News from Lockerbie Academy - Thursday 11 March 2010

Visiting German Student

My name is Susan Ruther and I am 21 years old. I come from Dorsten a town of 80,000 inhabitants in the west of Germany. I study English and History at the university of Essen. It is my third semester which means that I need another six semesters to finish my studies. When I have finished university, I would like to work as a secondary school teacher.

I am looking forward to being at Lockerbie Academy and helping German pupils to improve their language skills. In my opinion learning a language is essential in today’s society. This is my first visit to Scotland and I am keen to learn about another culture as I am sure that I will draw on this experience later on in my teaching career.

Fantasy Football (Manager of the Month)

Chris Gray is still top of the league with Nathan Moloney second and Mrs Anderson third highest scorer with 36 points was Connor Rafferty.

Managers of the Month (February)

S1 Harvey Tollick
S2 Connor Rafferty
S3 Andrew White
S4 Euan Moffat
S5/6 Billy Ho
Staff Mr Walls
Parent Mr Tait

Sports News

Table Tennis – Scottish School's Champion – Rhian Williams

Congratulations go to Rhian Williams who won the under – 18 girls Scottish School’s Championship. It was a great day for the Williams sisters and younger sister Alice was third in the under – 14 age competition, both girls will represent Lockerbie academy as part of the Scottish Schools team at the British Championships in Ireland in June.

Fairtrade Fortnight

Last week Fairtrade Fortnight continued with a number of events taking place including Fairtrade messages every morning using the School’s Tannoy system. The Milk House Assembly had a Fairtrade theme with an interesting power point and a Beetle Drive with prizes being fair-trade chocolate.

On Friday there were two lunchtime activities:

Pupils were asked to guess the number of teabags in a jar and how many were Fairtrade teabags.

Pupils wrote a ‘making it fair’ message for a display board.

The winners were:

Danielle Stuart (1B), Danielle Beattie (3F), Greg Davidson (2B), Ailsa Bartsch (1A) and Matthew Copeland (3A).

World Book Day

This year, as World Book Day coincided with Fairtrade Fortnight, it seemed a good opportunity to combine the two and also to incorporate our link with a school in Malawi. To that end we looked at the fascinating book, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, which tells the true story of William Kamkwamba, a young man from Malawi who built a windmill out of scrap so that his family could have electricity in their home. In order to show how the windmill provided electricity, Mr Bowles from the science department gave a very effective practical demonstration using a leaf blower and a model windmill. Enough power was generated to light up a L.E.D. bulb. It also blew half the post-its off the library ‘Cool Wall’! To finish off the event there was a chance to taste some Fairtrade chocolate and other treats which were kindly provided by Mrs Cotter, our Fairtrade coordinator.

Amazing Trip to Cern

One of our Science Staff Mrs Hargreaves was fortunate to be chosen as one of four Scottish teachers to attend a Physics study trip to CERN in Geneva.

The programme consisted of lectures and guided tours, organised and presented in English. It was designed to provide an overview of, and update on, contemporary particle physics and had been rated as a very valuable experience by past participants. Because participation is open to applications from all CERN member states it is also a unique opportunity to meet physics teacher colleagues from other countries.

Mrs Hargreaves said:

“We met up in the restaurant on the Tuesday night after a long journey to the site from all parts of the UK. The languages spoken in the restaurant were vast and varied. People interchanged between English, French, Spanish and German but there were also Italians, Poles and Americans all conversing about their research and ideas.

The lecturers were all first class, totally devoted to their subject and keen to pass on the joys of particle physics to the next generation. Three of the lectures were delivered by Rolf Landau, who was in the team who made the tiny number of antimatter that was the subject of Dan Brown’s book ‘Angels and Demons’.

In groups we were also set the task of building a simple particle detector, which can be built in schools, by pupils providing a source of dry ice which can be purchased.

Amazingly we were able to visit the Compact Muon Slenoid, which is an enormous detector of collided particles. This monster of a machine is looking for the elusive Higgs Particle, that Scientists think is responsible for the giving things mass.

Another highlight for many of us was the trip to the magnet plant, where the magnets for the LHC are tested. Our guide was knowledgeable and interesting and it was amazing to see the magnets being tested and the display boards reading the temperature – that was 1.9K, which is minus 271 degrees Celsius and one of the coldest places on the Earth.

Over the coming weeks I want to put the notes and photos that were taken in to a range of lessons for 12-18 year olds to increase their knowledge and understanding and excitement about the fantastic research that is happening currently in Europe.”

Dates for the Diary