2013 Award Winners!

Yet again, the performance of pupils from Kyle Academy in Accelerated Reader has been outstanding. This has been recognised with the presentation of certificates and book tokens at prize giving.

The top 5 pupils with the highest scores in S1 are Zoe Dinnie, Aidan Johnstone, Callum Cormican, Rand Tayyem and Matthew Lubek.

The top 5 pupils with the highest scores in S2 are Beth Chalmers, Quentin Norris, Niamh Gilfillan, Erin Robertson and Lara Seville.

In addition Jack Allen (S1) and Declan Thomson (S2) both won awards for consistent positive effort and achievement in reading. Marcus McCulloch (S1) is a well deserved recipient of the John Peter Boyle Memorial Award.

Well done to all!

Amazing Accelerated Reader stats!

• Pupils at Kyle Academy have read and undertaken quizzes on 2060 books!

• Pupils have read an amazing 72,439,894 words!

• 65% of pupils have averaged 85% or more on book quizzes!

• 91% of pupils have participated in the scheme and undertaken a quiz!
Figures April 2013.

Technical problems!

Unfortunately, I have not been able to update this Blog as often as I would like due to the Recent Upgrade to Windows 8, which won't let me sign in to Blogger. Hopefully this will be resolved soon so I can share more good news from Kyle Academy!

Boswell Book Festival 2013!

                                                                                                                                                           Pupils from Kyle thoroughly enjoyed the visit to the Boswell Book Festival in glorious sunshine today!

Award winning author Keith Gray talked about his background and how he became a successful writer.  His advice is that anyone can become an author, what you need most is Imagination and Experience. He also regaled us witth some funny anecdotes before signing books and meeting pupils.
We then enjoyed a tour of the house, meeting Boswell, his father, housekeeper and maid.
Pupils then participated in a writing workshop to round off the morning.

A great day out!

Carnegie Book Awards 2013!

Kyle Academy will be shadowing the 2013 CILIP Carnegie Children's Book Awards. Eight great titles have been nominated:
Wonder by R.J.Palacio; Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein; A Boy and a Bear in a Boat by Dave Shelton; Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick; In Darkness by Nick Lake; Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner; A Greyhound of a Girl by Roddy Doyle and The Weight of Water by Sarah Crossan.
Please come and join our shadowing group! More information here:   Shortlist 2013

Boswell Book Festival May 2013!

Places are still available on the S1 and S2 trip to the Boswell Book Festival on May 17th, 2013!
We will be attending the event:
Books are for Life, Not Just for Homework  with author Keith Gray.
More details can be found here: Boswell Book Festival
See Mr Waterston for a consent form.

Happy World Book Night 2013!

To celebrate World Book Night 2013, Mr Waterston has special copies of
Andy McNab's Last Night Another Soldier...
to give free to good homes!

World Book Night is all about sharing stories  and spreading the joy of reading. To find out more go to:

http://www.worldbooknight.org/about-us

A warm welcome to Inspectors of HMIE!

Kyle Academy wishes a warm welcome to all Inspectors from HMIE who are visting the school week beginning 22nd April.

Red Nose Day Fun!

Comic Relief  took Kyle by storm last week when £171.70 was raised  for this amazing cause:

Enterprising S1 girls organised a bake sale and a book sale;
The French Department sold cakes;
Mrs McCulloch sold cakes in the staffroom.

Well done everybody!!!

Aye Write! 2013

Pupils from Kyle Academy visited the 2013 Aye Write! book festival at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow and had a fantastic time. We thoroughly enjoyed events by graphic novel experts Metaphrog and  award winning Scottish  author  Theresa Breslin .

 

 

SYP Voting starts today!

Welcome to the polling station for the 2013 SYP elections!

http://elections.youngscot.org/Election/SelectConstituencyGroup/scottish-youth-parliament-elections-2013

Don't forget to vote!

Vote for Abbie!

Vote for Abbie Hamilton, your Kyle Academy candidate in the March 2013 SYP Elections!

Make sure you have your Young Scot Card and vote online from
4 - 14th March.

www.syp.org.uk/elections

Click to read Abbie's manifesto here! 

Love is in the Ayr! Valentine's Day Competition

Congratulations to all the S1 participants who won a prize in the Valentine's Day poetry competition. Well done!

The top 3 poems will be published on the Young Scot website.

Thanks to  Ann from Young Scot and P.C. Sykes for prizes. :-)

http://www.youngscot.org/local/south-ayrshire

Scottish Children's Book Awards 2012/13

Pupils from Kyle Academy have voted for their favourite books from this year's shortlist. In no particular order we registered the following votes:

Cathy MacPhail - Out of the Depths - 3 votes
Elizabeth Wein - Code Name Verity - 2 votes
Elizabeth Laird - The Prince Who Walked with Lions - 4 votes
James Killgore - Soldier's Game - 1 vote

Winners will be announced on 7th March - World Book Day! Watch this space...

Image courtesy http://www.scottishbooktrust.com/

Stop Press! Kyle wins Darren Shan books!

Great news! Kyle Academy has been lucky enough to win a class set of Darren Shan books courtesy of the Scottish BookTrust... More details to follow!  :-)  ***Picture from Darrenshan.com***

Literacy Skills in RME

 Pupils at Kyle Academy use a range of Literacy skills on a daily basis. A great example is the S1 RME project on Islam where pupils develop their reading skills by:

1. Using a range of sources to find information (Internet and Books);
2. Skimming a text to see if it meets their needs;
3. Scanning for keywords to locate the most relevant information;
4. Sorting information and organising their thinking;
5. Communicating what they have learned by creating a unique Bitstrips comic.

   
    
Lucy McCracken, S1WLR, Miss Anderson's class.

Master of Horror - Darren Shan!

S2 pupils in Ms Moore's class enjoyed this morning's Scottish Booktrust  Authorslive event with Darren Shan. This was broadcast live across the Internet on the BBC website and on GLOW at 11am. Darren opened by reading a gory extract  from his terrifying new 12 part series of books, Zom-B. He also shared tips and anecdotes about how he approaches his writing - essential viewing!
The event will soon be available to watch on I-Player.

SBT Learning Resources (www.scottishbooktrust.com)

Darren Shan's Home Page (www.darrenshan.com)

 www.bbc.co.uk/authorslive

Raising the profile of Literacy in school

We continue to raise the profile of literacy in by displaying information about the Kyle Academy Book Club as well as current events related to reading in school. This display is opposite the ICT suite on the ground floor.

Complete Issues

Kyle Academy subscribes to the Complete Issues resource package which provides essential research material, comment and opinion on current events for discursive essays. The lastest edition of Fact File 13 is in the Library and online for all the facts and figures you need to understand the world we live in! See posters for login details.