christmas newsletter

ADVENT/CHRISTMAS NEWSLETTER ST THOMAS AQUINAS RC SECONDARY

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!1ACT JUSTLY, LOVE MERCY WALK HUMBLY WITH YOUR GOD

Archbishop Tartaglia who visited on Friday afternoon, 6 December, to mark 10 years in our ‘new’ building.

Following a light lunch with our Chaplaincy Team and our Sixth Year Caritas Students he was accompanied on a tour of the school by Megan Heafey, Lyndsay McDonald and

Andrew Gavin. The Archbishop completed his visit with a Q+A session with our entire Sixth Year in the Social Area. Despite this potentially daunting task he responded very

fully to a wide range of questions drafted by our students.

ST THOMAS AQUINAS RC SECONDARY SCHOOL

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Welcome to our Newsle.er.

Inside you’ll find informa9on on a wide range of ac9vi9es that have been taking place since our previous Newsle.er in September. I am delighted to report that following ‘appeals’ our Higher Grade a.ainment in 2013 was the best ever for our school. Congratula9ons to our senior students!!

In this season of Advent we remind all of our students of this preparatory period in the lead up to the great Feast of the Na9vity during our Assemblies and Religious Educa9on lessons.

Next Monday, 16 December, our Advent Service will be held at 19:00. This will then be followed by a set of rather more boisterous Christmas songs and, hopefully, a visit from ‘Santa’ for our younger visitors.

Before we close for Christmas it is hoped that the school will have both a ‘Twi.er’ account and a ‘Facebook’ page. Ms Evans and I are working with GCC to have this established by this deadline as we believe this will further improve the school’s links with our parents.

School closes at 14:30 on Friday 20 December, and re-‐opens on Monday 6 January 2014 at 08:45.


!‘Learning about the Holocaust’

History Department

The History department has worked with the Holocaust Educa9onal Trust this year to provide exci9ng new learning opportuni9es for students at St Thomas Aquinas Secondary School. The ac9vi9es were strongly linked with the English department S3 Holocaust literacy project, providing the opportunity for inter-‐disciplinary learning and bringing History to life for our students. Photographs of all the events are available on the school system.

On 12th November 2013 Mr Henry and Ingrid Wuga visited St Thomas Aquinas to give tes9mony to their experiences of the Holocaust in Germany. Mrs Wuga grew up in Dortmund and Mr Wuga grew up in Nuremberg hundreds of miles apart living different lives. However they both witnessed first-‐hand the horrors of Kristallnacht (The Night of the Broken Glass) on the 9th November 1938, when the Nazi’s a.acked Jewish homes, synagogues and businesses all over Germany and Austria.

Their parents decided that their children were in danger and they made arrangements for them to be sent to Britain on the Kindertransport-‐trains that arranged for 10,000 Jewish children to take refuge in Britain. Both Henry and Ingrid aged 14 and speaking very li.le English set off on the journey and found their new homes in Glasgow. They first met each other in a refugee camp in Sauchiehall Street and they married in 1966 and raised their family in the city where they have lived since arriving in 1939. At a special assembly Mr and Mrs Wuga gave their powerful tes9mony to a cap9vated audience of Third, Fourth senior school students and staff. They both gave their personal experiences of a harrowing 9me in their lives. Aeer 45 minutes of tes9mony, students were given the opportunity to ask ques9ons to which the students responded with enthusiasm and respect. There was then an opportunity for students to come and see the historical artefacts and documents the couple had brought with them.

The Social Subjects Faculty would like to offer their sincere thanks to Mr and Mrs Wuga for so kindly giving up their 9me to provide this unique learning experience for our students.

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(top) Mr Wuga describes for our students the experiences of his time in Dortmund as a child

(Middle) Mr + Mrs Wuga at Central Station where they met up with our Third Year students again

(bottom) Students examine the family’s documentation from Nazi Germany


“Suitcase” play

On the 20th November Mr. D. Gault, Mr O’Neil, Mrs L. Hendry and Mrs L. Mc Gowan accompanied 42 Third Year students a.ended the play “Suitcase” at Glasgow Central Sta9on.

