The Art Club at Sullivan Upper have been enjoying great success in recent weeks with our talented students from years 8 and 9 gaining recognition in Art & Design competitions at a national level! National Final of ERP Junk Kouture In the Autumn term, Art Club entered the ERP Junk Kouture competition in which students from across Ireland are asked to create exciting catwalk fashion pieces using only waste and recycled materials – http://www.junkkouture.com/. Seven groups from Sullivan entered their fantastic eco-friendly creations and of these three were selected to appear live on the catwalk at the Regional Final of the competition, held at the Europa Hotel Belfast in March this year. The models put on a superb show and one group, ‘Kimono Junk’ (designed by Year 9 students Katie Russell, Emily Boyd and Katie Ireland), was chosen to go through to the All Ireland Grand Final held at Citywest Hotel in Dublin on Friday 20th April. The girls were the youngest to appear in the final show and Katie Russell got tremendous support from the crowd as she strutted her stuff on the catwalk! The winner was a Lady Data who appeared live on The Late Late Show that evening. The groups had a fantastic time taking part and are full of inspiration and ideas for next year’s competition! The qualifying groups talk about their designs and ideas below:NATIONAL FINALIST : Kimono Junk – Katie Russell (model), Emily Boyd, Katie Ireland “Inspired by Japanese kimonos, we made the bodice out of old wallpaper which we painted. The skirt is made of woven seat belts and we have also used scrap fabrics and bottle tops. Our piece mixes the old with the new, and urban style with Japanese design. We hope to make people think about reusing materials.” REGIONAL FINALIST : Ginja Ninja – Christian Green (model), Dylan Jones, James Stewart “Our suit is inspired by armour and was made by combining cardboard, scrap paper, old sweet wrappers, tin cans, seat belts and plastic bottles together. We think we have found a creative way to make a life size action hero out of everyday rubbish!” “We gathered up lots of old ties that were going to waste, a colourful selection of waste materials and some imagination to create our recycled outfit.” Maggie Art Club members also submitted original artworks to the prestigious Texaco Children’s Art competition, now in its 58thyear. This competition attracted over 26,000 entries this year and Maggie Gillies in Year 8 did exceptionally well to be selected as a Runner-Up in the 12-13 years category. Her work can be seen on the websitehttp://www.texacochildrensart.com/ and will be exhibited nationally in the touring Texaco Children’s Art exhibition (Ulster Museum Nov 2012-Jan 2013).

GCSE Home Economics Students Launch Tasty Careers Campaign The campaign is designed to educate young people about the wide variety of excellent career opportunities available in the food and drink manufacturing sector. The campaign provides information on the type of courses available, as well as inside information on what the jobs are really like. In a time of great economic uncertainty, the food and drink manufacturing sector provides significant job opportunities in a stable and growing industry, thus making it a pivotal employer within Northern Ireland, and one which should be embraced.

Three groups from our school Art Club have qualified for the regional final of the ERP Junk Kouture competition, which inspires pupils to think of creative ways to reuse recycled and waste materials in designing catwalk fashion pieces. The final is to be held in the Europa Hotel on Sunday 11 March 2012, and as a percentage of their marks will be awarded for their ratings in an online vote we would really appreciate it if you would take a minute to vote for the groups online at http://www.erpjunkkouture.com/ Online voting begins on Monday 5 March 2012 – and if anyone would like to come along to the live final, which takes the form of a catwalk show, and support the pupils this would be greatly appreciated! Tickets will be available from the same site. The pupils involved are : ‘Ginja Ninja’ – James Stewart, Christian Green, Dylan Jones (Yr 9) ‘Kimono Junk’ – Katie Russell, Katie Ireland, Emily Boyd (Yr 9) ‘All Tied Up’ – Nia McNally, Maggie Gillies, Catherine McLean (Yr 8)

Congratulations to Nina Lloyd-Humphreys and Siona Davis of Year 12 who have been selected by audition to participate in a National Youth Theatre Residential in London during the summer.  The girls were selected from over 4,500 pupils across the UK! The girls commented: “Over the Easter holidays we were delighted to receive the exciting news that we have been selected to join the National Youth Theatre this summer. We will take part in an intensive two week residential programme in London with fellow drama students. Over 4,600 young people applied from across the UK, 500 were chosen to join the NYT this summer, including 5 students selected from the auditions held in February in Belfast. We will be following in the footsteps of Helen Mirren, Orlando Bloom, Daniel Craig, Catherine Tate, Kenneth Branagh to name just a few! The course will take place at the Rose Bruford College of performing arts. We are now working hard to raise the funds for the trip, but it is making the never-ending GCSE revision that little bit more bearable knowing that we will have the summer experience of a lifetime.”

Congratulations to Michael Robson and Connor Roberts of Year 13 and Matthew Allister of Year 14 who were selected for the Ireland U18 Hockey Squad which competed in the recent U21 Inter-provincial Championship. Incidentally, the Ulster U21 team was captained by former pupil, Peter Purcell.

