Double sporting triumph

Congratulations to Lisa Thomson (3M3) for being selected to play cricket for Scotland in the under 17’s team.  She played in England in July then in Ireland during the first week of this academic year and she has a summer season of games in England this coming year.

Also, just before Christmas, Lisa found out she has been selected for the Scotland under 15 basketball squad.  She has already played basketball for Scotland against an Irish team in January and she is hoping she will be selected for a tournament in Europe at the end of May.  Not many people manage to achieve international standard in one sport; to achieve this in two is quite special.

Many congratulations.

Table Tennis success

Lou Guigues (2M4) came 2^nd in her age group at the Edinburgh Schools Table Tennis Championships last weekend.  A fantastic achievement.

Football success

Warmest congratulations to Chloe Sinclair (3M3) who was representing James Gillespie’s in the SE Regional Scottish Schools Football final at Toryglen last Friday.  

They won the Inter-Regional cup against the West team.

Annual survey of parents and carers

Dear Parent/Carer,

Annual survey of parents and carers

This survey has been devised to help us provide your child with a high quality education. Your views will help us find out what we are doing well and where we could improve.

Your views on your child’s education are essential for us to continue to improve on experiences for pupils at James Gillespie’s High School. I would encourage you to comment on what you view as weaknesses as well as strengths.

If possible, please complete the survey on-line using the following link:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ssvpc

(Please note, if the link does not open, copy and paste it into your browser and it should open from there). Please complete the survey by 14 February 2014.

If you would like a paper copy of this survey then please send a note in to school and address it to Mrs Moira Leslie in our school office.

Completion of the survey is anonymous so that you can express your views freely. The results of the survey are collated at our Headquarters and then sent to us. We will share the results with our Parent Council and use the information to inform planning towards next session’s school improvement plan.

Thank you for your co-operation.

Yours sincerely,

Donald J Macdonald

Donald J Macdonald
Headteacher
(On behalf of Gillian Tee)

Gillian Tee
Director of Children and Families
Waverley Court
4 East Market Street
Edinburgh EH8 8BG

Lego Mindstorms Competition success

Congratulations to the JGHS team who entered the First Lego League Scottish Championship at the University of Edinburgh on Saturday.

The team worked hard for several weeks to program a Lego Mindstorms robot to autonomously tackle a variety of challenges relating to this year's them of Nature's Fury which looked at how technology can help prepare for, and recover from, a variety of natural disasters.  The team also gave a technical presentation to the judges, explaining how they tackled the challenges, and gave a presentation outlining their ideas for a novel means of using technology in a real life disaster situation.

Not all of those who worked on the preparation for the competition were able to attend on Saturday, but the team won through to the Semi-final stage where they were knocked out by the eventual Scottish Championship winning team.

It was a nail-biting finish, and a most exciting and enjoyable day.  The team performed brilliantly and were a credit to themselves and our school.  Well done.

New resources from the National Parent Forum of Scotland for high school parents and pupils, especially S3 and S4

Two new resources from the National Parent Forum of Scotland to help parents and learners with the new National qualifications have been added to the Parents' page of our website.  

'Pointers for Parentsand Pupils'  supports learning and revision in the Senior Phase (S3 and S4 in particular)

'Nationals in a Nutshell: Assessment' explains assessment for National qualifications.  

These are particularly relevant to S4 pupils/parents who are doing National qualifications this year.

The Scottish Government is due to circulate hard copies of these to every S3 and S4 parent at the end of January but we thought it would be useful to circulate these electronically now.

The website www.parentforumscotland.org also has both of these available.

The Pointers document is designed to fold concertina-style, in case you wonder about its layout.