The play was taking place to mark the 75th anniversary of the Kindertransport trains coming to Britain. The play was beginning a tour of railway sta9ons across the UK by performing first in Glasgow. A video about the play is available on the BBC Scotland News website. h.p://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-‐scotland-‐24910219

The hustle and bustle of central sta9on made for a memorable semng and an engaging performance as the students listened and interacted with actors in a number of scenario’s-‐a trade union worker trying to raise funds to help refugees, a big sister looking aeer her wee brother, a Bri9sh couple mee9ng a child for the first 9me, a Bri9sh women who opposed refugees coming to the UK, a Bri9sh girl mee9ng a Czech boy for the first 9me, the women whose job was to allocate children to families in Britain.

Higher History students Sian Nolan and Jordan Fox took part in the “Lessons from Auschwitz” programme in November this year. Mr Gault and the students a.ended a seminar at the Crown Plaza, Glasgow to hear speakers from the Holocaust Educa9onal Trust (H.E.T) and the tes9mony of Leslie Rosenberg who had been a prisoner in Auschwitz when he was 14 years old and spent one year in the camp. Students a.ended a workshop with H.E.T. educators in prepara9on for their trip to Poland.

On 30th November Jordan and Sian flew to Poland and visited Auschwitz along with other students from throughout the Glasgow area. The students spent the day visi9ng Auschwitz and Birkenau – the most infamous death camp where 1million people died during the Holocaust.

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Lessons from Auschwitz

This photograph shows the view from the infamous watchtower in Birkenau. The train track shown here brought people to the death camp – most people who came here were sent straight to the gas chamber – the rest worked in the death camp as slaves with most dying of malnutri9on, disease and cruelty within a year of arriving at the camp. The selec9on process took place in the area shown in the photograph

!Performing Arts Events Studio Time for “Behind the noise”

On Tuesday 17th of December, the Behind the noise musicians and Music promo9ons team will have some 9me in a professional music recording studio working with industry professionals.

City Halls Concert

Several of our instrumental students are taking part in the Christmas concerts in City Halls on Monday 16th of December.

The Lion King

On Tuesday 26th of December Miss Morrison organised a trip to The Edinburgh Playhouse to see “The Lion King” all students and staff who a.ended had a great 9me and our students represented the school impeccably.

Christmas Caroloake

We are having a Christmas Caroloake on the aeernoon of Thursday 19th of December. Tickets for this are £1.50 and will be available nearer the date. Student and staff teams can compete for our wonderful prizes.

Drama Club

Our Drama Club are working on their Christmas Produc9on for the Christmas Carol Service. A.endance at the club is at an all-‐9me high and we have also made four of our most loyal and hardworking students from S2, our DRAMA PREFECTS. They were presented with a special lapel pin to wear on their uniform. They are, Lucy McNulty, Andrew Walker, Lauren Seery and Sarah Toland.



Film Club

Our Film Club has around 20 members who regularly a.end to watch , discuss and review movies. We have watched 12 Movies this term and are one of the few schools in Scotland to be offering this club.

We have watched; Back to the future, The Breakfast Club, Somers Town, The Goonies, Forrest Gump, Oz The Great and Powerful, Hocus Pocus, Psycho, The Hunger Games, Edward Scissorhands, Stand By Me and School Of Rock.

Here are some excerpts from our reviews:

Ka9e Hatrick First Year

“I love BACK TO THE FUTURE. A classic 1980’s movie, about a boy who goes back in >me and meets his parents when they were in high school. Then disaster strikes and the >me machine breaks down. Unfortunately, with the boy stuck in the wrong >me bad things start to happen!”

Kyle Cleary First Year

“Oz, The Great and Powerful, a brilliant film, we finally now know how the wizard arrived on Oz before Dorothy in this fantas>c prequel.”

