Broxburn Academy Autumn 2015
Dear Parent/Carer
The Autumn term has been a very busy time here at the academy, with events, activities and parents evenings. Christmas is just around the corner so ensure you look out for the Christmas Concert tickets going on sale, as well as our annual Prom Fashion
Show.
It’s great to see articles written by our pupils going in the newsletter this month, if you fancy being part of the ‘Pressgang’ please see Mrs Maher, Mr McIntyre or Miss Leslie, we would love you to be involved.
Don’t forget if you have any news that you want to share with the school don’t hesitate to contact me at Julie.maher@westlothian.org.uk
.
Positive Destinations
The Positive Destinations Website www.positive-destinations.co.uk
was Launched in June and has been slowly gathering momentum. The website is a very valuable resource for school leavers and at option times. It has information on Job vacancies, modern apprenticeships, training, colleges, university courses, information on CV’s, application forms and interview techniques.
In the coming months the website will be used to disseminate information and resources for students so take a look and encourage our young people to do the same.
Christmas Donations
Decluttering in preparation for Christmas? Please donate any unwanted books, games and craft materials to the school library.
Best Wishes for Xmas from Dr Stewart, her pupil helpers and the many pupils who use the library in, and out, of class time.

Pupils and staff in Norway
Parent/Carer Survey
West Lothian Council’s Parental Involvement Group are looking for your help. They are gathering evidence to help inform an updated West Lothian Parental Involvement
Strategy.
Please find below, a link to a survey for parents and carers regarding levels of parental involvement .
h t t p s : / / w w w . e s u r v e y c r e a t o r . c o . u k / s / P I S t r a t e g y S u r v e y
The survey contains only five statements to rate strongly disagree to strongly agree – there is also space to add comments if parents wish.
· Communication is effective between my child’s school and home.
· My child’s school provides me with the information I need to help my child learn at home.
· I feel confident supporting my child’s learning at home.
· I am aware of West Lothian’s complaints procedure.
· I know how I can become involved in my school’s parent council.
The closing date on the survey is 11 December 2015.

Youth & Philanthropy Initiative Winners
Over the last few months S5 pupils have been busy working closely with local communities and charities in order to win a £3000 grant courtesy of
YPI. The 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. YPI is Youth and Philanthropy Initiative, therefore whilst winning £3000 they are also looking at giving time to charities who often need that more than money itself.
Working in teams the pupils put together a presentation that demonstrates their chosen organisation’s strengths and how the grant would benefit them and their community. Going head to head the pupils present their research to a panel and a winner is decided.
The winning group consisted of; Chloe Dickson, Chloe Duncan, Rachael McCondochie,
Natalie McConville and Holly Sives on behalf of the Yellow Teapot Club. All of the finalists were excellent and deserved their places. A big thank you must also go to the Wind
Band along with Mrs Simpson and Mr Lang for helping with this and of course the esteemed judging panel of Mr Reid, Struan Robertson, Lilitha Konini and Carolyn Wilson from the parent council. Jane Clifford, YPI’s representative highly commended the pupils in not only the work done by the pupils but the overall event. Feel free to congratulate the pupils on winning £3000 from YPI to their charity to help fund the excellent work done.
Broxburn Academy’s ‘Building LearningPower’
In September and October we held the first ‘Building Learning Power’ Parent Workshops.
Led by Steven Hider and Evelyn Russell, the hour long workshops, held once a week over a four week period, looked at practical strategies that parents and teachers could use to develop four key areas of learning; reciprocity, reflectiveness,
resourcefulness and resilience. Feedback from parents who attended the workshops stated that they gained a ‘better insight into what happens at school’, were provided with an ‘excellent opportunity to develop a relationship with the school’ and went away with ‘strategies towards helping my child.’ Everyone involved also noted the relaxed, friendly atmosphere and commented on how enjoyable the workshops are!!
Further information is available on the school website. However if you would like to be involved please see the dates below.
A set of four workshops will run on a Thursday at 7pm and on the following dates: 19th November, 3rd December, 10th December, 17th December.
To book your place for either 'set' please email Steven Hider at steven.hider@westlothian.org.uk
and indicate which set of workshops you wish to attend. When choosing please consider that, while missing one workshop out of the four is fine, you won't get the full benefit of the program if you miss more.

