Contents...

Welcome from the Headteacher

Nursery and Primary news

Harvest

Eco Monsters

Secondary news

Eco Teams

Home Economics news

Bee Keeping at St John’s

AK Bell Archive Visit

Swimming Trials

Heritage Skills Event

Languages news

Bishop’s Visit

Lendrick Muir

DET - Twitter

And Finally...

St John’s RC Academy- Newsletter

Follow us on Twitter

@st_johnsacademy

Notes from the Headteacher...

Welcome to our first newsletter of session 2019-20! How time flies!

The year is now well underway, and the ‘big welcome’ of our new nursery, P1 and S1pupils (as well as others in different year groups) is now a happy memory. Almost allof our children and young people have settled in well and enjoying the many, variedlearning experiences on offer.

With new pupils come new parents and carers. Many of you have taken theopportunity to come along to our drop-ins, soft starts and stay-and-plays to get toknow us, and for us to get to know you too. It was wonderful to see so many of youcome along to our family mass, led by Bishop Stephen. The theme this year was‘Welcoming’, and this is what we want to be as a community. I also took theopportunity to invite you, as parents and carers, to become more actively engaged inthe life of the school. This can be in different ways, from supporting our homework,relationships and uniform policies, coming along to parents’ evenings or the ParentCouncil, volunteering to join school trips when opportunities arise, completing oursurveys, supporting whole school events, etc. Your participation and engagement arealways appreciated.

The children and young people have already been taking part in opportunities outsideof school, including the S1 induction trip to Lendrick Muir and the P7 transition weekthere too. P6 pupils visited Gleneagles during the Solheim Cup week, and our seniorpupils who are volunteering in the Recuperare Clinic in Bucharest during the Octoberbreak took on challenges to raise funds, including getting to the top of Ben Nevis.

In the senior phase of school, last year’s S4-6 received their SQA results over thesummer.  Once again our young people performed very well, including more pupilsthan ever before achieving 5 Higher awards in S5.  Congratulations to all our pupils –and thanks to all our dedicated staff – on all their achievements.  We know that thereis a direct link between study support and good results, so please encourage yourchild to attend.  In partnership with Stagecoach, we are using some of our Pupil EquityFunding to provide free access to buses for those attending after-school study clubs,so we hope this will encourage everyone to participate. Details of the activities areon our website. These include opportunities for free tuition, so please encourageyour child to make the best use of the time which our teachers freely give.

I recently published our Standards and Quality Report 2018-19.  This looks back atour achievements over the last year and looks forward to what we need to do next.Please take the time to have a look.

Finally, I regularly write to parents and carers via my ‘Headteacher’s Blog’ on ourwebsite and we update our Twitter feeds:

@st_johnsacademy and @stjohnsnursery_We have launched the Xpressions app, which helps us contact you directly withemails and updates. Please sign up for this. I also send out a summary version of oursecondary pupil bulletin to parents on a weekly basis so that you can know what’sgoing on in the school.  We have a communications page on the website so you cancheck the letters sent out which you may have missed. I hope you find these useful.We are always looking for ways to keep our parents engaged and involved, so let usknow if you have any suggestions about what you like and what we can do better.

You can email us: st-johnsacademy@pkc.gov.uk

I hope you all have an enjoyable October holiday with your children and I lookforward to welcoming them back on Monday, 21 October 2019.

God bless you and your family,

SP HagneyHeadteacher and Campus Leader

St. John's R.C. Academy was nominated for theScots Schuil of the Year Award, in recognition ofall of the work we do to promote the ScotsLanguage within our school community. We weredelighted to be part of the first year of the ScotsLanguage Awards; the ceremony took place on 27thSeptember, in the Mitchell Library Theatre,Glasgow. Although we didn't win, we did get a special mention. We look forward toNovember when our whole school celebrations of the Scots language take place. Monythanks twa aeb'dy whae voted fer us!

Scots Language Awards

Nursery has been harvesting all the fruits andvegetables from around the school to learn aboutwhere our food comes from. We planted seeds inour nursery garden which grew into beans andmarrows and explored the school orchard forapples, pears and plums. We went to our bed at theCommunity garden to collect potatoes. The childrenhelped to prepare, cook and taste soups for snacktime and discussed taste and texture and their likesand dislikes.

The children in nursery have been busy making

new friends this term and renewing friendships

with staff. We welcomed new children and their

families into the nursery and everyone is settling

into the new routines and enjoying creative

learning experiences. We have been outside in all

weathers too, jumping in puddles, building bridges

and putting on shows to entertain one another.

Harvest

New Friends

Nursery and Primary News...

In nursery we are out in all weathers exploring and

learning together. We are currently looking to

increase our sock store as even in wellington boots

our feet often get wet. If you have a child who has

grown out of their small size socks please think of

donating them to the nursery. Just drop by and

hand them in. Our feet will be very thankful.