Youth Theatre

We have several students in Glasgow Schools Youth Theatre produc9on of Footloose. This produc9on will be on in February. Tickets on sale soon. Approximately one third of the cast are from St Thomas Aquinas .

Comedy Workshops

We have held two workshops with professional comedians as a taster session for a longer stand-‐up comedy event. One of the comedians was Raymond Mearns from the Baea awarded, Limmy Show

!Geography department (from Miss Barton)

The Higher Geography class have had a busy session to date with revision, homework, coursework and supported study sessions. In addi9on to this they have been fortunate to receive a lecture from Professor Mike Barre. from Glasgow University who discussed the Scomsh Encounter with Tropical Disease. This will allow our students to provide up-‐to-‐date examples of the drugs and strategies for dealing with some of the biggest infec9ous diseases in the world at present (par9cularly malaria where at present there is s9ll no cure)

Next session will be equally busy (if not busier) leading up to the February prelims. We are hoping to squeeze in a field trip which is expected to take place in January. The trip will focus on an urban case study of Glasgow ( A key learning outcome of the Higher course) and will allow them to see the changes that have taken place in the different land use zones. We are hoping students will be transported round Glasgow by the tour bus before finishing off on a speedboat on the River Clyde. Pictures of windswept, slightly soggy students will feature in the next newsle.er!



Maths department

Enterprising Maths In Scotland CompeTTon (by KaTe Hayes + Reece Stoops) !On Tuesday 19th November we went to the Glasgow Science Centre to take part in the ‘Enterprising Maths In Scotland Compe99on’. Our group consisted of two Fourth Year students (Ka9e Russell and Ali Ba9) and two Third Year students (Ka9e Hayes and Reece Stoops). !There were over 60 schools there and on arrival we were given a challenging warm up involving a maths related crossword. Once all the schools had arrived we par9cipated in a general ques9on paper, which featured 15 difficult problem solving tasks. The second round consisted of construc9ng a large 3D shape, our group found this task rather difficult. !We were then able to have lunch and we had the opportunity to quickly look round the Science Centre. Aeer lunch, as a group we a.empted the ‘sta9ons round’, where we rotated round different tables and tried to complete the puzzles in 8 minutes. This was our favourite round as we found it fun and enjoyable. We then had a 40 minute tour of the Science Centre, to try out and experiment all the different games and illusions. !Following this we took part in the final round, the relay round, the hardest round. This involved the group of 4 being split into 2 and having to answer a series of ques9ons, but we could not move onto the next ques9on un9l the other group had finished answering their ques9on. We rounded off the day with the award ceremony where we were awarded a glass trophy and a ‘goody bag’ to share between us. Overall it was a great day and we all really enjoyed the experience.

S1 Credit Union Launch (Wednesday 20th November 2013)

St Thomas Aquinas RC Secondary School is delighted to have launched our savings scheme in partnership with Knightscliffe Temple Credit Union, ’STA Savers’ , with our First Year students. We believe that it is important for our young people to have a good understanding of money and of the importance of saving wisely. Glasgow City Council have also provided S1 students with an extra incen9ve to join a Credit Union by deposiTng £10 into every new account opened by an S1 student. It’s not o]en we receive money for nothing!



!Our aim is to develop financial capability and economic wellbeing through !

• Understanding the importance of financial inclusion. • Crea9on of opportuni9es for ac9ve ci9zenship in this area at local level. !

First Year volunteers wishing to par9cipate in the running of the Credit Union were given the necessary training from Credit Union staff with the help of our Sixth Year students.

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S2 Money Week 2013 (Monday 25th – Friday 29th November)

Following the success of our previous Money Week held here in St Thomas Aquinas, our current Second Year students have just completed another enjoyable Money Week held within the

Department of Mathema9cs. Second Year got to experience all things money: from GeMap Scotland Workshops, Budge9ng Ac9vi9es and the fun fuelled World Trading Game (for staff and students).

