday 14th January: Parent Council Meeting 7 p.m.

Fr Gerald Donnelly

Monday 13th January: S4—S6 Prelims begin

Thursday 9 January: S1 Parents’ Evening 4.30-6.30 p.m.

Easter Newsletter 2020

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Wednesday 8th January: S2 Reports to Parents

Wednesday 8th January: School re-opens 8.50 a.m.

Tuesday 7th January: In-service Day for Staff

Monday 6th January: In-service Day for Staff

Friday 20th December: School closes 3.25 p.m.

ST. JOSEPH’S COLLEGE

Although we had no pupils in school for the last two weeks of term, much learning did take place at home . I would like to sincerely thank all staff, parents and carers for all their creativity, effort and indeed patience whether that be with students or technology. Thanks also go to the pupils who made every effort to engage as fully as possible. Well done!

OneDrive You can save any work that you do electronically to you OneDrive and share that work with your teacher. Your work stored in OneDrive will be accessible wherever and whenever you log in to Glow. You can also download the OneDrive app to your phone.

Microsoft Teams Many teachers have created a Team for their class and will work with their class collaboratively from there. Teachers can create assignments and put resources in the Team for the whole class to be able to access them. They can also post messages to the class and answer posts that you put there. You can also download the Teams app to your phone.

SMHW Teachers also use Show My Homework to set work for classes and this means that pupils and parents that use the app can see homeworks and receive push notifications about work set by the teacher.

Office You can use this tile to download and install office on your computers at home for free.

Scholar This is an online learning environment for many National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher courses. Not all subjects are delivered through Scholar and your tacher will inform you if they wish you to undertake work from the Scholar site.

SQA This is a link to the SQA website which provides the course specifications (what is in a course), understanding standards and past papers. It also has any updates on the SQA positions about Coronavirus.

School Site Teachers may choose to put resources here which all pupils can access. This is different from Teams where only the students and teachers in a Team can see the work posted there.

St. Joseph’s College Easter Newsletter 2020

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St. Joseph’s College Easter Newsletter 2020

S3 Masterchef 2020 The S3 Masterchef finalists battled it out in Home Economics to win the coveted Masterchef trophy.

Many delicious dishes were created including potato and broccoli soup, hot chocolate fudge cake, mint chocolate cheesecake and thai red curry. After a closely fought battle the winners were announced by Mr McGee, our very willing judge! The trophy was presented to Sam McIntyre and Ben Tullius. The worthy runners-up were Kaden Dunn and Danny Woods. Congratulations to all who took part.

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N5 Practical Cake Craft A collection of this year’s practical work from Mrs Chalk’s N5 Cake Craft Practical Assignment. Pupils showing off the skills they have learned throughout the year. Some great work. Well done to everyone.

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St. Joseph’s College Easter Newsletter 2020

S C I A F

T

W E E

B O X

his years St Joseph’s Day was celebrated a little differently.

On the 19th of March we held a dress down day to raise much needed funds for the annual SCIAF Wee Box appeal.

Due to the generosity of our community, teachers, pupils

and parents, we raised £486.48 which the UK Government will double.

Thank you and well done.

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The S1 House Group Maths Challenge took place on the 4th February. Pupils were given a mathematician to research and then, together in organised teams, they had 45 mins to combine their information into a poster. Pupils were awarded points for the research completed and deducted points if they had not completed any. Round 2 was a standard puzzle round where they had to complete 10 questions in 15 minutes. The posters were judged by the Maths Ambassadors and scores collated. The winners for this year are...DOUGLAS house. Well done to everyone who took part.

Winners are: •

Bronze Award: Daniel Carroll, Fraser Langan, Kate Campbell, Teagan Ishmael,Vaishanav Munirja, Emelia Chierichi Black.

•

Silver Award: Harry Jackson, Jake Pollock, Jonasz Gofron, Samuel Jess, Dillion Marsden, Gregor Donnachie.

