St Modan’s High School

Newsletter – December 2015

CHRISTMAS CONCERTS A GREAT SUCCESS

Huge congratulations and well done to all of our choir members, musicians and music staff. Over the Christmas period the

choirs and bands were in great demand – playing in local parishes and supermarkets, senior citizen events and much more

as well as our own Christmas Concert in the school. Feedback from parents and the community, as always was exceptional

and reflects the hard work, commitment and talents of our young people. Thanks goes also to our exceptional Music staff

and tutors for preparing our young people so well and to the pupils and staff of St Bernadette’s and St Mungo’s Primary

Schools who joined us to sing so beautifully in St Mungo’s Church, Alloa.

SANTA VISITS ST MODAN’S PUPILS HAVE A BALL

St Modan’s pupils were treated to a visit from Santa Claus last week when he and one of his special elves

spent a lunchtime entertaining us all with Christmas Carols and festive songs to which the whole school

sang along. We’d like to thank Santa and his elves for taking the time out of a very busy schedule to attend

St Modan’s and wish them well for their travels for the coming weeks!

PTA UPDATE SUPPORT FROM PARENTS

The PTA would like to thank all parents and pupils who supported the recent fund-raising events; Christmas Raffle, Bingo-Tea

and Winter Wonderland. All 3 events were well attended and go a long way to help fund or support a wide range of school clubs

and other activities. This year the PTA hopes to support the school in it’s drive to purchase a number of bicycles and to set up a

‘cycle hub’ in the school where pupils learn about all aspects of cycle maintenance. In addition, the bicycles will be used to deliver

cycling as part of the PE curriculum and used for after school-clubs. Special thanks to those who helped to organise and run the

recent fund-raising events and to those who manned the stall, donated raffle prizes etc. – your support is very much appreciated

by us all. The PTA continues to look for more parental involvement – if you think you could help in any way please do not hesitate

to say so! The next PTA Meeting will be on Monday 7th March 2015.

S1 NUMERACY DAY NUMERACY ACROSS THE SCHOOL

Faculties across the school participated in this annual event involving all pupils in S1. Pupils took part in a wide range of fun,

challenging activities involving staff from different departments, demonstrating the value and importance of numeracy skills in

all aspects of life and learning. The S1 pupils had a ball, and learned of the relevance and importance of basic numeracy skills

beyond school. Thanks to the Maths staff who organised this worthwhile event.

S2 LEARN ABOUT WORLD WAR 1 INTER-DISCIPLINARY LEARNING

Our S2 timetable was recently collapsed for a full week to allow all pupils in S2 to follow a specially designed WWI themed

timetable involving departments from across the school.

This powerful experience was designed to encourage S2 to remember the men and women who fought and died in the

First World War and to give each of them the opportunity to learn about and reflect on the sacrifices made and to consider

the brutality of war and the needless carnage WWI caused. Activities over the week included; The Language of War, Army

Fitness, Casualty figures, Rations, Memorial, War Songs, Researching a WW1 Soldier, Drill and the Science of War. This

was an event which many pupils described as having a lasting impact on them. Thanks to Mrs Farrugia and staff across the

school who helped organise this event and to our cadets who supported us by leading activities.

TOP OF THE BENCH COMPETITION Last month St Modan’s entered a team once again into the Royal

Society of Chemistry’s ‘Top of the Bench’ competition at Forth Valley

College. This year our team consisted of Olivia Grant (S4), Eva Welsh

(S3), Murray Forbes (S3) and Conor Diamond (S2). The pupils were up

against 9 other schools from Falkirk, Clacks and Stirling and were

proud to be awarded Third Place, the first time St Modan’s has ever

been placed. Our team was said to have demonstrated fantastic

teamwork and worked very hard to complete a challenging

experiment and to write-up the relevant lab-report. Their their hard

work paid off! Congratulations and well done to all of our brilliant

competitors – you did us all proud!

S5/6 ASSESSMENTS COMING SOON

Start Wednesday 13th January

S5/6 Assessment Week is coming soon. Please encourage your son/daughter to prepare a study timetable and to stick to

it in preparation for the coming examinations. Assessments during this period are a very important part of SQA exam

preparation and should be taken very seriously.

Your son/daughter will have received an assessment timetable, a blank pupil timetable and a study planner. Additional

resources to support study for assessments can be found on a number of websites including Edmodo and Scholar.

Parents will receive school reports later in the session based on performance until now, including these exams and

decisions will be made soon regarding presentation levels using these grades and other assessments.

Please speak to your son/daughter about their assessments and study plan.

The following attendance arrangements will be in place during these exams:

Studying for exams - Pupils may choose to study at home during the prelim diet if parents are happy for them to do so.

This arrangement applies to this assessment week and the S5/6 SQA diet in May 2016.

Pupils who choose to attend school during the exam period are expected to study at all times except when they are sitting

an exam. In all cases pupils should sign in and out at the main entrance of the school to ensure the school has an accurate

record of those in the building in case of fire or emergency. The LRC will be unavailable to those wishing to study so all

pupils should be in class or return home when their exam is finished. Note that Bus Passes will not be provided to those

who decide to return home. Where appropriate some teachers may choose to use this time for individual pupils to

complete unfinished work or to reinforce prior learning etc.