Year 8 Pupils meet Princess Anne Most of you probably think that science is just an ordinary subject but wait till you hear this!  On Wednesday 7 March 2012 half of my class 8D and half of 8C met Her Royal Highness Princess Anne and just in case some of you don’t know how high up in the Royals she is, she’s the Queen’s daughter! We were told about two weeks before this great expedition that we were going to be taking part in a project, this project was called project 500!  At first most of us thought it would be just like any other project, an endless list of questions to answer and a nightmare test at the end but actually this project turned out to be quite different! We started off by separating into groups of boys and girls, then we drew numbers from a hat to find out what activity we were doing like making posters or searching the net. Then we got to work! On the big day after school we were all told to leave our mobile phones in the classroom but no-one really took any notice until later on!  When we arrived at Holywood Library we had to go through a security check which was thrilling!  We then sat down to get ready for science show with an amazing host scientific Sue!  Priory Integrated College were also there. Once the show was over we were told to get ready for the special guest, to tidy our uniforms up and that we should call her your Royal Highness the first time we spoke to her and if there was a second, Maam!  At this point we were all slightly worried about who this special guest was!  Priory already knew who the guest was but Sullivan had no clue which made it even more exciting if you ask me! Then Princess Anne entered and walked around all the tables to talk to us about the project we had been working on.  There was also a lot of tall people there with extremely tall cameras!  It was really scary but exciting at the same time. Once she had finished looking at our projects she stood to the side and watched the end of Scientific Sue’s show with us!  It was amazing meeting one of the Royals because I had never met one before!  When I got home I turned on the news to find a video clip of myself speaking to Princess Anne!  It was a very interesting day and I had a lot to tell my parents when I got home! By Beatrice Campbell, Year 8

Sullivan Junior Singers will be performing at Barnardo’s Spring into Song Concert. Barnardo’s Spring into Song Concert at St Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast on Thursday, 29 March 2012  at 7.30 pm contact telehone number 028 90674463 Admission £10

“The Great Debate” is a biennial debating competition organised by the Historical Association. This year, there were 24 heats across the UK and Ireland, with the winner of each heat going on to compete in the final at Merton College, Oxford. The topic for debate this year was “Why does history matter to you?”, which prompted a range of responses encompassing topics as diverse as the Brixton riots, the ancient goddess Ashera, Anne Boleyn and the Dutch Hunger Winter. After a competitive heat at the Drama Theatre in Sullivan, in which any of the competitiors could have be called a worthy winner, I was chosen to represent Belfast at the final in Oxford.  After an interesting and educational day of debate, I had the honour of being named runner-up. Sullivan already has a great reputation in this debate, having produced the 2010 winner and I was pleased to be able to keep up the school’s reputation in the field. The Great Debate is a fantastic opportunity for anyone interested in history and I would encourage other pupils in the future to get involved. Report on the HA website: http://www.history.org.uk/news/news_1457.html Link to Reuben: http://www.history.org.uk/resources/general_resource_3002_89.html Link to Jill: http://www.history.org.uk/resources/general_resource_5320.html

Sullivan Upper 24 v BRA 12 Congratulations to the team on winning the Northern Bank Schools’ Bowl Final against BRA on 8 March 2012.

Congratulations to Jill Luke who was runner-up in the UK final of the Historical Association’s Debating competition, held last weekend (11 March 2012) in Oxford.

Congratulations to Christopher Cree (10P) who won the Ulster Spring Provincial Tennis Matchplays and will now go on to represent Ulster in the National Spring Matchplays in Cobh, Cork from 23-25 March 2012.

ullivan Upper Physics Department Invade Europe (Well visit CERN!) The purpose of the trip was to visit the world renowned particle accelerator institute of Cern in Geneva. This was our inaugural visit which was largely organized by another member of the Physics Department Mrs C McCarey. Well the flight was fairly uneventful and just after 1pm local time we arrived in Geneva. There are many things you can say about the Swiss, but we were mightily impressed with the transport system so in no time at all we were walking through the sunny streets of Geneva following directions to the Youth Hostel. The youth hostel was clean and well run so after checking in we headed for th The rest of the afternoon was spent exploring the old part of the town, museums, street cafes for coffee and a pastry, cathedrals, more coffee houses, I sure you get the picture. The group met up again at 7pm and everyone was in high spirits exchanging stories of what they had done with their free time. The walk back to the hostel, once again was by the shore of Lake Geneva, was very pleasurable if a little cooler than in the afternoon. We sampled the delights of dinner in the youth hostel followed by a couple of hours of card games before we retired for the night. After breakfast we headed into town to catch the train to CERN, the train was scheduled to leave the platform at 9.42am and at 9.42 that is just what it did. The sun was shining brightly as we arrived at CERN, it had been shining all morning, so we reported to reception and were given just over an hour to visit the Microcosm e Our official tour started with a lecture by a recently retired researcher who gave use a very good talk on the background to the establishing of CERN, the work they are currently engaged in, and what the future may hold. We then did the short walk to the Atlas (one of the four detector sites on the large Hadron collider) control room. The detection system was explained in detail. The next part of the tour took us across the border into France where the complexity of build the LHC was explained and why one small leak in the coolant system took 13 months to fix and cost 30 million euros. It was a very enjoyable trip and I am very pleased and proud of the 17 pupils who were excellently behaved and very good company. Roll on next year. P Whittington