•

Gold Award and through to the Pink Kangaroo round: Julia Pjeternikaj

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St. Joseph’s College Easter Newsletter 2020

This year’s ski trip began with an early start and a flight from Edinburgh to Turin followed by a short transfer to the slopes of Sestriere. This is a huge ski area with a great variety of runs to suit every level of skier. The ski conditions were fantastic and everyone’s ski skills came along leaps and bounds. Other enjoyable apres ski activities included pizza night and ice skating. However, the skills on the ice rink definitely need some work when compared to the skiing. A huge thank you to Mr. Brown for once again organising a great trip and we look forward to the next one.

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St. Joseph’s College Easter Newsletter 2020

Members of two S1 Inter-disciplinary Learning classes were recently presented with CREST Discovery Awards. These pupils have successfully completed “passports” which provide an opportunity to reflect on the problem solving, team working and research skills that they have used during their interdisciplinary project work. Good communication is also assessed. Mrs. Fitzhenry’s class designed and built bridges, having researched some real life bridge designs. Mr. Purdie & Mrs. Flint’s class studied how diseases spread and formulated a design for an effective water purification system. Well done to all!

A body has been found with a mysterious white powder …..What is the substance and was it the cause of death? This was the scenario presented to Advanced Higher Chemistry students when Gaia Burgio from The University of West of Scotland visited to share her spectroscopic expertise and give our pupils some hands-on experience of using Infra-Red (IR) and UV-Vis spectroscopy.

Gaia demonstrated how IR could be used to identify unknown compounds by sharing some examples of spectra from a vast library of compounds. UV-vis colorimetry was demonstrated as a means of determining the concentrations of coloured compounds. Both techniques are studied by Advanced Higher Chemistry pupils and this session provided some valuable consolidation. The class very much enjoyed using the compact, portable machines, similar in style to those used by the police at music festivals and crime scenes. St. Joseph’s College pupils concluded that the white powder was aspirin and the concentration was too low to be the cause of death!

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S5 Biology and Chemistry pupils gained some valuable insights in to the latest research taking place in Scottish universities when they attended the Medical Research Scotland event at Strathclyde University. The pupils were given the chance to hear about scientific careers from an immunologist and a psychologist. They then toured exhibits and took part in a variety of hands on activities run by PhD students working on a range of projects all related to diagnosis and treatment of disease. One of the most interesting aspects of the morning was learning about the increasingly blurred edges between the traditional science disciplines. Most projects represented at the event involved students combining knowledge and skills from Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Computer Science. This was a timely opportunity for our pupils to give some thought to their areas of scientific interest and to consider subject choices and career options for the years to come. St. Joseph’s College is very grateful to Medical Research Scotland for funding transport to this event.

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St. Joseph’s College Easter Newsletter 2020

During this term our S1 pupils worked hard to plan and carry out a Science experiment at home as part of the annual Science Fair Event. Many outstanding projects were submitted for assessment and, after some very difficult decision making, twelve pupils reached the final.

They were invited to present their projects at the St Joseph’s College Science Fair. The Science Fair projects offer pupils the chance to investigate topic of personal interest while building some of the practical and analytical skills that are important in all scientific disciplines.

Every year we are impressed by the variety of topics and this year pupils investigated a diverse range of topics such as cupcake density, vitamin C content of juice, cress growth in different pH conditions, microbe presence on surfaces, viscosity of liquids and air temperature around different types of light bulb.

Congratulations to our S1 Finalists: Francesca Seton, Taylor Little, Jennifer Harper, Molly-Mae Blayney, Mirryn Fergusson, Pia McNeillie, Ava Nosratzadeh, George McGeogh, Katie Cuthill, Etain Bell, Sophie Earl, and Edward Hanna.

Primary 7 pupils from St Andrew’s Primary and the Primary 6 and 7 pupils from St Teresa’s Primary also took part in this event. They presented their projects at the Primary Science Fair to a selection of our Senior Science Ambassadors who judged the event.

Well done to all of the P6, P7 and S1 pupils for taking part.

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STEM Nation award STEM Nation Award – St. Joseph’s College has achieved 3 of the 5 elements!

This year, St. Joseph’s College was selected to participate in the pilot year of the STEM Nation Award, a nationally recognised scheme being developed for schools by Education Scotland that celebrates, promotes and builds on effective practice in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths) education.

