Braidhurst High School’s under 14 football team have advanced into the quarter-finals stage of the Scottish Cup after an impressive 5-0 win over Grove Academy thanks to five quality goals from Joshua McPake, Regan Mimnaugh, Kieran McGrath, Kyle Connell and Luke Main.   This sets up a replay of last year’s semi-final match against Broughton High School.  The boys from Braidhurst have the passion and desire that this year they can overcome last year’s defeat and advance into the semi-finals.

Braidhurst High Art pupils recently visited the Creative Residency Art Exhibition in Summerlee, Coatbridge.

On show were examples of work in photography, [painting, jewellery, textiles and a range of other creative disciplines.

The pupils thoroughly enjoyed taking in the exhibits and commented on their favourite pieces.

The exhibition stimulated a great deal of interest and many of the pupils will be applying to take part in this year’s Creative Residency at Oban in June.

On Friday 13^th February, Braidhurst High School’s senior girls had a great victory in the Scottish Cup, allowing them to progress into the quarter finals in the Silver section.

The girls have been busy this year with their studies, however still manage to make time for Netball, a sport which they are all passionate and enthusiastic about.

The girls were up against Lasswade High School from Edinburgh.

When the game got started it was clear they were ready for a challenging game and all played extremely well with some lovely set plays.   The passes were strong, spacing was never an issue and that began to show very quickly during the first quarter.   The score at the end of the first quarter was 13-1, with our shooters Gill Scott and Holly Worton rarely missing a shot.

In the second quarter, Lasswade seemed to fight a little more, with some changes being made to their team during the break, however Lyndsay McLean and Courtney North were there to crush all of these.   The quarter finished on 32-3.

The third quarter the girls continued to pull together as a team and took on a larger lead, finishing the quarter with a 38 goal lead.

In the final quarter, Lasswade were trying their hardest, but Braidhurst’s girls were not allowing anything to stop them finishing the game with the score of 56-6.

The girls are now into the quarter finals and will be travelling to Aberdeen this week for their next game.

Third year Art & Design pupils from Braidhurst are entering this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe Poster design competition.
They have drawn up their colourful poster ideas and are hoping to catch the judges eye with their impressive work. They have put a great deal of effort into  the designs and their skills are really being developed by the competition.

A group of 19 Higher Biology pupils from Braidhurst High braved freezing temperatures to enjoy a wild day out at Edinburgh Zoo. After visiting the United Kingdom’s only pandas, Sunshine and Sweetie they spent two hours with one of the zoo’s specialist education officers both inside the education centre and in the zoo learning more about primate behaviour and animal adaptations.

Pupils were able to observe first hand dominance hierarchy in chimpanzees in their purpose built, state of the art enclosure, the Budongo Trail. This included seeing the newest chimpanzee, baby Velu (which means hairy in French) being cared for by the troop. The pupils were also able to visit the Zoo’s recently updated Koala enclosure, the Rhino house at feeding time and the Penguins Rock facility. A great day was had by all and the pupils’ excellent manners and first class behaviour was a credit to the school.

S4 pupils who are part of the JSLA class were given the opportunity to go to Ratho Climbing centre in Edinburgh to experience some adrenaline infused activities including climbing, abseiling and bouldering.

In the climbing pupils were given the chance to scale the heights of the Ratho climbing centre which is specially built around a natural quarry.  They learned how to belay for each other which required a lot of trust and teamwork between the pupils.  The abseiling section was where pupils were truly put to the test as they were suspended at mind numbing heights and their lives were quite literally in their own hands as they carefully lowered themselves towards the ground.  This was probably the most popular part of the day with many pupils reporting to have overcome their fear of heights.

All pupils had a fantastic day and found it both a challenging and worthwhile experience.

A group of fourth year French and German students from Braidhurst High School attended an event organised by the Scottish Association of Languages in Glasgow last week.   They were accompanied by Mrs Eleanor Magowan, Principal Teacher of Modern Languages, Mrs Joyce Dalzell, Classroom assistant and Miss Imke Reitenbach, the German assistant at Braidhurst High School.   The pupils met with students from other schools throughout Scotland and commenced the day with a tasty breakfast prepared by the event organisers.

They were then given the opportunity to engage first-hand with business leaders who view language skills as key to the growth and success of their organisations.   More importantly, the young people were able to take part in workshops and to ask questions to find out more about a variety of careers and employment opportunities that are open to people who can demonstrate language skills on their CV.   Career input ranged from The Open University,  Engineering,  Scottish Business Enterprise to The Scottish Football Association.

All pupils thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to learn about the possibilities of a career with languages and the importance of learning a language in today’s society.   They will hopefully be inspired to take their study of French and German further in the future.