What a positive start it has been to our new term at Grange, with so much Great Grange Learning underway. As always there is a buzz of activity and learning around our school as we all continue to REACH FOR THE STARS! #believe…

#progress – This term we will issue our first of three Progress Updates of the year to let you know how the children are progressing in their learning. Based upon feedback from parents last session we have included a teacher comment and the children’s own learning goals. Where children are not yet making the progress we would hope for, staff will be in touch to discuss the support which is in place in school and ways you can help at home. I am sure you will continue to be as impressed as I am by the children’s ability to discuss their progress in learning at our upcoming Learner Led Conferences. On the night the children will also be Sharing Our Learning from our Gaming @ Grange project so don’t miss it!

#positivity – We all know at Grange that we need to be challenged in our learning to become Great Grange Learners and our aim this year is to increase the level of challenge for everyone.We have used feedback from parents, staff and children to come up with our own definition of what we mean by CHALLENGE at Grange…

CHALLENGE IS EITHER TAKING THE NEXT STEP IN LEARNING OR LEARNING THAT STIMULATES YOU TO THINK, REASON OR SOLVE PROBLEMS – SOMETIMES IT’S BOTH!!

This is a first draft and we plan to use this with the children to help us have a shared understanding of what challenge looks like and of course what it feels like (it doesn’t always feel good!). Our staff have been working hard to try out different ways of increasing challenge in our classrooms and I look forward to sharing our progress with you over the year.

#rightchoices – We continue to have weekly Bounce Back sessions in our classes to help the children explore their social and emotional well-being. This will be particularly helpful as we move forward with our work on challenge as we all need the resilience to deal with our mistakes in learning and to use mistakes as opportunities to learn. Our Health Hub MAD group will continue to work hard to encourage everyone to make healthy choices and our Eco Warriors are doing a great job with their recycling duties – well done everyone!

#engageyourself – Our MAD Fundraisers are delighted to have raised over £650 from their apple crumble bags and the chocolate tombola. Thank you to everyone who supported them and they have great plans for the Christmas Fayre to build on their profit to help pay for our Christmas cinema trip. Another exciting enterprise venture has been developed by a group of P5 boys who are making and selling waffles to raise funds for our playground so watch out for more information – look out Sir Alan Sugar! Huge thanks as always to our Parent Council and Grange Gabbers for continuing to support the school by sharing views and opinions and for organising fantastic Halloween events for everyone. Don’t forget that the minutes from Parent Council meetings can be accessed on the school blog and everyone is always welcome to come along and help to improve our school. Our next family learning event will look at supporting our children to cope with anxiety and to build resilience – we look forward to seeing you on the night!

#acceptance –  We strive at Grange to make sure that we know all of our children on an individual basis to ensure they are making progress in learning and that they are happy! To help us with this we will be reviewing our Great Grange Relationships policy this Friday at Grange Gabbers 9.30-10.30am where we will share scripts used by staff and we will discuss rewards and consequences. Please come along if you would like to get involved – by sharing your views and opinions you help us to improve and to continue to make Grange great!

As you can imagine this is just a snapshot of all the amazing work that is going on in our school… I continue to feel privileged to work with such committed staff and of course wonderful children. Their energy, creativity and enthusiasm make our school the vibrant learning environment that it is and make us all proud to be Grangers! #believe