In order to be eligible for the full STEM Nation Award, schools must achieve 5 individual elements within a 3 year period: Leadership, Family learning, Partnership Working, Curriculum & Pathways and Equity & Equality. Achievement of an element requires those teaching STEM subjects to carry out an extensive self-evaluation, then gather and submit evidence to demonstrate good practice and fulfilment of all criteria. An important aspect of the award is demonstrating that the school has a collaborative approach across more than one faculty.

St. Joseph’s College Science & Technology teachers worked closely with colleagues in Maths and Computer Science to create an impressive submission for Leadership, Partnership Working and Curriculum & Pathways. This included results data, photographic evidence, verbatim feedback from learners and partners and self-evaluation information.

Our submission was successful and we were delighted with the comments from Education Scotland Education Officer Lorraine Ross, who noted the sustained team work and use of innovative approaches by the school when promoting and delivering STEM learning across the curriculum.

A key part of the submitted evidence was demonstrating involvement in another pilot study – The Young STEM Leader Programme. Many of our senior pupils have been planning and carrying out worthwhile activities related to the promotion of STEM in school. S6 have successfully run targeted revision groups, transition lessons for visiting primary 7 pupils and support sessions for primary Science Fair projects. Consequently, our S6 pupils have certainly gained confidence in their own leadership skills.

Only two more elements to go then we hope to be able to report on achievement of the full STEM Nation Award!

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St. Joseph’s College Easter Newsletter 2020

S2 pupils were given the opportunity to attend the annual Energiser Workshop in February. Pupils participate in a hands-on engineering and teamwork experience. Pupils were instructed on how to build electrically charged model cars and, in groups, their task was to charge the car up to different voltages and then record the distance the car travelled. After the pupils tested the car repeatedly, they were challenged to charge their car up enough to go a specific distance. This was a fun experience that allowed pupils to get a glimpse into the world of engineering and get an idea of what it would be like to solve some of the world’s toughest issues.

S2 IDL Diseases throughout History has been focussed on looking at various disease that have changed the course of history ranging from the Black Death of 1348 to the Spanish flu in the early 1900’s. We have been able to do several practical projects such as growing our own microbes and testing different household items as potential antibiotics. At the end of our topic, we built a board game that was themed around the diseases that we have learned about. The overall winning team (Owen, Jack, Bernardas and Julian) made a game that took a deadly twist on Snakes and Ladders!

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Steven’s Croft Sawmill and Biomass Power Station On a cold and windy Monday morning, a small group of 12 students visited an industrial site a few miles north of Lockerbie. The students all study Physics or Rural Skills in the senior phase and gained a great insight into the timber industry and its links with the biomass power station.

Our day began at James Jones and Sons Sawmill. This impressive operation employs about 150 people on its large site. We were given a fast pace and fascinating tour of the facility including its automated mills and high tech timber scanning and sorting processes. Our students were guided through the very heart of the facility and had the opportunity to see the variety of careers which form such a complex operation. They also got to witness the machinery in action and see the process of sorting, scanning, processing and packaging timber from its arrival on log lorries to its departure as high quality construction timber and a variety of other products. We are very grateful to Mr MacKenna for showing us round the facility.

From there it was a short walk to the E-On biomass power station. The Steven’s Croft power station burns waste wood from the local timber industry to generate enough electricity for 70,000 homes. In addition to this they also supply the sawmill we had just visited with 6MWt of heat energy which is used in their wood treatment kilns. Mr Howat gave us a warm welcome and guided us around the site, explaining the processes involved in the various components of the power station. It was a great opportunity to see concepts and ideas discussed in the classroom scaled up to industrial proportions and to learn about the role Steven’s Croft Power Station plays in the power industry and in the local forestry.

While it was a cold and windy February day, our students enjoyed the visits and learned about the science behind a bustling local industry. It was also great to witness how two separate companies can work together in a symbiotic way for mutual benefit. We are grateful to both James Jones & Sons and E-On and hope to visit again in future years.

