Curriculum for Excellence
Curriculum for Excellence and Our Community Enterprise Project
The purpose of Curriculum for Excellence is encapsulated in the four capacities – to enable each child or young person to be a successful learner, a confident individual, a responsible citizen and an effective contributor.
Through our Community Enterprise Project we are aiming to support all four of these capacities. The children involved in the St John’s Homecoming have been involved in many parts of its production. Some have attended Marketing and Technical Direction workshops with the Creative Learning team from Dundee Rep Theatre as part of the work of developing the St John’s Homecoming performance.
Within the Music and Computing departments the cast and musicians have worked together with Mr Colin Stewart (Principal Teacher, Music) and Mr Derek Thomson (Computing), and with help from Ms Vicky Watson (Music), to produce and record tracks for St John’s Homecoming. Aiofe McGuigan-O’Brien, who played a major role in the performance, recently won the Focus on Achievement award ‘Vocalist of the Year’ and Aiofe will continue to work with St John’s when she leaves at the end of this academic year. Mr Lennon (Drama) has worked with pupils to build a number of scenes in St John’s Homecoming based on ‘Sunset Song’ by Lewis Grassic Gibbon.
The 2009 Advanced Higher, Higher, S1 and S2 Art pupils have also been involved in creating artwork for the project. Some of these pieces of artwork are available for sale from the website.
Linking with both St John’s Homecoming and next year’s ‘The King of Lochee’ the History Department having embarked on an ambitious Oral History Project. Led by Dr William Kenefick of Dundee University, around forty pupils attended an Oral History Workshop at the end of last term. The aim of the group is to gather together oral testimony from Lochee residents past and present, hopefully providing a legacy for generations to come.
Scottish song writer Michael Marra, who is working with the school, has provided much support and encouragement to all musical pupils involved in the project. His efforts have enabled us to bring together a fantastic choir, orchestra and set of musicians. Michael will continue to help us develop our Community Enterprise Project over the coming years and will be heavily involved in ‘The King of Lochee’ musical, which is set for late 2010.
We have gained support from a number of large and small businesses in our community including, Rainbow Music, CAPE Ltd, Insights, BrightSolid and Dundee United and we want our links with these organisations to continue to grow. Through our relationship with businesses we can provide our pupils with enterprise experience and opportunities which provide a richer learning experience. Also with support from the recently established van der Kuyl Foundation we will be able to further support pupils in areas linked to education and learning.
The Future
We will continue to work on building the Community Enterprise Project over the coming year and already have a number of small projects that will encourage and develop the four capacities of our pupils further.
The next major step in our project will be to re-record and release a song Michael Marra wrote called ‘Hamish the Goalie’. Penned in 1983 in tribute to Dundee United legend, Hamish McAlpine. This part of the project will involve pupils from Music, Business Studies, Computing, Art and English and will be a whole school project. The entire CD will be produced by the pupils and staff of St John’s with support Dundee United and from the local community.
Work is already underway in preparing for next year’s larger production entitled ‘The King of Lochee’ . Again pupils from many different subject areas will be involved in all aspects of production from marketing to script writing to set co-ordination.
This project as a whole is very exciting for the St John’s Community. Through our project children and young people will be encouraged to contribute to the life and work of the school and, from the earliest stages, to exercise their responsibilities as members of a community. We will include opportunities to participate responsibly in decision making, to contribute as leaders and role models, to offer support and service to others and to play an active part in putting the values of the school community into practice.