We would like to take this opportunity to wish all of our S5/6 pupils good luck in the forthcoming examinations.

AUTISM PROVISION As always we've been very busy in the Autism Provision -

Pupils and staff had a great trip through to Edinburgh. Everyone particularly

enjoyed the tram journey, the Christmas markets and McDonald's for lunch.

We've also been working hard on our Christmas Crafts Enterprise and have

had stalls at various local schools' Christmas Fetes, including Our Lady's PS,

Riverside PS and St. Mary's PS as well as Ochil House in Wallace High School.

Our recent Christmas Sing Along was

really well attended by staff, pupils and

some friends where we all sang Christmas carols and were even treated to some

jokes! As always, we took the opportunity to sell some of our crafts we’ve been

making in recent weeks.

Belated Thanks

The Knights of St. Columba, in Stirling and Alloa, kindly donated £300 towards our

Autism Provision London residential which took place in June. The presentation

of the cheque was made earlier this session by Mr Roy Smith to Savannah Gordon,

Paul Farley, Freddie White and Mrs Raeside. We all, staff and pupils, thoroughly

enjoyed our London adventure and we would like to thank everyone who took

part in our fundraising activities or made a donation. We really appreciate all your

support

DANCING SUCCESS

A number of St Modan’s pupils are members of ‘Dancestar’ who competed at the recent ‘Dance Champ Competition’. This

team were hugely successful and managed to win a total of 30 trophies and medals, including three 1st places for Disco &

Cheerleading for different age groups with a 2nd and 3rd place for Street Dance too. Huge congratulations to all our young

dancers; Megan Ferguson, Abbie McGill, Cara Langton, Ellie Kirk, Lia Rogerson, Caitlin Allison, Joanne Batista, Ashlyn

McCabe and Jenna Cooper.

PHOTOGRAPHY COMPETITION Thank you and well done to the many entrants in our recent photography competition. The standard of photography was

exceptional and the winners were as follows…

Eilidh McQuillian

(S6)

Charlotte Molloy (S3)

Cerys Shanks (S2)

JUST-JAR Our S6 Young Enterprise Company called “Just Jar”

enjoyed participating in their first trade Fair at the

Howgate Shopping Centre in Falkirk. The Company sold

out all their stock of upcycled jam jars turning them into

Mugs and Candle holders. For information will be out shortly Stay tuned for when the next trade fair will be and you can

follow them on twitter @Jar_just

ST MODAN’S SSVP CHRISTMAS TREAT FOR SENIOR CITIZENS

Well done to our Society of St Vincent De Paul who treated a group of Senior Citizens from

local Parishes to our annual SSVP Christmas Lunch in the school, a school tour and a private

performance by the school choir. Our visitors were grateful to have had the opportunity and

enjoyed their afternoon immensely. The SSVP team also collected scarves, hats and gloves

recently which will be distributed to those in need through Start Up and the Salvation Army

and would like to thank all who kindly donated to this worthy appeal. We now look forward

to the SSVP increasing its membership further to create more opportunities to support our

extended community.

DROPPING PUPILS OFF AT SCHOOL REMINDER!

Parents are reminded that pupils should not be dropped off at the front of the school when

arriving by car but should be dropped off in the bus-bay car park adjacent to Forthbank

stadium. Royal Stuart Way, the road at the front of the school is a dangerous drop-off point –

arriving here by car puts all pupils arriving by foot at risk.

Traffic on this road is dangerous just prior to 8.30am and again at the end of the day. In addition last session the school

received several complaints from local businesses that parents are entering the office car park in front of the school – this

is a private car park and we have agreed with those businesses that it should not be used by St Modan’s families. Our

relationship with our neighbours is excellent and it is important that it stays that way – please help by using ONLY the bus-

bay car park. Thank you.

UNIFORM RECYCLING BANK. In January our Parent Council is hoping to start a uniform recycling bank. Please send any unwanted uniform into school.

There will be a box in the entrance where it can be deposited. Please ensure the items are clean and in good condition.

The uniform recycling bank will be ‘open’ at school events, such as Parents’ Evenings. Items will be free of charge,

although any donations to Start- Up Stirling would be welcomed.

DEVELOPING THE YOUNG WORKFORCE (DYW) FAST! Recently the Future Apprentices of ST Modan’s High School took part in a CV writing session involving business

representatives from Arnold Clark, Robertson construction, RBS, Prudential, Stirling and Clackmannanshire council,

Youtrain and Diageo.

The ‘CV Gurus’ provided some constructive criticism of pupils’ CVs and provided some very valuable advice to enable our

pupils to ‘sell themselves’ through highlighting their skills, qualities and achievements. Pupils found the experience to be

extremely valuable, have created an impressive CV and have made some very lucrative business links in the process.

This session will be followed up in December with an Interview Skills workshop and an Aptitude Testing workshop in

February to allow pupils to experience the complete recruitment process for MA roles.