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St. Joseph’s College Easter Newsletter 2020

A Walk in the Woods Mr MacKellar and Mr Paoletti took the N5 Practical Woodwork class for a walk in the woods with a difference. They visited BSW Sawmill in Dalbeattie for a tour around the sawmill. The day started with a safety

briefing and before getting kitted out with PPE and our tour of the Sawmill began. The very informative tour took us from the lorries that bring in the timber from various locations around the country, through to the processing and seeing the guts of the mill, then to drying and treating the timber, to the finished machined and ready to use material. A very enjoyable and worthwhile trip for our young people. With thanks to BSW Timber for hosting us and DYW for organising the trip.

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S3 Geography have been working on a map skills and fieldwork topic. Tasks have involved visiting Dumfries town centre to carry out a traffic survey and everyone participated well in the tasks! We have since moved on to look at using compasses to take bearings and went out to the school ground to practice. A big well done to Mr Brown and Miss Tyeson's classes who have had an excellent term!

Purple Friday took place on Friday the 28th of February at St. Joseph’s College. We held a bake sale and karaoke which both raised £91.12 for our local LGBT Youth Centre at the DG1 complex. The bake sale was made up of treats like cupcakes and brownies. Huge thanks to Rowan Paine, Lucrezia DiGregorio, Arnoldas Voznyj, Alice Parry, Ms. Morrison and Miss Sammon as they provided the tasty treats. The Purple Friday karaoke was also a success; lots of different people were brave enough to sing their favourite songs. Fraser Langan was the star of the show and sung multiple songs including popularly distasteful classics like ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ and ‘Baby Shark’! The month of February is LGBT History Month which aims to educate society about prejudice for this particular community and make LGBT+ people visible in all their rich diversities.

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St. Joseph’s College Easter Newsletter 2020

Expressive Arts Evening The Expressive Arts faculty was hoping to showcase their on-going curricular and extra-curricular work but that was not to be.

So, we thought we’d share with you what we have been doing to engage pupils in the ‘Arts’.

School Band The band were busy rehearsing ‘Queen in Concert’ a medley of our favourite Queen songs including Bohemian Rhapsody and We Are The Champions. A favourite of the pupils was ‘The Pink Panther Meets Batman’. We even had Ben in S1 ready to be masked to add a bit of ‘drama’ to our performance. Our final offering was ‘Baby Elephant Walk’, the famous Henry Mancini melody. We will keep practising and maybe we’ll get a chance to perform them again.

The band took a hit last year as lots of our senior pupils left SJC but I have to say the younger pupils have committed whole heartedly and I am excited about how the band is going to grow over the next few years. A huge thank you to our current S6 members Vidhi, Beatrice, Cait and Elizabeth who have played with the band during their time at school. Without pupils supporting the band through to their senior phase, there would be no growth, no progression and no role models for the younger pupils to look up to. I am so sorry we are not going to get a proper chance to say thank you, good luck and goodbye. Please know that your contributions have never gone unnoticed and we wish you all the success as you head into the next phase of your life. Good luck and keep in touch!

Staff/ Pupil Choir Preparations for this year’s Expressive Arts evening were well underway. The Staff and Pupil choir were busy practising and very excited about singing ‘From Now On’ from ‘The Greatest Showman’. This was also of benefit to our Advanced Higher Music Technology pupil Cameron as he was trying to recreate a version of this song for his project. During one of our rehearsals Cameron took half of the recording studio and the choir to the Chapel to record his project. He wanted to use the chapel because of its vast acoustic, and the natural reverb that would be gained from this space. When listening to the recording you would thing that effects had been applied to the track, but there are none, it was all raw recordings taken from the Chapel.

The choir were also working on another piece of music called ‘Come to the Music’ that tested our counting skills as the piece constantly changed time signature with bars having somewhere between 6 to 10 beats in a bar. The heavy repetition led to the choir picking up this piece very quickly. Hopefully we will get an opportunity to showcase these pieces at a later stage.

Grease Show Cast This year’s show may not have gone according to plan but we had fun in our earlier preparations. The cast have shown nothing but enthusiasm and commitment to the rehearsals. Acting, singing and dancing have kept everyone busy and we are just sad that we will not be able to share it with you. Here are the only photos we have of our earlier rehearsals.

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Can you spot our seniors in their younger years?

