Wednesday saw the sun come out to play. Group C enjoyed an epic day in the hills, whilst B and C had the best of the weather tackling river kayaking and paddle sports. Looking forward to our final day today, everyone in good spirits, but definitely tiring now!
Day one was a resounding success, as we got settled into our accommodation and made a start on our activities. Group A were straight in at the deep end (quite literally), as they took on a challenging gorge scramble. Group B followed that in the evening. Group C had a dry day and have still to tackle a wetsuit, but today we are river day all day, then gorge scrambling in the evening. Sure they will sleep well tonight! 
Sign up is now open for the annual cross country competition held by Albyn and RGC at Balgownie Playing Fields. Sign up via the Google Form on your PE Google Classroom or the link here. It is great day out representing Alford Academy while having fun with your friends. You don’t need to be a runner at all! You can enter as an individual or as a team.
See anyone in PE for more information
📅Friday 17th March
📍Balgownie Playing Fields, Bridge of Don
Sign up by Thursday 16th February
Fancy an opportunity to win some great tech prizes worth around £100? This year’s challenge: Code a Christmas themed project that includes or mentions Santa. The judges will be looking for creative, eye catching entries that stand out. There must be code used to make your ideas come to life. This could be an animation, a story, a joke, a game, a card, a poster, an adventure game, a fact page….anything you like! It is completely up to you.
Click here to enter the DressCode Christmas Competition:
https://www.dresscode.org.uk/competitions/christmast-coding-comp
Click here to take on the Cyber Advent Calendar:
https://www.dresscode.org.uk/competitions/cyberadventcalendar2022
Good luck!
Alford Academy Remembrance Day 2022
“Remembrance honours those who serve to defend our freedom and way of life. It recognises the sacrifice of the Armed Forces community across the Commonwealth, as well emergency services and innocent civilians killed through conflict and terrorism. Remembrance honours people who have served and sacrificed, including armed forces and emergency services. It means stopping to remember people affected by war and hoping for a peaceful future.” (Taken from https://www.poppyscotland.org.uk/)
This year we continued our traditions in remembering all those who have or who still ensure our freedom.
The Interact club recruited friends in the school to create a week of remembrance. We are always very grateful to all the support staff give us at this busy time of the year and special thanks goes to the English and Humanities faculties as well as the Senior Leadership Team and Mrs Watt who always help the group with absolutely everything.
CLAN classes used a presentation made by interact pupils in the club with the inspiration from Mr Ryland to share some history; then CLAN pupils made poppies to be displayed in the school. The poppies were decorated with memories and thanks. These have been displayed for all to read.
Each morning during the lead up to the 11th there was a tannoy message sharing a reading or poem about remembrance which pupils are supported in selecting by Miss Steel. During the weeks assembly our pupil senior executive shared their own thoughts with a few minutes of personal reflection.
On the 11th the school took part in a 2-minute silence led by Mr Cookson at 11am and listened to another reading followed by a piper. At the same time Mrs Wotherspoon represented our school community with a number of pupils, staff and a piper to place a wreath on the Alford war memorial along with the primary and chaplain team.
All week pupils were selling poppies for Poppy Scotland and were delighted to hand over a generous donation.
Thank you to all the pupils and staff who helped the group.
Alford Academy Interact Group
Rotary Shoe Box Scheme 2022
The Interact club wanted to fill more boxes this year than last; and we are delighted to announce that we succeeded!!!
Over 50 boxes were collected after the holidays and will be sent to disadvantaged adults and children in Eastern Europe to help support those with a need greater than our own. CLAN classes were involved again this year and rose to the challenge of filling at least 3 boxes each.
The boxes will be sent to countries such as the Ukraine, Romania and Moldova. Our thanks extend to the Rotary Club of Alford for involving us in the scheme and collecting them for us.
If you wish to find out more information about the scheme then this website has more information: http://www.rotaryshoebox.org/
Alford Academy Interact Club
MacMillan Coffee Morning 2022
By the Alford Academy Interact Group
We did it! We had an actual event! And made £232.52 in cash donations and we received with £47 in online donations making a total of £279.52. This is enough to make a huge difference for those using the help MacMillan provide and we are absolutely delighted! This is the most we have raised in a coffee morning for years so we cannot thank everyone enough.
The coffee morning is the first organised event by the Interact Club, this year we were able to use the facilities in HE to bake our own fine pieces to sell to staff. Diane Forbes helped pupils to create a delicious array of tray bakes and ensure we had enough to go around all staff. The staff met in the school staff room which the pupils decorated and set up with their fine pieces and the urns with hot water to make plenty tea and coffee.
The pupils had to plan the event from scratch, order ingredients which Mrs Watt ordered for us and with the help of Mrs Harper set up ready for baking. Once baked the pupils labelled all the ingredients and set up the event.
This year we were grateful of online banking which helped everyone to contribute.
As ever the group is very grateful to everyone who donated this year and we are already looking forward to a bigger coffee morning next year.
The Alford Academy Interact Club
On Tuesday 22 March, Robert Gordon University delivered a workshop to the S5s on note taking and revision skills. This included identifying what type of learning style, what learning methods to use to be an effective learner as well as exam preparation tips. They also covered how to manage your mental wellbeing; what affects our mental health, what can we change and how we can find support. The pupils comments were:
Really helpful and in depth, I learned what learning style works best for me
It was interesting and useful
Very interactive session, good because of personal examples used
Helpful and informative
Project Trust also delivered a presentation on taking a gap year and volunteering with project trust overseas. Pupil comments were:
Great to hear about someone’s actual experience rather than an overview
I think what project trust is doing is amazing and I can’t wait to participate this year.
Definitely considering taking a gap year with project trust inspiring and informative
The presentation made me seriously consider going on a gap year with project trust. It seems like good life experience
The presentation I found really inspiring as it made me realise that there is maybe a good option of what to do after school as I still don’t know what I want to do after I leave school.
In November 2021, four of our senior pupils from Alford Academy took part in the British Physics Olympiad. The Olympiad is a a competition open to all schools, in which pupils across the UK produce written answers to several challenging questions in theoretical physics. Their answers are sent to Oxford University for marking and results are released later, once all papers in the country have been reviewed by markers.
Our pupils worked hard to prepare for this extracurricular activity and developed their problem solving skills and their confidence to deal with new tasks. This year, 2,300 pupils from 393 schools across the UK took part in the competition.
Our pupils were awarded two bronze II awards and two commendations for their performance in the written exam.
We would like to thank the Rotary Club in Alford for sponsoring us to take part in this competition and to everyone in the academy for their time and effort in helping us.
