S1 students took part in a personal finance workshop delivered with our business partner Business Dynamics.

Eileen Black and Laura Sinclair deliver these sessions in school which allowed our young people to consider budgeting and choices.

The aim of this session was to focus on financial awareness, numeracy and affordability. Students were able to consider personal finance within a real life context and will continue to develop these essential life skills throughout their education. Our S2 and S3 students will also be participating in personal finance workshops…

West Lothian Council environmental officers have recently been delivering presentations to schools in order to improve problems with litter.

The campaign titled ‘No Messin’ gave West Lothian schools the opportunity to create a poster to help highlight the message.

Megan Temple and Amanda McAdam both 2nd years from Inveralmond High School were winners of the competition and received prizes in recognition of their achievements.
Well done to the girls!

Megan and Amanda were able to connect their learning in the class with external issues affecting a wide range of people in West Lothian which further enhanced their experiences and outcomes for Curriculum for Excellence.

The second West Lothian Secondary Schools Golf Championships took place on the 9th of May at Harburn Golf Club. The event was first held in 2012 when 27 golfers took part.

This year, 54 golfers from 9 schools took part, including 6 from Inveralmond. Graeme Gillies, Cameron Morrison and Lewis Harley made up team A whilst team B consisted of Abbie Thomson, Ross Funston and Blair McMorran.

Inveralmond’s A team came in with a very respectable 101 points to finish joint 6th of the 15 teams entered.

The event is a team stableford where the best 3 scores from each team are added.This year, West Calder HS won the event as one of their teams amassed a huge total of 119 points to claim the Gordon Ford trophy!

The individual round of the day, however, was by Chris Curran of St Kentigern’s who shot a hugely impressive scratch score of 67 for 4 under par!

Despite the cold and damp weather the event was a huge success and all the golfers performed well on the day. A date has already been set for next year when Inveralmond will be hoping to go a little better to bring back the trophy.

A group of Inveralmond students recently took part in a professional film shoot with local film director, Graeme O’Hara.

The purpose of the video is to introduce our learning community to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Rights Respecting School Award.

The video has attracted a lot of attention from other schools in West Lothian as well as from UNICEF themselves. We think it does the job very nicely! Enjoy the video here:- I.C.H.S. Rights of the Child

A group of Inveralmond staff and students went off on an exciting trip to Valencia at the end of March.

This trip was an excellent experience for the students who were coached by Valencia FC’s professional staff.

As well as the hands-on teaching from Valencia’s coaching staff the students also took in a reserve game and received a tour of the stadium.

Arron Gunn, one of the students who went on the trip, has written his account of the four days which you can read by clicking below.

DAY 1

On Wednesday the 27th of March we met up at Inveralmond CHS at 05:00 am, it didn’t start well as the bus was a bit late and also just after we left the bus broke down in Deans and we had to get on a new bus. We then arrived at Prestwick Airport at about 08:15 am for a 10:00 am flight to Alicantia Airport which took about just over 2 hours or so. Once we arrived there at 01:00 pm or so we collected our things and then another 2 hour bus journey to Valencia.

When we arrived at the hotel we dropped our bags off and got our boots and got changed for training. Training was at 06:00 pm for and hour and a half to 2 hours. The training on the first night was not so hard and it was about working in a team when pressuring a player and to make space when your team had the ball so that we could spread to play and be under less pressure. Once we had finished the practices the coaches had made us do we played a game to see how much we had actually learned.

After training we went back to the hotel and had a shower and go our dinner. We then had the choice to stay in the hotel or come down and watch the Valencia reserves play a match. Sadly they got beat 2-0 and after that we went back to the hotel again and we went to our rooms to got to bed as we had a long hard day full of travelling and training which was very, very tiring.

DAY 2

At 07:00 am most of us got up to get a shower and to get ready for breakfast which was at 08:00 am. After breakfast, we gout our boots on training was at 09:00 am, when we got to the pitch we got split into our 2 groups again: Seniors and 1st, 2nd and part of 3rd year . We each had an hour and a half with each coach and the training was about pressure and passing again but this time it was a lot harder due to the amount of running we had to do and also due to the very warm weather.

After the hour and a half we swapped coaches and each group changes what they were doing and went straight into conditioned games which involved yet again a lot of passing, pressure and running and after that we had a bit of fun by playing the crossbar challenge which was a good way to cool down and have fun. After the morning training session we went back to the hotel and some of us had a quick shower as we had to go straight to Valencia’s stadium for a presentation of the history of Valencia CF and then a tour of their stadium which was amazing and it was very, very big. Once Mario finished the tour we had some time to visit the club shop and but a top or jumper or something before heading back to the hotel for lunch then the afternoon training session.

The afternoon training session was taken by the teachers and we started of with a nice warm up before going into 3 a side games. We got put into teams of 3 and there were 6 pitches each ranked from the king pitch to the bottom pitch we played 2 minute games and if you won the game then you moved up a pitch and if you lost then you moved down. But the champion of the 3 a side competition was me. Craig and Cameron who played our tactics perfectly and also used a small dirty tactic to waste time once we had the lead in a game. Once that had finished we played the crossbar challenge and only a handful of people hit the bar. Once the afternoon training session was done we went back to the hotel and got a shower before getting a bus to Heron City where we got dinner and went bowling which was a good laugh. We arrived back at the hotel about 10:30/11:00 pm and went straight to our rooms to get some sleep as it was a long hard day and we had another early start tomorrow.

