Category: Secondary Department

Welcome to the Secondary Department

The secondary department has 8 classes and pupils follow the principles of Curriculum for Excellence: a broad general education in S1-S3 and the Senior Phase in S4- S6.   The curriculum is varied, relevant, challenging, enjoyable and adapted to meet our pupil’s individual needs.  Pupils also visit a range of specialists, have access to relevant therapeutic inputs and participate in wider community events.

Room 16’s Colourful Science

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We have been doing a selection of colourful science experiments this month.  Yesterday we dissolved the sugared coating from Skittles in warm water to make patterns.  It worked instantly.  We had great fun watching the colour of the water change, and observing the different patterns.

Duke of Edinburgh Awards Ceremony

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On Tuesday we were delighted to see our first ever Duke of Edinburgh Award winners receive their Certificates at the Aberdeen City Award Ceremony. These young adults have now all left school however it was a pleasure to catch up with them and see how the confidence gained by completing their Bronze Award has supported them as they have moved on from school life.

We have another group of 6 S5 and S6 pupils working hard to complete their Bronze Award this year, culminating in their Excursion section at Whiston Lodge. They are all making excellent progress with their Skills and Volunteering Sections and enjoying all the practice sessions that will support them to complete their Excursion.

A Musical Visit

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Yesterday afternoon, we were extremely fortunate to have had a visit from Mary Raunikar Page and her harp.  We had a great time listening to her play the harp and there was lots of fun as we all had the opportunity to explore the instrument and make our own music.

Our Colourful World Of Art

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‘Our world of colour’ is our whole school interdisciplinary learning context this term and we are loving exploring a different colour every week. We choose one of three activities and are asked to try and sign the colour of the week. We have enjoyed creating with primary colours and secondary colours, tomorrow we are going to experiment with the tertiary colour brown, through cave painting, transient sand art and rubbings. Karen has attached her lesson ideas if you would like to use these at home.

Live Music Now

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Today we welcomed Lloyd and Danielle, student and graduate respectively of the Royal Scottish Conservatoire Scotland and members of Live Music Now Scotland. The pair will join us every Thursday until May. We have two groups of ten pupils nominated by their classes, who will join them to make music. The book ‘Ocean Commotion’ will be used as a platform for music making with a performance on their last week. Today we were introduced to their instruments, trumpet and tuba….what amazing sounds!

Our Eco Achievements

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Over the last year everyone at Orchard Brae has working very hard on developing our Eco awareness as part of our Eco Schools journey and we have participated in a range of activities based around the topics of Litter, Waste Minimisation and Food and the Environment.

We conducted litter picks in the local area as well as in the school grounds, planted seeds and bulbs and cared for the plants, and made soup from our bumper crop of tatties grown in the school garden. The work that classes put into the Rag Bag scheme and Orchard Brae Fashion Boutique was recognised with a nomination for the Aberdeen City Council EcoCity Waste and Recycling Champions Award and while we were not the winners of the categories, we were rewarded with a certificate for our hard work and effort.

We are absolutely delighted that all of our hard work and effort has been recognised and we have reached the gold standard and been awarded our first Green Flag!

The Green Flag Award is presented to nurseries and schools which have demonstrated a commitment to Eco-Schools Scotland programme and usually takes place over two years. We are so proud that our Eco work has managed to get our first Green flag awarded in just one year!

We have been truly amazed by the comments we received from the Eco-School Scotland Team who noted that our action plan and evidence ‘was innovative and engaging’, ‘demonstrated a true commitment to improve the environment’ and ‘our dedication to embedding sustainability within the curriculum’.  They also highlighted aspects of our work as ‘examples of good practice’ which may be used as future case studies to support other schools.

A huge well done to all the students and staff for their on-going work and effort in enabling us to achieve our first Green Flag in one year.

 

Howes Hoose Plant the School Logo

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A team member from the Parks Department at Aberdeen City Council came to work with Howes Hoose pupils. We were asked to design a flower bed. He then took all our designs and put them together to make the design for the new flower bed. We set to work planting daffodil bulbs in the shape of an O for Orchard Brae. Over the next few weeks we will plant out more bulbs to make the B, put down bark in the shape of the hands on our badge and finally plant more bulbs to finish the design. Please look out for the flowers as they begin to grow on the bank at the far side of the car park over the next few months. Many thanks to the Parks Deparment for helping us with this project. We are looking forward to working with them every second Tuesday.

Room 15 explore Our World of Colour

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Last term Room 15 explored Our World of Work.  We all made posters of ourselves as workers.  We think one of our class must have had inside information about our next topic.  She chose to be a painter and now we are exploring Our World of Colour! We had a class outing to a DIY store and investigated the many different colours of paint there.  We all looked closely at the colours trying to decide which was our favourite.

Football Tournament

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The football team recently played another session of matches at Aberdeen Sports Village. They showed great improvement and battled on despite fierce opposition. Congratulations to them all for their sportsmanship. They were all a real credit to the school!