Realigning Children’s Services

Survey of pupils in P5 to P7

Realigning Children’s Services is an important programme about the lives of children in Scotland.

This is an entirely new survey, designed specifically to meet the needs of the RCS programme. Children will complete a web-based questionnaire themselves during a lesson at primary school.  All children in P5-P7 will complete the same questionnaire, regardless of which school year they are in. The differences in age are unlikely to have a significant effect on how they interpret and respond to the questions.

Children  will be  asked about:

  • friendship and family

  • how they find school

  • play and what they do in their free time

  • health and feelings

Before the Easter holidays further information will be sent out via pupil post with the survey planned to take place after the holidays.

Primary 2 request for help!

P2 are planning a theme based around food and cooking for the summer term. This is a big challenge, as we do not have a lot of cooking equipment in the school. We are now collecting donations of used small kitchen equipment and utensils, including mixing bowls, spoons, scales, storage containers and anything else you might use in your kitchen! It is essential that these items are clean and undamaged. We would also welcome donations of non-perishable ingredients for cooking and baking including flour, sugar, baking powder, dried fruits, tinned tomatoes, herbs and spices and anything else you might have at home. All food products should be sealed in their original packaging.    Thanks for your help!  P2 and Mrs Budge.

Latecoming

We are all aware of how busy our households can be at certain times of the day, and getting everyone off to their various destinations in the morning can be quite a feat! We continue to monitor those children who arrive at school at least 10 minutes after the school day has started.   We would much rather that our pupils were late, but here, than lateness causing a complete day missed.  Our school life is pretty hectic and filled with so much that, as long as our young people are well enough to be at school, we really need them to be here and be learning.  By the same token, though, the start of the day sets the tone: messages are given, information about the events of the day is shared and things get started.  I would therefore ask that your child is, please, at school, whenever possible, for the start of the day. We do letter individual parents of our concerns. If this is an issue for you and your child please do not hesitate to contact the school so that we can discuss support. In accordance with national policy schools do track and monitor attendance. As such, our local authority guidelines are in place. Therefore standard letters are regularly issued to parents regarding this matter. We are always available to discuss any issues affecting your child’s attendance at school.

Open Evening

As usual during our spring term we offer an invitation to everyone to come along to the school to see what we’ve all been up to.  This year’s Open Evening will take place on Tuesday 22nd March between 6.30 and 7.30pm.  We invite all friends and family members to come along to visit from our nursery up to the top floor and share in all the interesting and colourful learning that has been going on recently. We are also opening our Fairtrade café again from 6.00p.m. until 7.15p.m. in the dining hall.  Why not pop into the nursery and see all the colourful and engaging activities there where our learning journeys begin? In both P1 classes and P2 you can enter the Jurassic world of dinosaurs while P2/3 and P3 are Egyptologists discovering the wonderful world of the ancient Egyptians. On the middle floor you will be amazed at the scientific approaches to learning and problem solving around the world of plastic and just how amazing lego is in so many aspects of learning.    Mrs Donald and P4/5 are researching the wonderful world of animals and finding out about habitats, conservation and a host of amazing facts.   Meanwhile P5/6 are enjoying the French influenced world of Professor Layton as they tackle some tricky scientific based problems. P7 are embracing the use of technology based around Minecraft. This is always a busy, bustling time when the children and staff get to share all their learning with each other as well as their friends and families and we look forward to welcoming everyone.

Fairtrade

Our Fairtrade breakfast club was a great success and we would like to thank Mrs Birrell and the catering team for supporting this event.  You may have seen the tweets showcasing some of produce and events. Brake Brothers, catering supplies, donated the additional produce to ensure that we could offer this.  Well done to p6 and Mrs Elins who put a lot of work in to ensure this was a success.

Staff News

Both Mrs Ross and Mrs McQuade have been back into school working alongside everyone again. They were using their Keeping In Touch days and both aim to be back with us mid-June before returning to classes for the start of our new session in August.

At the request of the authority we were asked to release Miss Irvine to join a team in another school for the remainder of the session. Mrs Lesley Duncan has joined us on a temporary basis until the end of session, working with P1 to replace Miss Irvine.

Working with the Clackmannan Development Trust

Our Digital Leaders have been in consultation with a group from the Clackmannan Development Trust who are working to put together a Heritage walk around the village.  Mrs Donald has been introducing green screening to make videos to be placed around the walk.  We aim to create qr codes to direct walkers to the information.  Here is a test of the video.  What do you think?