The Lion King On Wednesday 19th February, the Expressive Arts department arranged for 50 pupils and 5 members of staff to travel to Edinburgh for a rather exciting theatre trip to see The Lion King. Pupils were almost as thrilled as the staff members to see this excellent performance! We were fortunate to be sitting in the stalls and when the animals started moving down the aisles past us during “Circle of Life” there were audible gasps at the magnificent and realistic creations beside us. The pupils ranged from S2 to S6 and were all in strong agreement, on returning that evening, that they were amazed by the performance they watched. The two firm favourite numbers seemed to be “Circle of Life” and “Be Prepared”. Some of our pupils have been generous enough to share their thoughts below.

“One of the best musicals I’ve ever seen! It was interesting to see all the design aspects of the production, especially the costume.

A great last school trip!” Emily S6 “I really enjoyed the trip and the experience of going to the theatre to see it. The play itself was fantastic!” Lucy S3 “Incredible show! The professionalism of the design areas were truly outstanding. Would 100% recommend the live show to everyone!” Taryn S6 “A great fun day away and a spectacular show to see!” Mia S5 “The lion king theatre trip to the Edinburgh Play House was a great wee day out, the show was FAB and would definitely recommend to anyone!!! #hakunamatata ” Rowan S3

Young Musician of the Year In our previous newsletter, we wrote about Thomas’ success at the burgh final held at The Bridge. We were delighted when Thomas won the Instrumental section at the zone final in Annan progressing to the District Final held at Heriot Watt University in February. His success was not to stop there and Thomas progressed to the Regional final held in Perthshire. This would be the end of the competition for Thomas but this was a huge achievement. Well done.

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St. Joseph’s College Easter Newsletter 2020

Scottish School Swimming Chamionships Lexi Anderson (S2) and Reuben Kelly (S3) represented St Joseph's College at the Scottish Schools Swimming Finals at Tollcross in January. Reuben narrowly missed out on a medal, finishing fourth in the Boys 15-16 100m freestyle final and fifth in the 200m freestyle final.

Many congratulations to Lexi Anderson of S2 who won a Silver and Bronze medal at the Championships. Her Silver came with an excellent swim in the 200m Freestyle, missing out on Gold by only 0.11 seconds. She then followed this up with a very well deserved 3rd place in the 200m Backstroke. Lexi is currently one of Scotland's most talented and hardworking young swimmers and we wish her well for the future.

Well done to both swimmers for your fantastic achievements!

Skating to Success The 2019/2020 Synchronised Ice Skating season has just come to a close with much success for four of our pupils. Skating with Solway Comets, Grace and Maya of S1 won their category in both the Scottish and British Championships, as did Louise of S3 skating with Solway Lightning. Skating for the first time in an International Iceskating Union category, Solway Lightning certainly did themselves, their coaches and Dumfries and Galloway proud, as did the Comets! In addition Megan of S4 proved to be a real 'star' skating with Solway Stars in the Junior ISU category. This team became Scottish Champions and only just missed out on the top spot at the British Championships. Great rewards for all of these pupils who put in many hours of training both on and off the ice.

Our congratulations and thanks also go to Mrs McCubbin of the Maths Department who not only manages Solway Comets but also makes sure that all of the Solway teams are turned out so well. Gold stars all round !

S2 Football The S2 football team remain top of the U14 league table, having recorded impressive wins against Stranraer Academy, Annan Academy and Lockerbie Academy. The team drew away to Dumfries High School last term and had one fixture remaining, prior to the closure of schools.

S3 Football The S3 football team narrowly lost 3-1 to a strong Dumfries High School team in the Quarter Final of the U15 D&G Hunter Shield.

The boys effort and attitude was fantastic throughout the game. The boys had the better of the second half, despite conceding two late goals. The boys will compete in the D&G Large Schools' U16 League next academic year.

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St Joseph’s College Bronze and Silver Duke of Edinburgh Award recipients with Dumfries and Galloway Council Chief Executive Mr Gavin Stevenson And finally—Mr. Rossi with his extremely well-deserved Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme Long Service Award. Well done Mr. Rossi.

Wishing everyone a healthy and happy Easter.

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St. Joseph’s College Easter Newsletter 2020