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February 2014For Parents, Carers, Parishes and Community

Former Year 11 and Year 13 students from Bellerive filled the Concert Room at St George’s Hall in December, to receive their GCSE and A Level certificates.

The event opened with a rendition of the ‘Danse Macabre’ by the school orchestra.

Friends and family were then welcomed by headteacher Sister Brigid Halligan, She said: “Welcome back, we’re delighted to see you. What you all have collectively achieved is quite astounding.”

In total 46 subject awards were handed out for GCSE attainment and achievement and 15 to A Level students.

The final award of the night went to Erin Gleeson. It was presented to her by the Chair of Governors for achieving the highest A Level results in the school. Erin is now studying English Literature at the University of Edinburgh.

Sr Brigid went on to say: “We aim for excellence in all that we do and though your exam results were above national averages in many subjects, I believe it would be improper if that is all we recognise here tonight. The education of the whole person, not just the mind, is of the upmost important to us at Bellerive and our school is full of excellent, courteous and competent young people with a zest for learning and life. You should all be very proud of yourselves, I am proud of you as are the rest of the staff and of course your families. Congratulations.”

The evening was brought to a close by the school choir singing ‘O Holy Night.’

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CELEBRATING GCSE AND A LEVEL SUCCESS AT BELLERIVE

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Visit from CAFOD

Year 8 continued their fantastic fundraising efforts and managed to raise £1,400 for Cafod to support their work in the Philippines.

On Thursday 23rd January, Chris Lappine from Cafod came into Year 8’s assembly to explain some of the work that has been done and to accept the cheque. Everyone was moved by the stories she told and we are very grateful to Chris for taking the time to visit us.

Students Respond To Food Bank Challenge

Members of the Senior FCJ group and Sixth Form students worked hard to collect donations for the Food Bank. Year 11 pupils learnt about the reasons why demand on Food Bank resources had risen significantly in recent times; they used their knowledge to raise awareness in the year group and then collect in items on the ‘shopping list’ from each form. The response was overwhelming; the Food Bank’s representative was delighted to collect hundreds of food items from our collection.

Students from sixth forms and colleges from across Merseyside gathered in our Marie Madeleine Hall on Tuesday 21 January for the first meeting of the Merseyside Outreach Programme 2014.

Alice Wilby, the school’s liaison officer for St Peter’s College, Oxford talked students and their parents through the various bursaries available and offered an insight into life at the world-class university with an overview of the collegiate system and the range of extra-curricular activities.

Parents then had the chance to ask questions whilst the students took part in a couple of interactive activities in order to break the ice.

The 30 students from Holly Lodge, St John Plessington, Cardinal Heenan, Carmel College, King David High and Rainhill High will be visiting St Peter’s College in April. They will spend two days touring the facilities and city, meeting current students and taking part in mock tutorials.

Five girls from Bellerive have won places on the programme and will be taking part in that trip, Congratulations to Lizzie Farrington, Natalie Smith, Emma Mason, Megan Rice and Niamh Fearon. (pictured) Look out for further updates in April!.

Did you know?

Oxford University has a ‘copyright ‘library’ which means they hold a copy of every single book published in English since the 17th century! There are over 80 libraries on the university campus holding in the region of 11 million books which are housed on 120 miles of shelving!

Bellerive hosts Oxford University outreach event

Science

During the run up to Christmas, the Science department ran a competition to find a team of pupils to take part in the regional Top of the Bench competition, run by the Royal Society of Chemistry and held at Liverpool University. Pupils were asked to write a letter outlining why they should be chosen for this opportunity. There were some superb letters, but only four could be chosen! The winners of the competition were Daisy Scott (9T), Holli Spencer (9A), Julia Miloszewska (10A) and Charlotte Haskayne (11R). The girls worked hard on a poster for the competition and thoroughly enjoyed their day. Here is what Charlotte had to say: We began our day at the Top of the Bench competition by being thrown head first into an experiment to investigate the effect that different concentrations of hydrochloric acid had on fully dissolving a piece of magnesium. While this may sound boring, we were lucky enough to be doing this in the new £23 million Central Teaching Laboratory, which is the first of its kind in the UK, which made the experience very interesting!

In the afternoon, we had an hour chemistry exam, followed by a prize giving ceremony. Even though we may not have won any physical awards, we still gained many experiences from our day at the University of Liverpool, and had great fun using the equipment in the new labs.

Numbers add up for our Maths students

Well done to the upper school girls that took part in the UKMT Senior Mathematics Challenge. Congratulations to Emma Mason, Niamh Fearon, Philippa McCabe and Asheni Chakrawarthige-Fernando for doing a great job representing the school in this event.

Mathematics Quiz

Two cats called '1,2,3' & 'un,deux,trois' had a swimming race across the channel. 1,2,3 cat won because un, deux, trois cat sank!After you’ve wiped the tears of laughter from your eyes try thisS is 25% of 60, 60 is 80% of U, 80 is M% of 25. What is S+U+M ?

Hand your solutions into Bellerive office for a prize.

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FCJ club goes from strength to strength

Our students have access to a wide range of enrichment and extra-curricular activities such as music, dance and maths. They also have the opportunity to join FCJ Club. The group was established in 2008 to mark the 150th anniversary of the death of FCJ foundress Marie Madeleine. The first intake travelled to France for a celebratory mass at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris where they met pupils from FCJ’s global family of schools.

