{"id":1349,"date":"2017-01-14T15:01:00","date_gmt":"2017-01-14T15:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/harlawacademy.aberdeen.sch.uk\/?p=1349"},"modified":"2017-01-14T15:01:00","modified_gmt":"2017-01-14T15:01:00","slug":"23rd-december-2016-rounding-off-the-termyear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harlawacademy.org\/new\/2017\/01\/14\/23rd-december-2016-rounding-off-the-termyear\/","title":{"rendered":"23rd December 2016: Rounding off the term\/year"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apologies for the lack of blogs in December – I hope to be back to a weekly one in the New Year.\u00a0 In this one I will quick run through what has been happening in December.<\/p>\n

In the first week of December\u00a0some of\u00a0our pupils took\u00a0part in the consultation on plans to re-develop Union Terrace Gardens.\u00a0 As well as the Architects, Councillor Marie Bolton and David Ewan from the City Centre Directorate came and met a group of S2 pupils to hear their views.\u00a0 It was really good to see those involved in the re-design of the city listening to young people and even better to hear the ideas\u00a0being put forward by our\u00a0pupils.<\/p>\n

During the second week of December I ran a set of assemblies where we discussed raising expectations in all aspects of school life.\u00a0 I attach a summary of the points raised and hope I have the support of parents in taking this forward Expectations Poster Decenber 2016<\/a>.\u00a0 We also raised the topic at the staff meeting that week and looked at ways ‘raised expectations’ relate to coursework and classwork.<\/p>\n

During the third week of December we were presented with level 1 of the Rights Respecting Schools Award.\u00a0 I have mentioned our work around the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child previously and this award\u00a0is a formal recognition of this work.\u00a0 I am delighted to say that Harlaw Academy is the first secondary school in Aberdeen City to gain the award.\u00a0 We are now helping others to\u00a0achieve the award and also looking at how we can work towards level 2.\u00a0 My thanks and congratulations go to the pupils\/staff involved in this achievement.<\/p>\n

During the fourth week of December we were presented with the Northsound Schools Energy challenge trophy.\u00a0\u00a0Each year Northsound along with OPITO\u00a0and the Energy Institute run a quiz.\u00a0 Sixteen schools from the City and Shire took part this year and\u00a0Harlaw\u00a0was successful\u00a0through the various heats and won the event.\u00a0 It is the third time Harlaw have won this award and indeed we are the first school in the 16 years of the event to win it 3 times.\u00a0 Again my thanks and congratulations go to the pupils\/staff involved in this success.<\/p>\n

The fourth week of December also saw us; run a very enjoyable Christmas concert and Christmas assemblies which raised over \u00a3100 for Alzheimer\u00a0Scotland, raise money for the Salvation Army\u00a0through a\u00a0Christmas jumper day, deliver 10 food parcels donated by a local church to local families in need, take 6 boxes of food to TLC foodbank @inchgarth.\u00a0\u00a0These very\u00a0real examples of Harlaw Academy working in and with its community are something which all our pupils and families should feel very proud\u00a0about.<\/p>\n

The emphasis here at Harlaw was to work hard through the last week.\u00a0\u00a0I was disappointed that some families\u00a0chose\u00a0to\u00a0take their children off\u00a0early and even more at those who indicated they had done so because we would not be doing anything important during the last few days.\u00a0\u00a0I was round the school a lot over the last week and was very encouraged\u00a0by quality and quantity of work taking place.<\/p>\n

All of\u00a0our many achievements in\u00a02016 have come about through hard work, ability\u00a0and determination.\u00a0\u00a0These are also the qualities which will be needed if we are to be successful in 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apologies for the lack of blogs in December – I hope to be back to a weekly one in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":708,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,14,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-parents","category-uncategorised","category-weekly-blog"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harlawacademy.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harlawacademy.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harlawacademy.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harlawacademy.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harlawacademy.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/harlawacademy.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harlawacademy.org\/new\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harlawacademy.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harlawacademy.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harlawacademy.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}