Broxburn Academy joins the Cool Down Crew
Designed to engage young people & raise their awareness of fire related safety & other forms of anti-social behaviour, the Cool Down Crew enjoyed a great 5 days working with the Scottish Fire & Rescue Service at the beginning of November. Six pupils from S2 &
S3 took up the challenge & spent the week from 2 – 6 November learning a variety of skills connected with fire safety & related issues in the community. All the pupils were presented with a certificate which highlights & recognises their achievements in basic first aid, fire safety, health & safety, practical skills & personal development.
Writer in residence fosters creativity at Broxburn Academy
West Lothian's very own Writer-in-Residence, Harry Giles, has been working with
Broxburn Academy's senior English students with a view to helping them further improve their writing folios while also highlighting the kind of opportunities that can be accessed at their local library.
Chloe Soutar, S5 wrote about the experience:
"During our English double period slot the writer, Harry Giles, joined with our English class in order to help us with our creative writing folios. He got us to complete a various number of tasks which involved us writing short descriptive stories to let us be creative.
The tasks were all fun to do and involved everyone in our class. The tasks were also very helpful and gave me numerous amounts of ideas that I can integrate into my
English folio."
Mr Crawford, English teacher said:
"As part of our initiative Harry offered to run two writing sessions in our school library where he offered students some invaluable advice on improving their folio writing by taking them through a series of short exercises highlighting particular skills and aspects of writing.
While the exercises were well planned, suitable for the audience he was working with and valuable to the students, what impressed us most was the way in which Harry interacted with and spoke to the pupils.
There has also been positive feedback from the sessions that Harry has run at the local library and Broxburn Academy looks forward to continuing to work with Harry in the future."
Dancing to Success
A massive congratulations to our Junior team who came 2nd at the West Lothian School
Dance Competition! Teacher Mrs Scoular said, ‘They did an amazing job and the standard was so high, the judges took a half hour to deliberate as apparently it was so tight for the winner!’ Please feel free to congratulate Megan Reid, Kerys Currie or Hollie
Russell, they did us proud! The seniors didn't get placed but also did an amazing job and

are very proud of themselves!!!
Prom Fashion Show
As you may know, the Prom Fashion Show is taking place at 7pm on Tuesday 8th December.
The theme this year is 'Winter Wonderland' and all proceeds go to the S6 prom and Teenage
Cancer Trust.
Please buy a ticket and support our S6 pupils, they cost £3.50 and the price includes a candy cane, musical performance, staff dance performance (which may involve tutus), and the show itself. There will also be a Christmas crafts stall put on by the Nurture Base.
We will be holding a raffle on the night and we are still looking for raffle prizes. If you have anything going spare we could give away, it would really be appreciated.
Thank you if you are already involved. If not, it is a really good night to get in the
Christmas spirit now it's December.
Charity Walking Challenge
Broxburn pupils raised a staggering £4000 by participating in the Academy’s annual sponsored walk. Classes took it in turns to walk the mile long route back in October to help raise money for the school’s chosen charities.
Organiser Mrs Simpson said, I’ would just like to say a massive thank you to you all for your help and support with the sponsored walk. It is really appreciated especially when you are all extremely busy at this time of year.’ The money is to be split between the school’s activities fund and three chosen charities, Teenage
Cancer Trust, Forget Me Not Hospice and Project Romania. Well done to all involved.
1 Act Fabulous!
1 Act 8 proved to be a sellout success once again this year with captivating performances from our senior students and our very own Mr Reid! Rebecca Wightman reports.
Captivating, thrilling and show-stopping, 'One Act Eight' proves to show another brilliant performance from the school’s drama students. Broxburn's senior students clearly demonstrated a wide range of talent from, singing and dancing to gritty drama. There was a variety of extracts to keep all tastes happy from TV shows to Musicals. The show was truly excellent, skill, creativity and overall talent was shown to the audience. Everyone agreed that each

performer showed great potential for their future careers.
In particular Sam Malone performed excellently within his many scenes and Emily
Wishart once again showed off her beautiful singing voice. One Act Eight was a show for everyone to enjoy, it made you burst into tears and laughter, it even made you jump out of your seat! I’m already looking forward to next year!
Author Jandy Nelson
S1 pupil Drew Bain reports on visiting author Jandy Nelson. I’m writing this review on the Jandy Nelson Author Event that happened at our school recently. Jandy came in to talk to us about her new book ‘I’ll give you the sun’ and also answer our questions about what it is like to be an author. She also gave us some great creative writing tips. The event took place in the school library which I think is the perfect place to talk about books! Personally I would rate the event 5 out of 5 as I really enjoyed hearing about how Jandy became an author and about how she wrote and got inspiration for her books. It was really fun as well because she told us some funny and weird stories about her family and other things. A few of these was she described Edinburgh as “a magical place it feels like I’m book and in a town in Lord of the Rings!” She also told us how her family inspired some of the characters in her recent book and when she was little she wanted to play the clarinet but she couldn’t so one of the characters in the book does play the clarinet. She also told us about the different stages of publishing a book. I found it really inspiring and I hope everyone else that was there was as well. If another event like this happens I would truly recommend you go as it was really fun and very interesting.
European Silver and Bronze
A massive congratulations to S6 pupil Fraser Albiston on winning not 1 but 2 silver medals and a bronze in the European Wado Karate Championships in Luxembourg. An outstanding achievement. Well done!
Black Belt Success
Congratulations also to Jay Aitken in S3 on achieving his 1st black belt in Tae Kwan Do in September.
That’s all for now! Keep checking the school website for forthcoming events and school updates. http://www.broxburnacademy.co.uk/ You can also Tweet us
@broxburnacademy. We look forward to hearing from you.
Yours faithfully,
Head Teacher