In 2013/14 members of FCJ Club demonstrate their faith in action by taking part in group prayers, theological discussions and undertaking practical activities such as collecting for charity and organising fundraising events.In the autumn term the group led Bellerive’s fundraising efforts to help those affected by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. £1600 was raised for Cafod in all. The group also collected donations to make up nine Christmas shoe boxes destined for children, teenagers and older people living in Albania.

A group of 21 students and three staff from Bellerive FCJ have recently returned from a fantastic week long skiing experience in the French Alps.

A group of 21 Year 10s were accompanied by Mr Wareing, Ms Brennan and Ms McCarthy to the Les Deux Alpes resort in the south east of France from 11 to 18 January.

Snow depth was around 30cm near the hotel and that increased to nearly two metres deep up on the slopes. Snow fell every day and temperatures dropped as low as -16 degrees!

Novice and experienced skiers were divided into two groups and everyone made excellent progress under the expert tuition of our instructors Euan and Eric - By the end of the week everyone was able to ski confidently on blue slopes.

Après ski activities included a trip to the local town for a game of tenpin bowling, a pizza night and a quiz night.A presentation evening was held on the final night where pupils received progress medals from their

Bellerive students and staff hit the slopes!

ski instructors, five beginner bronze medals and 16 silver intermediate medals were handed out.

Mr Wareing said: “It was an amazing trip and such a fantastic experience

for both students and staff. We all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and everyone hasn't stopped asking to go back since we returned!”

Tiny Giants Theatre Company perform A Christmas Carol in Bellerive

In the last week of the autumn term, Bellerive students were treated to the festive treat of watching a one hour performance of A Christmas Carol. It was performed by the creative and energetic three person theatre company, Tiny Giants.

They used a mini set that rotated effectively to reveal the dark and haunting settings in the novel. Contrasting colours of black, white and grey added to the ghostly feel of the performance. The music the company used, such as loud chiming bells and slow haunting melodies also added a sinister feel to the performance. However, there were also some very funny parts to lighten the tone.

Overall, we thought the performance was a brilliant and accurate portrayal of the original text. It appealed to all ages, as shown by the performance receiving a great reception from the audience which consisted of Years 7, 11 and staff. No wonder A Christmas Carol by Tiny Giants is invited back every year!

Our Y8 students visited the University of Central Lancashire recently for a languages day. Here's how they got on.....

Our Trip to University of Central Lancashire, January 2014.

We started our great trip at 9:30am to UCLAN. We all boarded the coach and left school. The journey took about 1 hour and a half but the time flew by because and my friend Veronika and I were busy chatting.

When we got there we were given a UCLAN pen and then we followed a lovely girl called Lucy to our first class. When we got there (after a few wrong turns) we found out that we would be learning Russian. I learned how to say my name, say hello and many other things. After an hour of fun, it was time for lunch. My friends sat and talked about how much fun learning languages is. Before we went to our next class, Lucy gave us a little tour of the University’s campus. Lucy told us all about the University and what you can study there. Then it was time for Arabic. The woman who taught us was called Saadia and she was lovely.

Another hour went by and it was time for the prize giving. Lots of people won prizes for their achievements throughout the day. Finally, it was time to board the coach and go home.

I thought that the day went really well and it’s good to learn as many languages as you can because it can help you get a job and it's fun!

By Faith Parkes 8J

Language Enrichment Event at the University of Central Lancashire

We were on our way to the university and everyone was excited. We were unsure of what languages we would learn and what we would do during the day. Once we arrived we were introduced to Lucy who was a student and our guide.

First we went to a Russian class where we learnt to spell our names and other short phrases. We were taught a bit about Russian culture and traditions. Russian was hard to learn as they have a completely different alphabet. After lunch Lucy took us on a tour of the campus. We were allowed to ask questions about university life and the different courses we wanted to take.

In the afternoon we went to Arabic. It was hard but fun, we learnt to write our names again and some short phrases. We all went up in pairs and had a short conversation in Arabic. We also learnt numbers from 1-10. Then we had a competition to see who could remember them best. It was fun and we won chocolate coins. We then went to a mini assembly with the other schools who were at the event. The head of languages gave us a talk on careers in languages and then gave out prizes to people who had done well in the classes. After the assembly it was time to go home. The day was very interesting and we all enjoyed it.

By Anna Gorman-Cargill

Happy New YearThe Language Club theme for January has been ‘Mandarin’ and we have been celebrating Chinese New Year (Friday 31st January). This is the Year of the Horse and the girls attending have been eager to find out which animal represents the year of their birth. They have been getting into the spirit of the Liverpool Chinatown celebrations by producing masks, lanterns and dragons. They have also selected a ‘new’ Chinese name and have successfully introduced themselves in Mandarin. The club would particularly like to thank Yun Yun (Ella) Liu (8A), Wenxin Wang (7T) and Cate Davies (8R) who were our resident China experts. These girls gave invaluable help with pronunciation and translation of names.Kung Hei Fat Choy!

Year 8 Football

Congratulations to the Year 8 football team who won the South League tournament. The girls will play in the city finals at a later date against the north side of the city.

The girls won all their matches and conceded no goals. Fantastic!

The Year 7 league has just begun and we have great hopes that our team will follow the success of Year 8.

Bellerive FCJ Catholic College, Windermere Terrace, Sefton Park, Liverpool, L8 3SB Tel: 0151 727 2064 Fax: 0151 727 8242 www.bellerivefcj.org