Christmas Concert – 13/12/23

Our Christmas Concert will take place on Wednesday 13th December 2023 at 7.00pm.

Tickets are available from 1st December and can purchased via parent pay for a small donation.  We will be collecting for both Mission Christmas and our local foodbank on the night and would welcome any donations to support these wonderful causes.

Tickets are limited so please book early, we look forward to seeing you there.

Christmas Concert 13-12-23

S3 PARENTS EVENING – 12/12/23

On Tuesday the 12th of December between 5pm and 7pm the online S3 Parents’ Evening will be taking place. The system that we use for S1-S6 Parents’ Evenings is called ‘ParentBooking.com’ (see website https://www.parents-booking.co.uk/lasswade).

The booking system opens at 7pm on 03/12/2023 and will close at 10am on 08/12/2023.

 

All of our Parents’ Evenings are now fully online (video call), so if you have not taken part in an online Parents’ Evening at Lasswade HS before, please read the Parent/Carer User Guide ahead of the evening or watch this useful video Video Meetings Demo, with Troubleshooting.

 

Each student can book a maximum of 10 appointments. Each appointment lasts for 4 minutes (on screen timer) with a minute in between consecutive appointments.

 

If more than one parent/carer wishes to join the video call, the identified ‘main carer’ (person who makes the appointments) must be the person to share the joining details with the other parent/carer.

The Lasswade High School Christmas Appeal 2023

Mission Christmas: What is Mission Christmas? What can you do and when?

Mission Christmas is here to make sure that children living in poverty can have a great Christmas and wake up to a gift on Christmas morning. Some families are already struggling to make ends meet and the current cost of living crisis has pushed even more into poverty. For so many people this year, Christmas is a luxury they just can’t afford.

Within our local area, 1 in 4 young people live in poverty and we want to do our bit to support disadvantaged children and young people. With that in mind, we would be so grateful if students, families and members of the local community could donate a gift for a local young person. We are collecting gifts for children of all ages 0-18 years old.
We will be collecting gifts at our front entrance and the playground entrance on the following mornings:

• Friday 1st December
• Friday 8th December (also Lasswade Christmas Jumper Day)
• Friday 15th December

Last year as a school community, we donated over 500 gifts to Mission Christmas. Please donate what you can!

Mission Christmas: How to confidentially sign up to receive a Christmas present for your child

If your child attends Lasswade High School and you would like to request a Christmas gift for them, then please complete this short and confidential Google Form to register.
All Christmas gift requests must be submitted by Friday 8th December. We will try our very best to supply you with an appropriate Christmas gift for your child.
If you have more than one child at Lasswade High School, please complete an individual Google Form for each of them, so that we can personalise gifts.

Mission Christmas 2023: Request a Gift

Food Donations & Christmas Food Hampers: What can you do and when?

Christmas can be a really challenging time of year for families, especially with the ongoing cost of living crisis. We are welcoming food donations from students, families and members of the local community. Your donations will help us to create our very own Christmas Food Hampers for families linked to Lasswade High School.
We will be collecting food donations at our front entrance and the playground entrance on the following mornings:

• Friday 24th November – THANK YOU for your kindness!
• Friday 1st December
• Friday 8th December (also Lasswade Christmas Jumper Day)
• Friday 15th December
• Wednesday 13th December – at the Lasswade High School Christmas Concert (7pm-8.30pm)

All food donations must be long-life/have a long shelf-life. Below is a list of the top items to donate. Other items, for example for babies and specific to Christmas, would be gratefully welcomed too.

Please donate what you can!

Christmas Food Hampers: How to confidentially sign up to receive a Christmas Food Hamper

If your child attends Lasswade High School and you and your family could benefit from a Christmas food hamper, please complete the following short and confidential Google Form to register for a Christmas Food Hamper. Last year, we supplied Christmas Food Hampers for over 50 local people.
All Christmas Food Hamper requests must be submitted by Friday 8th December. We will try our very best to supply you with a variety of foods for a few meals/days.

Christmas Food Hampers 2023

HT Feedback: Response 27/11/23

Please note no feedback received from HT Update of week ending Friday 24th November. The Google Form requesting feedback on our website and communication practices remains open.  Thanks.

HT Weekly Update: Week-ending Friday 24th November 2023

This concise weekly HT Update is generally published every Friday afternoon.   It’s a simple opportunity for you to also feedback/ask questions via the link at the bottom of each Update.  Feedback received, where appropriate, will be responded to and published by Monday afternoon on the school website link.   

Key messages from this week

Calendar:  Next week sees a series of events across the school;   on Monday we’ll hold a S2 Horizons and Pathways Event to support students in career planning and course choice, that same evening we’ll hold a S2 to S3 Course Choice Information Evening, via Zoom from 6.00pm (see below);  on Wednesday we’ll hold a SQA Coursework Assembly with S5/6;  on Thursday we’ll hold a SQA Coursework Assembly with S4.

Staffing: Congratulations to Mandy Bennett who will be joining the Student Support team as a PCWO. Charlotte Cole will be joining us on Monday as a Teacher of Art & Design. As part of an Administrative Restructure, we also have a number of changes in the school’s admin team.  Hayley Harlick has successfully secured the position of Senior Administrative Officer, with a focus on HR.  Laura Robb has successfully secured the position of Senior Administrative Officer, with a focus on leading the school office and supporting finance.  Vicky McNamee has successfully secured the position of Senior Support Assistant, with a focus on managing the school office.  Kelly Diamond has successfully secured the position of Senior Support Assistant. Kelly will take on additional responsibilities and will focus on timetabling at key points.  We will shortly advertise a G2 Support Assistant role.

