Work Experience week

S4 pupils had an excellent week on work experience placement with the school receiving very favourable reports about the pupils from local businesses. Staff and pupils would like to thank Suzanne Murdoch at the Ayrshire Chamber of Commerce and all the companies who provided placements ensuring that our pupils had a successful and productive work experience. Thank you to Mr. Kelly, Mrs. McLay and Tammy Borthwick for organising the event.

Army work experience

Doon Academy has successfully secured 8 places on the Army work experience week in February 2011.

Barnado's Drop In Club

Barnado’s Drop In club will resume on the 5th November and will be available for pupils every 2 weeks. Everyone is welcome to attend.

Seasons for Growth

Kate MacLeod from Seasons for Growth will be visiting the school in November to provide in-service training on bereavement counselling to the core support team.

Construction course

Ayr College staff will be delivering a 12 week construction course, in school, to 8 S5 pupils. The old SFL base will be transformed into a construction site for the course beginning in February 2011.

Health4Life Comenius project meeting

As part of Doon Academy’s Comenius ‘Health4Life’ project Mrs Dorans and Mrs Ferrie attended a project meeting at the IES Alcarrras High School in Spain. Together with teachers from our partnership schools in Belgium, Poland, Greece, Portugal and Spain they finalised the arrangements for the project programme. Amongst the many activities at the meeting was a ‘Health4Life’ logo competition where the logo designed by our S3 pupils Cameron Smith and Varri Murdoch gained 2nd place. The next project meeting will be in Belgium in March attended by pupils and staff with the main focus being a health debate.

Student teachers

Staff and pupils bid a warm welcome to our returning student teachers, Suzanne Fraser in the English department and Ruth MacCallum in Biology, who will be in school for a 5 week placement until the 3rd December. We wish them every success.

Romania visit

During the October holiday week a team of twelve Doon Academy students, part of the Lazer Group from Bellsbank Church, visited Romania on a mission trip.
The team worked on projects with the Romanian based charity ‘The Smiles Foundation’. The group were involved in working on eleven of the nineteen projects that Smiles is currently developing in Romania. These activities included: working on a farm by cutting back hedges and painting pens; delivering aid to poor, deprived families: taking aid in the form of food, soap and sleeping bags to the homeless; visiting Tileagd school and village; delivering a container into Salard; visiting the emergency housing unit and helping at the crèche with children who need love and attention. Throughout the week the students were able to see ‘how the other half live’ and this proved to be an emotional journey for them. On return, the group hope to spread awareness about the Smiles Foundation and continue fund-raising in the school and the community to help to make a difference to the Romanian people.

Supported Study

Supported Study sessions after school on Wednesdays and Thursdays are now underway. All pupils in S4 to S6 are welcome to attend to gain extra help and support from their teachers.

"Wear it Pink"

The S4 Care Group organised a fundraising event for ‘Wear it Pink’ to raised money for Breast Cancer Research. They held a non-uniform pink day, cake sale and raffle which raised over £190. A special mention to Mr. Paton who deservedly won Best ‘Pink’ Dressed Male with his pink shirt, pink belt and pink furry boots!

Poppy Scotland Project

S1 and S2 Support for Learning pupils visited the War Memorials in Ayr as part of the Poppy Scotland project. The visit helped the pupils to understand how much the community contributed to the defence of the country during the two World Wars and how much it is still supporting the service personnel today with projects such as Combat Stress in Hollybush.

Doon on BBC

The BBC came into school and filmed some S1 pupils with Mr Gilmore and Ms Joss talking about their lives and researching on the Internet.
Here is the link to BBC School News Report website where you can see the finished report and film.

BBC First Click Campaign

Here is a link to a report on the First Click Campaign. Doon is mentioned at the bottom of the page.