DAY 3

Yet again we got up before 08:00 am and got a shower and then down for breakfast at 08:00 am before getting a 10/15 bus journey to where we were training that morning and that was taken by Mr Shipton and Matt. We started off with a good warm up before getting split up into out groups and Mr Shipton took one group for some shooting practice and Matt took the other group for some passing drills and then we switched about after an hour or so. Both the drills were very good. Then each group split up into 2 teams and we played an hour or so game until the bus picked us up and took us back to the hotel for a shower and lunch.

After lunch we had a one hour break so most of us sat outside and tried our best to get a tan. At 02:30 pm we went down for our afternoon training session with the coached. We started of with a few passing drills before getting split up into 4 teams and we played 3 games against each other and the top team won but 2 teams had the same amount of points and they went into a penalty-shoot-out sadly this time my team did not take our chance and we lost the penalty-shoot-out.

After training we said thank you to the coached as that was our last training session with them and we than got another shower and got dinner. After dinner we got a bit of free time to watch some of the games that were going on there before we played a big football test which get again was very good fun. After that we went up to our rooms to pack as we were leaving the next day and some of us got a good night’s sleep as we had a game in the morning.

DAY 4

We got up at the same time for breakfast and then we had our room inspection and we took our backs to another room where we left them before heading to out game. It was about a 30 minute drive to the pitch and once we were ready the first/second year and the seniors played first but sadly none of them won as the seniors lost 8-3 and the younger ones lost 18-1. The third years were up next playing an 11-1-side game but sadly they also got beat 3-0. Even though we all got beat it was good fun and there were some very good performances by some people at each age group.

We then got showered if you were brave enough as they were freezing and we headed back to the hotel where we got lunch and had one hour free time before the bus came. Once we got on the bus we had a 2 hour drive to the airport and I think everyone slept as the game and the heat took it out of us as well as the whole time there. After checking in at the airport which took a bit of time, we then if we wanted, got a Burger King as we were so hungry and then we went onto the plane which was stopped for an hour before it took off. We arrived at Edinburgh airport at 10:30 pm and then we arrived at Inveralmond at 11.30 pm where every one got picked up and went home.

Overall it was an amazing weekend and if anyone in years to come get the chance to go on it, I suggest they do as it is a one in a life-time chance and I have been lucky enough to have been at Valencia with the school twice now and I have loved every minute of it. I would also like to thank Mr Marr for making the trip possible and also to all the teachers that went and made the trip worthwhile.

Education Scotland have announced that Game On Scotland has been launched to help teachers use the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games as an inspiring, motivating and fun context for learning.

Using Games as a context for learning has been inspirational for many educational establishments in the past and provides schools with opportunities to develop learning across the curriculum (see Case Studies).

The new Game On Scotland website provides key information about the games, resources, opportunities for schools to be part of the Games and more.. Click on the following link to access the site, GameonScotland

An Online Study Support page has been created to help Higher candidates. The online study support resource can be accessed using this Link.

The main study support resource does not require any password or login details. If students wish to participate on the collaboration areas they will need to know their glow log in details.

There are study support resources for Higher English, Mathematics and Computing. Each of the subject areas also offer the opportunity for peer-peer and teacher-student support through discussion forums, real time chat and conference facilities.

Inveralmond Chess Club recently received a visit from Chess expert John McIntrye.

Mr McIntrye treated our students to their first taste of a simultaneous. A simultaneous is a board game exhibition most commonly in chess in which one player (typically of high rank, such as a grand-master) plays multiple games at a time with a number of other players.

S2 student Poppy Fountain received a chess prize for playing the best game.

All the students who took part enjoyed the experience.

Inveralmond Science teacher Mr Bethune has just completed the second stop in his ‘Electric Nursery’ tour of local schools, with Livingston Village and now Harrysmuir pupils enjoying the show.

Mr Bethune has been using his friends Mr Potato, Mr Banana and little Miss Tomato along with others, to teach the benefits of Healthy Eating and using electricity in an environmentally friendly fun way.

All the children involved so far have been a credit to their school and so far around 200 pupils have attended with some participating in the fun.

2-10a ‘To begin to understand how batteries work. I can help to build simple chemical cells using readily available materials which can be used to make an appliance work.’ A fun packed 30 minutes of electricity promoting Health and Well Being with Electricity was had by all.

Some pictures from Mr Bethune’s Electric Nursery tour can be seen by clicking on the following link Electric Nursery Images

In November 2012 students Jennifer Gordon, Shannon McKenzie, Emma Melville, Abbie Thomson and Hollie Middleton competed at the West Lothian Schools Gymnastics competition.

The girls finished second meaning that they qualified for the Scottish schools Gymnastics Finals which were held at the Bells Sport Centre in Perth recently.

All the girls have put in a commendable amount of effort over the year and finished a very respectable 10th from 25 competing schools. The girls individual and team scores can be seen here Gymnastics Results. Some pictures from the event can be seen here.