Ross Cooper from the Curve Foundation Dance Company has been delivering contemporary dance workshops to students in all year groups.  The S5/S6 pupils currently studying Advanced Higher Dance learnt repertoire from his company: the piece was entitled "First Draft."  They performed "First Draft" at Dance Base on Sunday 18^th March and it was excellent.

Early in the team S2 pupils had the opportunity to work with dancers from Y Dance and attend the show "RISK" at North Edinburgh Arts Centre. The company dancers guided the pupils through a warm up which incorporated acting and dance before teaching street dance repertorie from the show.  The show was about "decisions young people make as they walk the line between feeling alive and staying alive.

Gymnasts from Broughton High School participated in the Edinburgh Schools Gymnastics Competition. This was a qualifying event for the Scottish Schools Gymnastics Competition. We had two groups competing at Level 1 - Emma Walker, Jodi Darge, Amy Lonnie, Jody Stanton, Lois Glen, Hannah Mack and Charlie Brinkhurst and another group competing at Level 2: Nyomi Hogg, Jody Davidson and Frances Fraser Reid.

The pupils did very well with Level 1 groups finishing 4th and 5th and the Level 2 group finishing 4th.

Broughton girls' football team is very popular and consists of players from 1st to 4th year. We have had a fantastic season playing in the Bank of Scotland league and are currently undefeated.

Additionally, the girls recently took part in the Coca-Cola 7's tournament. Unfortunately, they narrowly missed out on going through to the SPL stage.

Due to the popularity of the girls' football team, we are currently developing two teams. One team will consist of S1 and S2 and the other will be for S3 and above. We are keen to increase the numbers for each team so if anyone is interested please come along.

Young Entrepreneur

We were delighted to welcome Joanna Lyle, owner of Juice Monkeys - a successful new business specialising in fresh fruit smoothies.  Joanna spoke to S6 pupils about why she decided to start her own business within a year of completing her degree in politics at Glasgow University.  She gave a really interesting account of her hard work, motivation and sheer determination needed to get her business off the ground.

In December students put in a huge effort and raised almost £500 for World Vision's 'Alternative Gifts' Appeal. This allows people to buy gifts which have beenasked for by communities in Africa and around the world. As a result the gifts make a real difference to the everyday lives of whole communities. Students chose what gift they wanted to buy and as a result there are chickens, goats, and sheep heading to new homes along with vital medical and sanitation equipment which will provide clean water for seven families. Well done for everyone who took part!

Broughton High School has now become an official affiliated "Heartstart" School.

This is a fantastic programme run by the British Heart Foundation with support from the Scottish Ambulance Service which allows students to be taught resuscitation skills. Following out successful application for a Heartstart grant of £1500 to buy resuscitation manikins we now have 10 'Little Annie's' and four infant manikins for student use. We plan to introduce the programme in session 2007/2008 through PSE with S5, through the Link Unit and through Support for Learning before rolling out the programme out to all years. This is a fantastic oppertunity for students to gain practical, lifesaving training. Staff training will begin shortly and we look forward to taking this exciting new initiative forwards.

We are delighted to report that work has commenced on the building site for the new school, which began on Monday 16 April. The construction area has been fenced off and made secure by the builders Laing O'Rourke. Pedestrian access from the playing fields towards Waitrose is no longer available, but a new gate has been been placed on the same side of the school.

A 5 day work based challenge

Eight S6 Broughton High School students recently took part in this unique opportunity.  Mindshop facilitators - Douglas Brotherston, DBFM and Jim Sinclair, The Townhouse Company, worked with the student group.  Their week long programme included - business improvement techniques, team work, strategic thinking, goal setting, mind mapping, brainstorming, cause and effects of analysis, motivation and presentation skills!

 Over the course of the week, they focused on 4 key objectives

•  Life Building Skills

•  Team Building Skills

•  Self Confidance

•  Continuous Improvement

For an entire week they swapped the classroom for The Bonham Hotel!  The Townhouse Company would like to gain entry to "The Finacial Times Top 100 Comapnies To Work For" - their challenge was to find ways in which the company could achieve this.

Students - Nafisah Jamil, Sabahat Saeed, Jennifer Wood, Chris Mack, Rory Mack, Sam Martin, Josh Gajree and Sam Thomas worked hard (9-5) all week- here are some of their comments.

"It was certainly a worthwhile experience - working as a team was difficult at first but by the end of the week it was rewarding"

"The balance between giving us support we needed and the freedom to work through problems on our own was perfect - I enjoyed the week greatly"

 "We were treated like consultants rather than students which was extremely motivational"

"Working in a group allowed us to respect each other and learn to compromise"

"We enjoyed meeting the staff of The Townhouse Company Group, who guided and helped us through the week"

 "It was an interesting and very worthwhile experience"

Many of our S3 pupils submitted entries into the national 'Away with Words' poetry writing competition. The standard of writing was very impressive and we are eagerly awaiting news.

S1 pupils auditioned for a general knowledge quiz team to be screened by the BBC. We are still awaiting news on this but are, again, keeping our fingers crossed. Miss Godley of the English Department will be organising this year's end of term quiz.

Two of our S3 pupils - Sinead Leach and Sarah Armes - won first place in the Edinburgh finals of the 'Your Voice in Europe' Competition. The girls will be competing for the Scottish title in the Parliament at the end of March.

 S4 pupil, Lewis Kelly, received a Special Mention for his entry into the Councillor Meek 'My Edinburgh' competiton and attended a prize-giving in the City Chambers at 9.30 on Thursday 8th March.

The department hosted Kev F. Sutherland for a comic book masterclass on March 13th. This was open to pupils who have been working on creating comic books in the department and pupils who have been selected by their English teacher as a reward for good effort and behaviour and for those with an interest in working in the field.

In January it was Broughton's turn to benefit from the City's rolling programme of replacing our aged computer stock of computers. Over 240 machines were replaced and the school paid to upgrade a further 70 or so machines to the required spec as well as buying 26 new laptops, 20 of which will be part of a wireless set-up for use in the Science Department. At the beginning of March our Local Area Network was also upgraded with all switches and hubs being upgraded to run at 100mb per second - in other words, a much faster network throughout the school.

The school has also invested heavily in increasing the number of interactive whiteboards and data projectors throughout the school. This will mean that many lessons will be more attractively presented and should result in a better learning experience for many of our students.

The improved computer estate now enables us to take full advantage of the learning package 'Successmaker Enterprise' which we bought 2 years ago. This is an attractive programme aimed at improving literacy and maths skills, primarialy in S1 and S2.

After Easter Broughton switched over from Phoenix to SEEMIS as our Manangement Information System. The new system, being rolled out across the city, should bring about a number of improvements and can be used for tracking and reporting. SEEMIS also looks different to Phoenix so parents will notice a difference when they recieve attendance reports, etc and student's timetables have also changed in appearance.

Thanks to the skill and dedication of our web team, especially of Craig McCreath of 6S2, as well as others, the new Broughton High School website is back up and running.

Recently a number of students have been involved in posting information on a website called 'Bebo'. Some of the information is rather distasteful, some is of a bullying nature. I would like to suggest to parents that they ask to see their child's homepage.

Tony Dougan