Tomorrow’s Engineers Week To celebrate this year’s Tomorrow’s Engineers Week 2015, Jim

Lewars of the East Kilbride Group Training Association visited St.

Modan’s and gave insightful career talks to our S4 and S5/6 pupils.

Jim provided pupils with overview of the various areas of

Engineering and the possible routes to careers in Engineering. Our

pupils really enjoyed the talks and can now make more informed

subject and career choices should they wish to pursue their interest in Engineering.

The talks were so successful that Jim has very kindly offered our pupils the chance of a work place visit in the future to

allow pupils to experience an Engineering environment first hand.

My World of Work Live! In collaboration with Skills Development Scotland and the Glasgow Science Centre

we organised for our S3 pupils to experience the ‘My World of Work Live!’

interactive resources. These include the Info Wall, whereby pupils can select an

industry sector and learn about the various STEM careers within each sector, the

Magic Mirror, which allows pupils to select a uniform for a selection of STEM

careers and see themselves in this uniform, and a Personality Quiz on iPads, which

allowed pupils to explore their personality in relation to STEM careers.

Pupils had great fun using the interactive resources, gained a deeper level of

knowledge and understating of STEM careers can use the results of the Personality

Quiz to make informed choices for their future.

CELEBRATING SUCCESS Congratulations to Luke & Glenn Barjoti have won places in the National Youth Orchestra for Scotland. Luke will play violin in the Senior Orchestra and Glenn Cello in the Training Orchestra

Well done to all those seniors who competed in the recent

Youth and Philanthropy Initiative (YPI) competition. YPI is

an inclusive, multi-award-winning secondary school

program that strengthens the social sector by engaging

youth in social issues, local charities, and grant-making. Our

seniors worked with local charities to present a case for the

charity being granted an award of £3000 from YPI. The

winners of our first YPI were Molly Dawson, Joe Kettrick,

Aidan McKeown, Alisdair Abbess who presented their case

to their peers in S5 and invited guests from each of the

charities. Our winning team represented Plus (Forth Valley).

PLUS is a registered charity that supports children and young people with disabilities, to have access to social, leisure and

recreational opportunities and activities, across Forth Valley. PLUS was established in 1988 by parents who believed that

children with disabilities had as much right as anyone else to an ordinary social life. The £3000 won for PLUS will go a long

way to support the re-introduction of a group to support young people with aspergers and AHDH.

SPORTS REPORT A QUICK UPDATE ON OUR MANY SPORTS CLUBS AND ACTIVITIES

Swimming Success

Well don't to all members of team St Modan's who competed in the central Schools Swimming on Sunday 29th Nov.

Particular mention to medal winners; Kyle Howie, S2 who won Gold in the 100m Breaststroke & Bronze in the 200m IM,

Rebecca Matthewson S4 who won Gold in the 200 Butterfly, Silver in the 100 Butterfly & Silver in the 200 IM and Luke

Matthewson S6 who won Silver medals in the 100m & 200m Butterfly.

Football

Well done to the Senior team who maintained their unbeaten start to the league season by coming back from 2-0 down

to draw 2-2 against Wallace High. Goal scorers were Adam Beirne & Charlie Sanda. The U14s continued their good league

form with a 5-3 win against Stirling HS, goals were shared between Joseph Comrie 3 & Jack Stevenson 2. The 13s performed

well but lost out to a very strong Graeme HS in the 3rd round of the Scottish Cup. All 4 football teams will play their final

games of 2015 in the coming week. See the School PE Twitter @stmodanspe for more news on sports teams and clubs in

St Modan's

Congratulations to S5 pupil Ronan Fallens S5 who was a substitute for Stirling_Albion in their SPFL League 2 game against

Queenpark FC. Well done also to former St Modan’s pupil Stephen Al Sayed won the USCAA National Championship with

@UMFKBengals I America – well done Stephen!

Ten Pin Bowling

Congratulations to Daniel Addison who recently won a silver medal in the Junior Tenpin Bowling Triple Crown in Dublin Tae Kwon Do

Well done to Chloe Gavin (S6) who recently won a Gold and 2 Silver medals at the International Taekwondo 'Chang Ung

Cup'

CHRISTMAS CARDS Thank you to all those who kindly sent Christmas cards to the school – your kind words and greetings are

greatly appreciated by us all. This session the school chose not to send Christmas cards but to donate the

money normally spent on them to support local food banks.

COMING SOON! DATES FOR THE DIARY

Date Event

Thursday 7th January Pupils return to school – 8.30am

Friday 8th January S4 Full Reports (in school bags)

Wednesday 13th January S5/6 Assessments begin

Thursday 14th January S4 Parents Evening 3.30pm

Monday 18th January A focus on Low Level Disruption (S1-3) for next 2 weeks Tuesday 19th January S3 Options Info Evening 7pm

Monday 1st February Parent Council – 7pm

More dates/events can be found on our school website.

ST MODAN’S HIGH SCHOOL STAFF AND PUPILS WISH YOU ALL

A VERY HAPPY AND HOLY CHRISTMAS

This newsletter is available electronically (in colour, with live links) on our new website at www.stmodans.co.uk