P7 Open Afternoon:  If you currently have a child in P7 you may already be aware of this from your child’s primary school.  Nevertheless, we are aware that some parents were not able to attend our P7 Open Evening held on Tuesday 24th October. We are holding a shortened version of that evening on Thursday 7th December for those that missed the October event,  click here.  Mrs Brown and Mrs Main will lead this event.

Study Skills Week: Our thanks to Katherine Lebida and Erin Thomson for all of their efforts in the planning and delivery of this week’s Study Skills Workshops and Parents’ Information Night.  Student attendance was very encouraging.  The sessions will support our seniors in the development of their study skills ahead of the first Formal Assessment Window. In addition, thank you to Matt Kennedy who has created an Infographic to support learners and families in encouraging good study habits,  click here.

Mission Christmas & Hamper Appeal: The S6 Charities Committee have launched Mission Christmas and our Christmas Hamper Appeal, for local families. If you are able to help contribute items we’ll be happy to receive.  Today’s Dress Down Day resulted in a phenomenal response.  See our socials for more details.  Donations are welcome at our School Office at anytime during the school week.    

S5/6 Parents’ Evening Evaluation: Parents/carers of S5/6 students are asked to please visit the website and complete an evaluation of the evening,  click here

Coldwells Art: Our school photographers have shared an update, for all parents/carers,  this allows clarity about the cut off dates for Christmas delivery,  click here.

Parent Council: On Thursday we held our third meeting of the session.  At the meeting we gathered feedback on our website and our communication practices.  We gathered good information from those able to attend, but are keen to hear from a wider ‘audience’.   Please have a look across our website, click here, and consider what’s positive/effective and what would help improve things.  In addition,  we have a short paper on our communication practices with students and with parents/carers, click here.  Please have a look at this paper and consider what’s positive/effective and what would help improve our communication. Thereafter, we’d welcome feedback via this Google Form

S2 into S3 Course Choice: We posted a website story on this last week.  The evening will be online and be held on Monday 27th November.  It is aimed at the parents/carers of S2 students.  Click here for details.  

If you have any feedback/questions relating to this update please submit them via the link below

Feedback here

Take Care

Campbell Hornell,  Head Teacher

P7 Open Afternoon – Thursday 7th December

On Thursday 7th December 2.30pm-3.30pm, we will be holding an hour-long P7 transition information session in Lasswade High School. This session is for students and families who COULD NOT attend our P7 Open Evening on Tuesday 24th October.

S5/6 Parents’ Evening Evaluation

Thank you to all parents/carers who booked and attended virtual appointments for our S5/6 Parents’ Evening (Tuesday 21st November). We hope you all had a very positive experience and look forward to communicating with you again in the near future:

• Senior Phase Full Report – 8th February 2024
• Senior Phase Alert Report – 27th March 2024

We value parent/carer feedback and use it to evaluate our service and implement change. We would appreciate it if you could complete this short Google Form to share your experience of our S5/6 parents’ night.

Study Skills – Parents’ Session

Thank you to those of you who were able to join us last night for our Study Skills session. As promised, last night’s presentation is available for you here. We have also collated some other materials you my find helpful in response to some of the questions you asked.

Please remember that students can still sign up for Study skills workshops through the year group Google Classrooms

We would also be grateful if you could complete a short evaluation – your feedback helps us to improve our work and provide more of the support you feel is required.

Thank you.

Effective Revision- Parent Session (1).

Study Skills Parent Session – Q & A

Study Skills – MindMapping

Neurodiversity StudySkills-1

Neurodiversity StudySkillsAnsweringEssayQuestions

Neurodiversity StudySkillsNoteTaking

Neurodiversity StudySkillsOrganisationTimeManagement

Neurodiversity StudySkillsRevisingForExams

ICT- Supports

Dress Down Day 24/11/23

As we draw closer to Christmas, we will be shortly launching our two main charitable appeals; the Mission Christmas toy appeal and the Lasswade Christmas Food Hampers. Both of these appeals were extremely successful last year and very well-received by the community.

This ‘Dress Down’ Friday (24/11/23), instead of students and families solely donating money to our chosen charities, we are kindly asking students and families, if at all possible, to donate long-life foods, which will all go towards our Lasswade Christmas Food Hampers appeal. We will still very grateful take cash/Parent Pay donations which will go towards our chosen charities.

Please see below a list of long-life foods and non-food items, which will all go a long way to supporting families in need. The S6 Charities Committee will be collecting donations at the front entrance and playground doors from 8am on Friday morning.

Parent Council Meeting 3

Our third Parent Council Meeting of the session is on Thursday 23rd November.  As we are now in the midst of darker nights and winter weather the meeting will be held via Zoom.  We’ll begin at 7.00pm and end no later than 8.30pm.  Our learning from last session was that Zoom meetings usually last closer to an hour.

As part of the meeting there will be discussion on

• Our website;  what’s on it that works/what’s not
• Our communication;  what works/what would help or improve things
• Google Guardian
• School Captain Report
• a question and answer session;  please send in questions via the link below
• a live ‘chat’ session where we can answer questions raised on the evening

All parent/carers on will automatically be sent joining instructions for the meeting, via email,  on Wednesday 22nd November.  All are welcome to ‘attend’.

Please send in any questions, via email and with ‘FAO Parent Council’ at the top of message, to

lasswade.hs@midlothian.gov.uk

Or,  post a question to the Parent Council Facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/High-School/Lasswade-High-School-Parent-Council-278734819307792/

All questions should be submitted no later than 1.00pm on Thursday 23rd November.