Pupils and staff voted to decide on the stars of the show for this years Nativity production:

Best supporting role... Rebecca Carey!

Best supporting role... Alexander Easdale!

Best supporting Actress... Chloe Neilson!

Best supporting Actor... Declan Bryce!

Star of the Show... Stuart Smith!

S2 peer assessment in history

Monday morning, and S2 are wide awake because this morning other people are assessing their work from last week! The class are in the middle of a topic on 17th C Edinburgh. They have been making Public Health Leaflets about the plague... combining creativity with historical fact! Today, the class are moving from seat to seat, giving each leaflet a grade from A-D, a comment on what is good about the leaflet, and a comment on how it could be improved. The class came up with what each grade would look like- an A has to be perfect in every way and could not be improved! Next time the class undertake similar work, we will take these peer assessment sheets out of their Excellence folders and each pupil will set targets based on the comments made this time.

S3 Review

We reviewed the video recording of Thursday's performance today. Below you can see a clip of one of the scenes focusing on mobility issues.

S4/5 In rehearsal

S4/5 took over the GP room this morning and made a good start on the performance piece for their drama skills unit. I look forward to seeing it develop as they work through the production process.

S3 Drama Skills unit

Well done to Chloe, Beth, Zander and Lara for the excellent performances they gave in their drama skills unit presentation today.

They have explored the topic of disability over the last few months, looking at visual impairment, hearing impairment and mobility impairment. The culmination of their work has been in the devising of 3 specific scenes to show as an end product. Everything went smoothly and each of them performed very well. A definite pass for each in the performance section of this unit!

Mandarin Conversations!

S2 are mastering Mandarin! After coaching with Dr Alison Black, the school's Chinese Studies consultant, I am pleased to report that S2 are doing really well! They have learnt lots of new words, and can now have a conversation with one another! What do you think:

Higher Modern Studies- Making Good Progress

The higher Modern Studies class are making great progress! We are currently studying the powers of Central Government. Today we are examining the balance of powers between a sovereign Parliament, a constitutional monarchy, the Executive and the Judiciary. Bec and Megan are undertaking a piece of extended wiriting examining the extent to which the Prime minister is primus inter pares (first among equals.)

S4/5 Drama

This week in S4/5 drama, pupils finished blocking the last scene of the devised work they had created based on the play "The Terrible Fate of Humpty Dumpty". On Monday Gabriella was in the Director's chair...

Today we were working on the costumes for the Christmas Musical. The drama room was transformed into a costume workshop as the pupils worked on the 16 soldier costumes needed. The all-new leather look armour with extra trim and silver buttons along with the matching silver helmets are all well on the way to completion....!

(sort of like this but not quite as fancy....)

S4/5 artists

S4/5 artists have been working on their design projects this week. Mass, Bec and Megan have been dying fabric and working on creating patterns using a batik type technique:

Hannah has been using wire to construct her first working model of an extravagant butterfly inspired hat:

Bec has been measuring up a miniature mannequin and fitting some trial designs for her waistcoat project. This is version 3...

S3 Art

During the course of the week Ailie and Lara completed their design development sheets for their mask projects. The next step is the final piece...

Today we were writing a NAB essay for the design section of the Art and Design Studies unit. After a few weeks of revision and a period of solid writing / typing everyone was glad to be finished!

An interesting week in drama...

This week in S4/5 drama we have been busy with a range of different tasks...

...today we were working on the costumes and props for the Christmas musical. This involved dressing the market stalls with fabric and fruit / veg and measuring some of the primary children who still need costumes to be made for them.

...on Tuesday we were blocking the scripts we had devised in order to make up a prompt copy. This involved clearly writing out all the cues and coded stage directions and then justifying them. After that we had a go recording some of the SFX we needed using Garageband - this was great fun!

...on Monday Deborah was in charge and was directing the others in the scene she had devised for our project on power.

Visiting specialist...

S3 dramatists were very lucky to have visual impairment teacher Lesley Reid come in to speak to them on Thursday.

First of all she let us try out a range of special glasses which simulate a variety of impairments:

After that she told us about Braille and showed us how to decode it visually. We used type one Braille which is the simplest type where each word is spelt out letter for letter. She also showed us some of the more complex type 2 Braille which uses many contractions and shortened forms.

We each had a go decoding some "secret messages" written in braille as well as actually using the braille machine to write our own sentences.

Thanks very much Lesley - it was a very interesting and informative afternoon!

S2 construction continued...

S2 were working on their head sculpture projects on Thursday. Some were using polystyrene, tape, wire and newspaper to create a basic structure for their models whilst others had moved on to the papier mache stage...

S1 clay

S1 were using clay again today - some were finishing off their Terracotta Warriors and others were making tiles with Chinese characters on them. Great fun!

We will paint them next week.

Ni hao!!!!

This week, as part of our Geography topic on China, S2 (and Miss Rukin!) have started learning Mandarin!

All of S2 can tell you why it is important in today's society to study China. They have learnt to say hello, goodbye, sorry, thank you, how are you and I'm very well... however, our efforts are not quite bloggable yet!!

Watch this space for vidoe footage, as soon as we are good enough!
Zaijian! (Goodbye)

Costume mania...

S4/5 drama were fitting all the costumes for the P1 -7 Christmas Nativity today. This is a huge organisational task as it involves at least 2 costumes for almost every child - about 100 in total. All costumes need to be labelled, stored and any alterations correctly noted. They all worked very well and we nearly got finished...!

Trying on for size:

Piles of soldier outfits, ready to be bagged: