Parents/Carers/Friends

We have nally made it to the end of 2020, a year I know we won’t forget in a hurry.

Alongside all that has happened in this Pandemic your children have been at our school and I’m delighted to say have

brought joy, fun and laughter to their peers, their teachers and myself.

This newsleer should give you a small indicaon of some of the acvity that has been taking place. I hope you

enjoy reading it.

For me there have been many dierent highlights. The distribuon of the “roodie” was an absolute pleasure. Our S6

were rushed o their feet and who’d have thought there would have been such a buzz.

The Christmas Doors always make me smile and we maybe needed that this year more than ever.

Our S6 Leadership Team have already started to make impact in their roles both driving the rights respecng school

and eco schools agenda. Well done to them! Our Columba 1400 leaders are also making their mark. Our leaders of

the future I’m sure. It was great to meet with some of you online through our focus groups. A new way of connecng

that I’m sure we’ll connue to ulise.

Thanks go to our Parent Council for their support of all of us through this challenging period.

As always, the contribuon to charity has been inspiring. As a community we have given to the foodbank, the food

pantry and to our own families. That’s the Holyrood way!

I thank you for all your support and want you to know that it connues to be a privilege and pleasure leading our

great school. I wish you and your families a peaceful and joyful Christmas and look forward to working with you all

again in 2021.

Sharon Watson

S6 Leadership and Christmas Wishes from the Captains

The S6 Leadership Team is a ‘go geng team’ of 20 inspiring S6 students (If I

do say so myself). Working with our Year Head and HT we took a look at

school priories for the year we decided to focus on becoming a rights re-

specng school, charity work including period poverty and moving to be-

come an eco school. We are really proud this year to be awarded the

Bronze Rights Commied status as part of our Right Respecng School ini-

ave. S6 have been working hard to send backpacks to children in Bei-

rut. We have been encouraging all year groups to contribute and gathered

over 150 backpacks. We have also been raising money for our local food-

bank ‘The People’s Pantry’. And nally we have set the bar high in becom-

ing an eco school and working with everyone on becoming a single- use plas-

c school. We hope that all that we have achieved this year can connue onto future year groups and we want to

wish everyone a healthy, safe and happy 2021. Merry Christmas to all.

Cara Goutcher and Reza Tahmid

Nurture In Holyrood Secondary

A great hello from the Holyrood Secondary Nurture

Department!

Since the beginning of this academic year, the young

people in our nurture groups have engaged in a lot of

great acvies in the Francis Base that I would like to

share with you all.

Halloween Acvies

Leading up to Halloween, pupils got involved in various

acvies such as pumpkin carving, making Halloween

posters and we even managed to squeeze in a Halloween

lm!

In preparaon for Christmas, the young people in our

nurture groups are designing their own Christmas t-

shirt. Pupils have started the research process and

have been looking at various Christmas designs to put

on their t-shirts.

Express Yourself

A great big thanks to Miss Kuligowski who delivered

an Art Therapy session to our young people! As part

of our Emoons day, pupils were able to express

how they

were feeling through Art therapy. This was a great

acvity to encourage relaxaon, creavity and al-

lowed pupils to express themselves through music

and paint.

Spreading some holiday cheer!

From all of the Holyrood Secondary Nurture

Department, have a lovely and safe Christmas!

Well done to Zoe Craig in S4 who raised £540 as of yester-

day for the Lile Princess Trust by cung her long hair.

She donated her hair for children who lost their hair to the

likes of cancer and other illnesses.

Some of our young

people gained a St

Andrews First aid

cercate., aer taking

part on the day course.

Well done!

Glasgow Hate Crime Awareness Poetry

Compeon

A number of our pupils entered the Hate Crime

Awareness Poetry Compeon. They engaged with

challenging issues and focussed on the discrimina-

on of people with disabilies and expressed

themselves in poec form. We are incredibly proud

of all our young people who entered. Daniella A.

(S2) in S2 was commended for her poem and Sahar

S. (S1) was the winner across Glasgow!

Scosh Schools’ Young Writer of the Year

A number of our Senior Phase pupils are busy craing their non-con entries for the Scosh

Schools’ Young Writer of the Year compeon. They are emulang the styles of quality

journalists and engaging passionately with topics that interest them and impact their lives.

Pupils will submit their entries on December 9

and we

have no doubt that they will do exceponally well!

Narnia

“What do they teach them at these schools?”― C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

The English Department hopes we have taught our pupils a love for literature and the importance of

charity! We have transformed some of the department into the magical land of Narnia for Christmas

and have made a donaon to charity.

Rights Respecng Schools Steering Group, nalising plans for our Bronze applicaon.

Our Rights Respecng Schools Steering Group has worked hard to complete our applicaon for Bronze

Rights Respecng Schools status. They are working with the Pupil Voice team to elect Rights Re-

specng Schools Ambassadors and making plans for 2021.

Pupil Voice Focus Group, hard at work on Equity and

Inclusion issues

Quality meat Scotland and United Aucons

teamed up for the #LambforStAndrewsDay

campaign and provided the Home

Economics department with lamb to cook

with our young people. All week they have

been cooking lamb curry and lamb pizza

learning about locality and seasonality.

1.07 and 1.08 Art classes looked at the Artwork of American sculptor

Claes Oldenberg and his giant food sculptures, They created modrock

sculptures of french fancies in class. Then they used the Doink green

screen app on their iPads to create their own giant sculptures, but placed

them on the Holyrood building.

Our Duke of Edinburgh’s Award

parcipants have been working hard

during lockdown and since we re-

turned to complete their Duke of Edin-

burgh’s Award.

Many acvies had to be cancelled

during lock down so parcipants were

unable to help out in charity shops, go

to the gym or clubs. Many began

volunteering at home, helping younger

brothers and sisters with their online

homework or shopping for elderly relaves. Some switched to running, walking or cycling for

their sports and cooking or baking at home for their skill. Even without an expedion, they will

receive the 2020 DofE Cercate of Achievement.

Since returning in August we have held 2 expedions, one Bronze and one Silver, although we

are not currently able to camp out overnight due to COVID restricons. The bronze group have

now completed this secon and the Silver group will complete their next one in February 2021

to complete their award.

All parcipants are now entering their evidence in the form of photos, diary entries, spread

sheets along with an assessors report to complete each secon.

We also had our rst Gold award completed enrely at Holyrood from Daniel Scullion and

several parcipants from previous years also took advantage of lockdown to complete their

Bronze Awards. So, it’s never too late, if you’ve started an award but not yet nished, please

see Miss Callan for advice on how to complete it.

Congratulaons and Well done to all our successful parcipants.

Bronze Awards

Haadiyah Rashid

Morgan McDougall

Sophie Gray

Diarmaid McGuigan

Safa Khan

Shae Sweeney

Anes Arulthas

Silver 2020 cercate of

Achievement

Ronan Peacock

Brian Ritchie

Gold Award

Daniel Scullion

The winners of the family learning cake cra were announced today. The standard was phenomenal

the 1

place winners are Wylie Waers & her mum Debs, 2

place was Julia and the Malinowska

family with the navity scene and 3

place was Georgia and the Dunn family with a Christmas night

silhouee sky. These prizes were awarded for design and creavity.

The £50 prize for the family endeavour award for embracing family learning

went to Kae and the Gunning family with an elf the movie cake. Even

Kae’s baby sister got involved in the taste tesng and dressing up for the

photo opportunity!

Daniel, Rose, Ina, Josh, Caitlin, Eva, Laurie and their families won in this

category. All the equipment and ingredients were provided and families

learnt skills in numeracy, literacy, creavity, manual dexterity and team

work. Well done to all involved!

A warm welcome to our new Primary Specialist Miss Lamb. She started at Holyrood aer the October

week. She is Principal Teacher, Primary Specialist and her role is to raise aainment in Literacy,

meaning she is based in the English department. She loves working with Holyrood's young people to

improve their reading and wring skills. Miss. Lamb will mainly be working with S1 and S2 pupils and

has already been so impressed with their movaon and willingness to learn. She is excited at the

prospect of raising the aainment of the young people here at Holyrood Secondary School.

Pupil engagement and enjoyment

We are pleased to see from the ndings that most pupils enjoy

maths and use their skills learned around the school. Obviously, we

hope more, if not all pupils enjoy their studies in maths and this is

something we will aim for in the future.

It is posive to see the movaon is there in most pupils to do the

best they can and apply their skills across other areas in the school.

Plans for the future

Implementaon of new level 2 and level 3 mastery courses for S1

More support oered for BGE pupils in the form of drop in sessions/homework club

Introducon of new tasks to develop higher order thinking skills

New maths and numeracy posters

The full report will hopefully be ready by February midterm where we hope from there to create an acon plan

that helps raise aainment in numeracy across the school, increase pupil and parent engagement and increase

our support network to parents, sta and cluster.

Many thanks for reading,

Have a very happy and safe Christmas

Rewarding Success Merit Award Scheme

This year we have launched a Merit Award Scheme to highlight the wonderful examples of our young

people’s success here at Holyrood Secondary. Teachers can award young people Merits each month for

any posive interacons over and above the normal high standards we set.

Merits can be awarded in the following categories –Homework, Co-operaon, Uniform, Relaonships,

Aendance, Time Keeping and Engagement in Learning and Life of the school

There is a brief video explaining the Merit Scheme on the latest Parental Engagement newsleer.

In recent weeks Mrs Watson has organised a rota of volunteer classes to pick lier in the local communi-

ty. S1 an S2 have been involved in lier sweeping our community. Pupils have been merited for this

also.

Despite the challenges the on-going “new normal” has presented the scheme has begun to grow and

ourish. Both pupils and sta have responded posively to the introducon of the scheme.

Last month all young people awarded a Merit had a leer sent home to their parents or guardians in-

forming them about the scheme. Look out for more excing developments from the Merit Award

scheme over the academic year.

Mr D. Gault

PT Rewarding Success,

Morning Mass connues to be celebrated by Fr Paul in the oratory on Monday and Friday at

8.20am. Morning reecons took place in the oratory Tues – Thursday at 8.20am

We celebrated World Porridge Day in

conjuncon with Mary’s Meals in September

and all S1 pupils received a apjack made by

the Home Economics Department.

All S1 pupils were given the opportunity to

pray for their deceased family and friends

during the month of November class mass in

the oratory with Father Paul.

Our Christmas Appeal was launched and was successful in delivering donaons to the People’s

Pantry in Govanhill. In other news, some of our S6 pupils, Jasmine, Sam and Sophie represented

SCIAF and Holyrood at the World Summit of Child Leaders via Microso Teams in November.

Leadership Academy and Columba 1400

The pupil leadership academy has kicked o this year and already has

made a wonderful impact.

We have a pupil Captain and Vice ( S3/S2) who lead a group of students

in the BGE.

Each of the 7 groups are led by a teacher team leader. Each group has

the responsibility for an area of school improvement and work in stream with DHT strategies. All

minutes will be published on our school website so you can follow our developments.

We have pupil teams making change in the following areas:

Nurture

Ethos

Learning and Teaching

Outdoor Learning

Transions

Parent Engagement

The Academy works under Columba 1400

who are teaching and supporng our

young people on leadership through

values.

We are looking forward to compleng

our Leadership Awards in 2021.

Dear Parent/Carer, You will be aware that we launched our Standards for Success (SfS) posive relaon-

ships policy in August 2020. Since this me we have been reinforcing the SfS values and expectaons

with daily tanoy calls from the Head Teacher. Posters have been put in social areas and in every class-

room.. Teachers have been asked to highlight the A,B,C’s in their conversaons with the young people.

Posive relaonships and mutual respect between sta and young people are at the heart of SfS. and play

a central role in enabling us to create an ethos within Holyrood which will enable all to achieve their very

best.

Your support in encouraging your son/daughter to rise to the challenge is crucial. Always encourage

them to be the best that they can be in their Aspiraons, their Beliefs about their ability to be successful

in all aspects of their learning, and to Communicate in their atudes, words and deeds that they are a

posive inuence within the Holyrood school community.

Your connued support as the rst educator of your son/daughter is a crucial factor in creang the aspira-

onal school ethos within which all can ourish.

Suggested Acons:

 Read the Standards for Success (School Website /Pupil Planner)

 Use the A,B.C’s when discussing future plans and ambion with son/daughter.

This year the digital achievements made have been exceponal.

Holyrood achieved the Digital Schools Award. The main focus for this award, was to show that our

school and teachers are commied to idenfying and achieving eecve pracce in making digital

technologies part of the curriculum. This emphasised how sta had used the iPad as an addional

resource within their classroom using a host of plaorms. Pupils have made the transion to use

those resources eortlessly.

Sta and pupils connue on their journey to learn how other tools on their iPad can assist within

the lesson. This can take the form of sta training aer school to pupils going along to the Digital

Ambassadors Room in IT 5. The school has also received the Digital Schools Award for Cyber Resil-

ience and Internet Safety and I am pleased to announce we are applying for the Digital Schools

European award.

What a wonderful and successful year we have had. Well done to digital excellence.

As we move out of 2020 with prayers of a safer

2021. We are delighted to say that one of our

highlights was our ‘roodies’.

Maybe our prayers were answer here too.

Pupil Voice 2020