School news
After two years of planning the pupils set off to France. The bus left QMA at 7am for Glasgow Airport. Pupils arrived in Paris mid- afternoon and boarded a coach to their hotel on the grounds of the Futuroscope theme park.
Tuesday was spent enjoying all the rides in the park and pupils even watched the light show after sunset.
On Wednesday pupils spent the day in Poitiers. Poitiers is recognised as a city of art and history, hiding many passionate secrets in its narrow streets.
A town thriving around its centuriesold university, it is particularly favoured by those who love Romanesque art.
Pupils had a guided tour of the city and visited the most popular places such as the Law Courts, the Museums of Sainte- Croix and Rupert de Chièvres, as well as and the famous pedestrian streets. Pupils then stopped off at a shopping complex to practice some of their French and spend some Euros.
From there, they went to play minigolf and arrived back at the hotel at 8pm for some well- deserved food.
On Thursday pupils spent the morning in a French school where they participated in lessons and experienced school life from a different aspect. After this very daunting experience pupils went to a French market and then to a local patisserie to find out how French bakers create their specialities.
Before they knew it, it was Friday and time to make the return home. The school have to say farewell to their Chinese teacher Jana. Jana has had a very busy year working in QMA and the cluster primary schools across South Ayrshire.
Last Thursday, pupils from the five cluster primary schools along with pupils from QMA joined forces with pupils from North and East Ayrshire to showcase the work that has been taking place. There was a wide array of performances from primary one and three pupils from Sacred Heart and St Cuthbert’s, doing Tai Chi, primary three and four pupils from St Patrick’s doing a Chinese style dance, primary five and six pupils from St John’s and St Ninian’s singing a Chinese song, and S1 pupils from QMA singing Chinese songs and modelling their personally designed and created chengsams. Michael McManus has been selected for the West District Athletic championships at Grangemouth, due to his outstanding javelin performance.
Congratulations also to Caitlin Baker and Niamh Cullen who were selected to be included in the Ayrshire under- 15 netball team.
Michael Bargh, S5, won a bronze for QMA in the under- 17 400 metres at Grangemouth on Friday, running a personal best time of 51.9 seconds. He has also been selected to run for Scotland in the 4x400m relay at the Celtic Games in Wales in August. A huge thank you all who supported the recent XL project, with the school collecting over 130kg of food for the South Ayrshire Foodbank. The donations will now go towards helping people in crisis across the area. Neil McKay of the technical department has been running a lunchtime club with a group of S2 pupils. They have been studying Mechanics with quite a few projects in the pipeline. Currently the group is overhauling a beach cruiser Chopper bicycle.
The pupils have stripped it, overhauled all parts, rubbed down the frame and painted it neon orange. The next stage is to fit an engine to it which will allow it to be used as both a bicycle and a motorcycle. The project is still ongoing and the pupils are really keen.
The pupils are: Joseph Abbot, Cameron Healy, Kyle Kelly, Darren Pirie, Conner O’Neil and Rachel Denton.
The bike is called the Queenie Rocket. The school team reached the final of the Sir Tom Hunter Challenge in Kilmarnock. The audience were impressed by the QMA team. Mr Flynn wishes to express his thanks to Alison and Theresa for their work with the QMA team in the South Ayrshire heat and on the night of the final. Congratulations to the S3 pupils who competed in the Institute of Physics competition. They won the S1- 3 Category: Reflections on Light competition. Thank you to Eleanor who worked with the pupils on their entry and Bryce who took the team to the event.
The successful pupils are: Toni McLaughlin, Andrew Morrison, Matthew Pentleton and Rosie McCardie. The following pupils took part in the Provost’s Carbon Footprint Challenge at the County Buildings last week, accompanied by Mr Davidson and Miss McGhie: Josephine McGahon 2M1, Conner O’Neil 2A1, Kyle Kelly 2A2, Callum MacKenzie 2Q1, Rachel Denton 2A2, Lauren Crawford 2A2, Priscilla Farrell 5M1, Georgia Lewis 5Q1 and Kyle Stevenson 2P5 Thank you to all the staff that came along to support S6 at their recent prom celebrations. Both staff and pupils had a wonderful night at the Lochgreen Hotel where the surroundings were ideal for spilling out onto the lawns for fabulous photo opportunities or onto the patio for a quiet chat in between dancing the night away. The school welcomed 10 Lebanese pupils and two members of staff – Andrea who is a teacher and Ziad who is the head teacher of their school in Tyre.
They were greeted by Miss Phillips, PT Guidance, who organised the visit, and head teacher Mr Flynn in the conference room, who gave them a tour around the school.
They then shadowed their new Scottish friends and followed their timetables with them. On Wednesday, the Lebanese pupils made presentations to the friends in the English Open Area.
On Thursday the entire group will be going out of school for the day to visit Glasgow.
After school on Friday, the group celebrated with a barbeque to mark the end of another successful trip. The QMA choir was invited to sing two songs at the Education Awards in Glasgow.
The Scottish Education Awards were first launched in November 2001 by the Scottish Government and the Post’s sister paper, the Daily Record, with the specific aims of celebrating the successes and recognising the achievements taking place within Scottish education.
The choir sang Lascia ch’io pianga by Handel and Come What May from Moulin Rouge. sponsored walk and managed to raise £ 560 which will go towards refurbishing the upper dining hall.
This event was the culmination of a health and wellbeing interdisciplinary project in which pupils had been learning about different aspects of health and fitness in their PE, home economics, science, and PSE classes. Seven pupils qualified from the East Ayrshire Athletics finals to take part in the All Ayrshire Athletics final at Dam Park last week.
The group of athletes competed against schools from across Ayrshire and won medals in a variety of events. Ruariadh Airlie broke the record for the javelin that had stood since 2003. The school closes for the summer holidays on Thursday, June 3, at 1pm. It re- opens for pupils on Wednesday, August 17. The school hope everyone has a lovely summer. Copies of the school improvement plan summary and the standards and quality report for 2015/ 2016 are available on the school website.