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Roisin and Mahuum oversee our First Year Credit Union tellers

Burkina Faso celebrate as the winning Traders


Home Economic department Glasgow Culinary Excellence Scheme Eight students from St Thomas Aquinas senior school, studying Hospitality, were selected for a ten week training programme in conjunc9on with the restaurant ‘House for an Art lover,’ in Bellahouston Park. The students a.ended the restaurant one aeernoon a week and received front of house and chef skills training which culminated in a wonderful lunch for twenty five people, prepared and served by the students involved. One of the students involved, Christopher Tait, commented at the end of the programme “This has been a fantas>c experience working in such a busy and successful restaurant and I’m so thankful to the staff for giving their >me and exper>se to show us these great skills, which will be such a benefit in our course work as well as giving us skills for the future. It has also confirmed in me that the Hospitality Industry will be my career choice” The Home Economics Department looks forward to con9nuing the link with this restaurant in the future. !Wider Achievement Nicole Hendry from our Fieh Year (pictured) travelled to Japan to compete for Scotland in the 50th World Karate championships. Nicole had an outstanding tournament winning two silver medals (one for kumite (figh9ng) and one for Kata (stances and movement)). Nicole rounded off a successful tournament by also achieving her 1st Dan (Black Belt). A fantas9c achievement!

!Also in the Mar9al Arts, Reiss Havelin of Third Year achieved a Silver Medal in Tae kwon do !!!!!



Science Faculty (from Emma McDonald, First Year)

On Friday the 22nd November our science class went on a trip to the Botanic Gardens because we are studying biodiversity.

We lee school at twenty minutes to ten, just aeer maths. There was a coach wai9ng outside of school to take us there. The bus journey was about fieeen to twenty minutes long. Our science teacher Ms Evans told us to wrap up warm because it would be freezing and it definitely was.

When we walked through the front gates the first thing that I saw was The Kibble Palace, an amazing glass building with a domed roof. As we were walking in we met up with our guide. Her name was Louise and she told us that she was going to take us on a tour around the Greenhouse and the carnivorous plant room in the Kibble Palace. It was good to get out of the cold. There is a humid atmosphere in the Greenhouse so that the plants can survive.

Louise showed us all of the plants in the Greenhouse and she knew an interes9ng fact for almost every one of them. I saw a chilli plant, a banana tree, cocoa beans, dates, coconuts, bamboo and lots more. My favourite plants were the cac9 that almost touched the roof of the Greenhouse. I also learned an interes9ng fact about a plant called ‘Dumb cane’. If you eat it its leaves will shred your vocal chords and you will be unable to speak. The plant that I didn’t like was the one that the leaves of it are used to make perfume. It smelled absolutely horrible! I was quite surprised when Louise told us about how much the bamboo had grown in one day and that it can grow much faster in China.

Once we had finished our tour it was eleven o’clock. I did not bring anything with me to eat so I decided to go to the tea room and buy a chocolate cookie. It tasted delicious!

Overall I really enjoyed the trip to the Botanic Gardens. The cookie was very tasty but my favourite part would have to be the tour around the Greenhouse and the Kibble Palace.



Zoolab

As an extension to our First Year Inter-‐Disciplinary Learning (a key part of Curriculum for Excellence), and our con9nuing links with our partner school in Trinidad and Tobago, our English department arranged for ‘Zoolab’ to visit our First Year students. Our students were able to see a tarantula spider, huge millipedes and other creatures of the Rainforest of north-‐eastern Trinidad.

Here Miss Hutchison prepares to hold a huge millipede much to the surprise of the boys behind her!!

Many of the students were confident enough to hold a range of insects and even a large snake.

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Career ExhibiTon – Wednesday 29th January ; 7pm – 9pm

The school would like to invite all S4, S5 and S6 students and their parents / guardians to a Careers Exhibi9on on Wednesday 29th January 2013. The event will take place from 7pm -‐9pm with le.ers and invites being sent out post Christmas. Following on from the success of last year’s event; St Thomas Aquinas is working in partnership with Knightswood Secondary this year.

