John Rettie recently achieved a Saltire Award for the independent research he has conducted into his family history. For the past year John has been researching online and at the Mitchell Library, uncovering documentary evidence providing a fascinating insight into people and events from his family’s past spanning six generations.
John has discovered his showman heritage on his father’s side of the familyand a shipbuilding and naval tradition on his mother’s side.

John decided to contact several long-lost members of his family, and organised a meeting to reunite his gran and her cousin’s family, thus using all of his hard work and research skills to bring distant family members back together. Well done, John!

Remembrance Day was especially poignant this year, coming as it did on the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War. This considered, and holding true to Woodfarm’s commitment to respect advocated in our Rights Respecting School Award Classroom Charter, pupils and staff were determined to make a special effort to mark the occasion with the utmost deference and gratitude. Pupils in S2 – who have been studying the Great War in Social Subjects – participated in a poetry competition centred on the theme of remembrance. Many outstanding poems were submitted, with pupils in other year groups choosing to take part too. After careful consideration it was decided that the poem by Anna K from S2 most fittingly summed up the mood of the occasion:

Delicate poppies dance on the breeze;

They murmur a chant that is heard by the trees.
The trees whisper the line over and over
That is repeated again by the grass and the clover.
Soon joins in the ground and the mud and the mire;
The phrase they repeat will never tire.
People from every nation say it too;
Haunting and sorrowful the line is so true.
On this special day, 11th of November,
Everything vows: ‘we will remember’.

Anna’s poem was engraved onto a golden plaque and attached to Woodfarm’s own commemorative poppy wreath purchased from the Lady Haig Foundation. This was placed at Thornliebank War Memorial on Armistice Day by Mrs MacGlashan in a short service of remembrance attended by our Head Boy and Girl, representatives from the Pupil Council, pupils and staff from the cluster primaries, councillors, representatives from the Cooperative Funeral Service and local residents. After a beautiful rendition of the ‘Last Post’ on trumpet by S6 pupil, Ewan Sinclair, Anna read her poem aloud to the assembled group. Meanwhile, in the school itself, all pupils and staff impeccably observed the minute silence at 11am.

You are welcome to view our poppy wreath for yourself at the War Memorial in Thornliebank.  Some of our S2 pupils have had the chance to visit the site during class time, as especially moving experience for S2 pupil, Taylor Meechan, whose great, great grandfather’s name – William Meechan – appears on the memorial itself as one of the fallen in the Great War.
Thank you to everyone in the school and the local community for marking this special year of remembrance with such thoughtfulness and dignity.

Woodfarm pupils Sehr and Rabia attended the recent Teen Night at Giffnock library to promote the UNCRC as part of our rights respecting school journey. The aim was to ensure the whole community learns about the Convention on the Rights of the Child and that our young people, staff and parents use this shared understanding to work for global justice and sustainable living.

Pupils learning about the war had the opportunity to interview members of the Eastwood Writers’ group who have written various stories about conflict. The pupils involved read the short stories and planned their questions. Pupils benefited from discussing the personal experiences of families during WW1 and WW2. The pupils also created a poem to mark the centenary of the outbreak of World War One.

The Social Subjects and RME faculty consulted with a group of S2 pupils to consider how to improve homework.  The aim was to engage and challenge pupils to improve the quality of homework and compete with the new video games and social networking sites and show pupils that homework was not boring.  It was decided that offering pupils a choice from a range of creative activities would help pupils become more confident, encourage pupils to solve real problems and to take responsibility.

Many pupils created trench warfare models, timelines and recruitment posters which involved research skills, placing events in chronological order and applying their knowledge creatively.