Department of additional support

Teaching Staff

Mrs Bathie - PT of the department

Mr Sim - PT1 of the department

Ms Goff - Class teacher

Ms Green - Class teacher

Ms Stockdale - Class teacher

Ms Foster - Class teacher

Ms Shahzad (Maternity Cover) - Class teacher

Ms Mills - Class teacher

About Us

The Department of Additional Support in Lochgelly High School is a small community within the High School and very much part of the wider community. Currently we have fifty five pupils split into 6 classes from S1 to S6. Teaching staff are supported by a team of fourteen PSAs who assist with learning needs and personal care. Pupils have a wide range of additional support needs with a significant number having multiple complex needs. One of the challenges of this is to ensure that all pupils achieve their potential, that all needs are met and that youngsters leave at the end of their school career with a sense of self-worth and a positive post school destination. To ensure that our pupils achieve their potential as outlined in Curriculum for Excellence a wide range of strategies are deployed to access, track and celebrate learning and success whenever it occurs.

The pupils are in small group class settings and are taught English; Maths; Social Studies; Health and Wellbeing, RME and ICT within the department. Teachers in our senior classes deliver a wide range of SQA units across the curriculum at National 1 and National 2 including National awards in Personal Development and Personal Achievement.  

The pupils in the Department are placed in mainstream classes as appropriate to meet their needs.  All pupils experience a broad balanced curriculum accessing subject specialist teachers for all practical subjects either as a DAS group or within a mainstream class.  There is a high level of adult support in all classes.

Our vision

To encourage young people to achieve their potential and pursue positive pathways in life.

Our Values

Self-respect and respect for others

To be independent in life and responsible

To know how to work to the best of their abilities

To embrace all opportunities

Our Goal

To provide a broad range of experiences that prepare our pupils for adulthood.

Lochgelly High School Christmas Fair.

The Department of Additional Support Christmas fair goes from strength to strength. Friday the 6^th of December saw another successful Christmas fair held in the Department of Additional Support at Lochgelly High school. The fair is the ideal opportunity for pupils to complete units of their Personal Development Award and showcase their work. Pupils designed, created and sold their products as well as developed their organisational and interpersonal skills with members of the public including family and friends. The department raffle prize was once again a big talking point with a huge mixture of gifts on offer ranging from an electric toothbrush, bottles of whiskey, wine, port, tickets to a local football match  and not to mention a bumper £75 Christmas food hamper. A huge thank you to all the local businesses who support our venture each year, the staff for going above and beyond the call of duty and of course the pupils who make it look all so easy. A total of just under £500 was raised. Thank you

Disability Sport Fife Carpet Bowls Championship 2019

Eight pupils represented Lochgelly High School at the 2019 Carpet Bowls Championship at the Michael Wood sports and Leisure Centre in Glenrothes. Our Young sports stars were commended for their sportsmanship and natural talent shown on the day.  We would like to give a big thank you to Sarah Ewing para – commonwealth champion and her manager for coming in to help coach us on the four preceding Fridays before the championship.

Results:

Boys S1/S2 with a learning disability
Winner – Lee Mackie Lochgelly HS
Runner up – Olek Kobel – Lochgelly HS

Junior boys with a physical impairment
Winner – Josh Panes – Lochgelly HS

Runner up – Liam Bradbury – Glenrothes HS

Junior boys and girls S3/S4/S5 with a learning disability
Winner – Logan Anderson – Lochgelly HS
Runner up – Christopher Trowell – Glenrothes HS

On Wednesday the 20^th of November Twelve Lochgelly High D.A.S pupils were selected to represent Fife in the National Swimming Championships. This annual competition sees over 300 swimmers competing from all over Scotland at the impressive 10 lane International Swimming Centre in Glasgow. This venue used for numerous competitions including the commonwealth games a fitting setting for our young athletes. For our first year pupils this was the first time that they had experienced a competition of this magnitude. A big well done to Connor McDonnell and Savanna Hodge.

DAS 1/2 

Have been looking at wants and needs in Social Studies. We have focused on food by looking at the 5 food groups and we looked at food labels and designed our food label. We also looked at the importance of water and made an information leaflet. 

In RME we have looked at the 10 commandments and made a poster to display this and to show our understanding we choose one or more commandment and said what it meant and why it was important. 

In Art we created portraits of ourselves using fruit and vegetables. We had to think about the different foods and their shape and how similar they were to facial features. We have also created warm and cool autumn tree pictures. 

Writing: We have been doing functional writing so have used ICT to write instructions of how to make tea and toast (which is what we did in Life Skills) and we are just now looking at creating our own event for invitation writing (also using ICT).

DAS SP1

This term we have been focusing on our National Qualifications with lots of life skills to help make them realistic. Planning our excursions online, selecting destinations and routes then heading out to Edinburgh Fringe, The Seagull Trust at Ratho Canal and shopping in Dunfermline, Kirkcaldy and Glenrothes. All of our journeying and travel planning will lead to different qualifications.

January News Letter