A wide range of companies and training providers will be present – most of which are currently training or offering employment. In response to the feedback the school received last year; Universi9es, Colleges , the Crea9ve Industries and the Fitness Industry will have a stronger presence this year.

The school would like to invite parents / family to be part of the event. If you would be willing to talk about your career area to individual students or have company contacts that would enhance the event we would love to hear from you! Please contact Mrs Farquhar at the school.

The event is to raise awareness to all our young people of the many excellent career and training opportuni9es available; for all students regardless of academic level. The event will also raise awareness of the different career areas and how they can enter the different professions and progress within them. This will help students make informed choices with regards to applying for appren9ceships, further study, training and course choices in S5/S6.

There are also Graduate Opportuni9es so even if your son/daughter has applied to University it would s9ll be beneficial to a.end.

Please support your school by a.ending this important and pres9gious event

Mrs Farquhar -‐ Employability Officer



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!!On the 27th of November a coach-‐load of staff and students a.ended a performance of The Lion King at the Edinburgh Playhouse. Aeer braving rush hour traffic we arrived at the Playhouse eager for the highly an9cipated show to begin – we were not disappointed.

The show featured elaborate costumes, a stunning set, unforge.able music and a familiar story with familiar characters we have all grown to love. Of course, all the well-‐known songs were featured such as The Circle of Life, I Just Can’t Wait to be King and the firm favourite Hakuna Matata. A par9cularly memorable and enjoyable moment was when some of the animals paraded down the aisles towards the stage. This gave us an opportunity to admire the intricate costumes up close.

This produc9on brought The Lion King back to life in a new and exci9ng way and all those who saw it absolutely loved it. It was a truly spectacular performance and a thoroughly enjoyable evening was had by all.

Katy Green S4

Career Academies UK

Career Academies UK brings together employers and schools to prepare young people for the world of work. Seven of our Fieh Year students are par9cipa9ng in the two year Career Academies programme. Following a compe99ve applica9on process students are matched to a Partner In Business who then mentor each student to develop their transferable skills and awareness of the different career sectors. The programme lasts two years with the students comple9ng a 4/6 week paid internship during Summer 2014. The students also a.end ‘guru’ lectures and meet with their mentors on a regular basis. Companies par9cipa9ng are Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander, Scomsh Power, Edrington and Ci9 Bank. More informa9on can be found on this website: h.p://www.careeracademies.org.uk/.

Mrs Farquhar -‐ Employability Officer



Important Diary News !

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All teachers and support staff of St Thomas Aquinas RC Secondary wish our students, parents, carers and

supporters of our school a Happy and Holy Christmas.

Date Event

6 January 2014 School Re-opens at 08:45

Monday 13 January 2014 PRELIM EXAMS FOR ALL FOURTH YEAR STUDENTS NOTE: Their is NO Study Leave for students.

Friday 17 January Fifth and Sixth Year Reports to Parents

Wednesday 22 January FINAL DAY OF FOURTH YEAR PRELIMS

Thursday 23 January PARENTS EVENING FOR FIFTH / SIXTH YEAR: 17:00 - 19:00

Tuesday 29 January Patronal Feast Day - FEAST OF ST THOMAS AQUINAS -Doctor of the Church

Wednesday 29 January Careers Exhibition, 19:00A crucial event for Parents and Students from Fourth to Sixth Year. Younger students should approach Mrs Farquhar if they have a particualr Career in mind

Thursday 30 January St Thomas Aquinas Charity Concert….. one of the favourite nights of the year. Please support our Performers and Singers

Thursday 6 February PARENTS EVENING FOR FOURTH YEAR PARENTS: 17:00 - 19:00

Friday 7 February School closes for Mid-Term break at 14:40

Thursday 13 February School Re-opens at 08:45


christmas newsletter

Documents

school system

school closes

holocaust history department

year caritas students

senior students

holocaust educa9onal

mr wuga

ingrid wuga