Socks

Mae and Rozerin in P7R havebeen working hard to createLitter Monsters. These will beplaced in the Primaryplayground and will aim toencourage people to put their

litter in the bin! Well done girls!

Eco Monsters

The Primary and Secondary Eco Teams

worked with volunteers from Beautiful

Perth to help create the flower bed

outside of Perth Leisure Pool. This

year Beautiful Perth has been

nominated for the RHS Britain in Bloom

'Champion of Champions' Award!

S6 Practical Cake Craft pupilshave been developing their pipingskills, experimenting with dualcoloured icing on chocolate cake.

Eco TeamsSecondary news...

S6 Practical Cake Craft

Personal Chef Mark Heirssupported S3 practical cookerypupils through a "PancakeChallenge". This was part ofthe Futurechef competition,Springboard's national culinaryprogramme. Congratulations toLeah Russell and Eilidh Graywho will go through to thelocal heats in November.

S3 Practical Cookery

Follow us on Twitter

@SJA_HE

Senior pupils have been busyusing their skills to producedelicious treats which wereserved at the Family Mass.

Family Mass

Beekeeping at St John’s Academy

Here at St John’s we have started up bee-keeping with the installation of a hive and acolony of bees that came to us from the Perth and District Bee keepers Association,for which we are now members. They arrived in June and the bees have been busyproducing honey all summer long which we have recently harvested. This is very fittingas our Patron St John the Baptist had a strong association with honey. “John's clotheswere made of camel's hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food waslocusts and wild honey.” (Matthew 3:4).

John was a man living on the edge in the wilderness of Judea and foraged for his foodpreferring to eat alone. He probably had a connection with the Essenes who were amonastic community at Qumran and who wrote the Dead Sea scrolls. Indeed throughoutthe century’s monks and bees have enjoyed a long association, for honey is used notjust as a food source but also medicinally and the wax used for candle making and balm.

However, John was a fiery prophet in the footsteps of Elijah, from the Old Testament,who prepared the way for Jesus, calling people to turn away from their sins and seeksalvation. His message was one of repentance, pointing out that the Kingdom of Godwas very near. His baptism with water was an initiation ritual meant to cleanse and openpeoples’ hearts to personally receive the Saviour. It is only with a pure heart that wecan truly see the beauty of the world around us and ultimately God himself.

St Francis of Assisi also reminds us of this in his “Canticle of the Creatures” written athousand years later in Umbria, Italy, in 1224 where he encourages us to be goodstewards of creation when he writes: “All praise be yours, my Lord, through our SisterMother Earth, who sustains us and governs us, and produces various fruits with colouredflowers and herbs.” For this reason he is the patron saint of ecology and his messageis as relevant now as it was then.

As an eco-school, and with ever increasing warnings about climatechange, it’s even more important that the community of St John’sAcademy creates a positive environmental footprint. To this end wenow have a flourishing rural skills group that have created avegetable garden at the back and also look after our quad garden;which is to be redesigned in the October holiday and replanted withbee friendly plants. Bees are important pollinators and are worthmillions of pounds to the agricultural and horticultural industries andindeed to our own ecosystem and very survival.

St John’s honey has been harvested from our hive and is shortly tobe extracted from the combs to be bottled by pupils in the homeeconomics department. The Advanced Higher Graphic Design pupilsare also designing a label to advertise St John’s honey, which willthen be marketed and sold by the Fair-Trade group at parent’s nightsand other special occasions.

A number of pupils from the eco-group have now tried their handat bee keeping, as can be seen in the pictures with IsabellaMacdonald and Nikoletta Szimelfenig suitably suited up, as novicebeepers, and standing next to the statue of St Columba in thequad garden where the hive is located. Next year we hope toexpand the apiary and have two hives up and running sohopefully even more honey!

AK Bell Archive Resource Visit

The S3H History class visited AK Bell Library onWednesday, 4th September, to engage with World WarOne archives. The pupils were amazed at the sheersize of the archive collection and enjoyed working withthe letters and photographs of Pitlochry soldier, JohnAlex Veitch. The visit introduced a unit of work andlaid the foundations for analysing sources. This wasthen carried on in the classroom and concluded with avisit by Archivist Sarah Wilcock to the school wherethe fate of John Veitch was discovered.

Tayside Schools Swimming Trials took place on Wednesday, 18th Sept, at Perth Leisurepool. Representing our school were Milly Muir S2 and Cameron Wilson P7. Both havequalified for the Tayside Team and go on to swim at the Scottish Disability SportNational Junior Gala at Grangemouth Sports Complex on 6th Nov, 2019.

Milly swims allindividual strokes at50m and does 100mMedley –includingbutterfly. CameronWilson swims allstrokes at 75m, exceptbutterfly, and does a75m Medley.

Swimming Trials