: It is an important part of the “can do” ethos and community spirit of the school that, where possible, our pupils come in uniform. You should now have received your order forms for uniform for next session. Please remember the final date for orders for delivery on Monday 22nd August must be received by Monday 30th May.
All posts by Mr McLaren
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:
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friendship and family
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how they find school
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play and what they do in their free time
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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?
FairAware!
The children’s choice commitee (CCC) and Eco committees have identified sustainability as an action to undertake this year, particularly raising awareness of Fairtrade. Primary 6 embraced Fairtrade as their context and through the work they have carried out, we are now a Fair Aware school having achieved our first Fairtrade school award. P6 and the CCC have been pro-active in making changes in our school. We now have Fairtrade products available in our dinner hall, we run a very successful Fairtrade tuck shop and we have introduced Fairtrade products to our staff room.
We are now working towards our second Fairtrade award and due to the combined efforts of p6 and the CCC we are well on our way to achieving this.
Monitoring Latecoming 2016
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! However, recently we have noticed a number of our pupils who are persistently coming into school after the school day has started.
Can we remind parents and carers that children should enter the school through the playground doors with their classmates and not be dropped off in the school car park. Anyone entering the building through the front door after the bell will be marked as late unless a previous arrangement has been made with the school. The start of the day sets the tone: messages are given, information about the events of the day is shared and learning started.We would encourage families to get in touch with us if they are having difficulties getting children to school on time, so that we may consider ways in which support may be offered.
We track and record latecoming and our results will be available to view on the school website. We also share this information with our Attendance and Welfare officer who will be assisting us setting up support meetings for families who are persistently late.
