The Portpatrick Community Development Trust kindly organised a fantastic Halloween party for our pupils from both Portpatrick and St. Joseph’s. The hall looked amazing with creepy decorations galore. The refreshments were a frightful delight with vampire blood and ghost spirit drinks along with Halloween themed sweet and savoury treats. The event was very well attended, particularly for such a wet and windy night – it all added to the mood.
St. Joseph’s pupils are very enthusiastic in going for our Gold Rights Respecting Schools Award. The children are working together to learn about rights, for rights and through rights. We want to involve our families as much as possible. Your child will shortly come home with a book bag so you can chat about children’s rights with your child at home. This will be on a weekly rotation. In the
Linking with This Is Our Faith strand of the Mystery of God, our pupils decided to show how we can all take a role in caring for our environment. They created signposts around school to demonstrate where St. Joseph’s takes our stewardship roles and responsibilities seriously. This links with our positive action for our Rights Respecting Schools and Eco Schools Awards. This Is Our Faith – Mystery of God UNCRC Rights
We promote the development of the 4 capacities of Curriculum for Excellence in our children. All of our pupils are active participants in our pupil voice groups. Have read of the latest minutes for each group to see how they are leading positive change in our school. UNCRC Rights of the Child: Article 12 – Respect for Children’s Views, Article 24 – Environment SHANARRI – Included, Respected, Responsible Pupil Council
Our P5-7 pupils were thrilled to welcome a special visitor, Ella, to our classroom recently. Ella, from Scottish Book Trust, came to talk to us about the importance of books and shared fantastic ideas on how we can organise our school library to better suit our reading preferences. It was an insightful and hands-on experience for everyone involved. During the session, Ella introduced a diverse range of books for the
At St. Joseph’s, we encourage children to show our school values, such as resilience, co-operation and compassion at all times throughout the day. This doesn’t stop in the classroom! One of the ways we try to encourage this is through providing our P7 pupils with the opportunity to participate in the Play Leader Scheme, through Active Schools. This allows pupils to have the opportunity to lead outdoor games and encourage
Our recent Wider Achievement Afternoon was a wonderful showcase of our pupils’ enthusiasm, creativity, and teamwork! The entire session was child-led, allowing our pupils to choose an activity that truly excited them. This term, they could pick between hand knitting, STEM building, or art, which included online Halloween drawing tutorials or play-doh sculpting. We’re delighted to share that every pupil got their first choice of activity, making it a very
Today, our school community came together to attend a beautiful Mass service centred around the theme of Creation. The service was filled with joy as we sang some of our favourite hymns, including The Butterfly Song and The Colours of Day. The children sang with enthusiasm, filling the church with their lovely voices. Father Ben shared a heart-warming story about St. Francis of Assisi, who is known not only as
This week, our Primary 5-7 class had an exciting visit from Nigel, a representative from the Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels (SSRS) charity. As part of our social studies topic on Scottish local biodiversity, Nigel came to share his knowledge about red squirrels and how we can help protect them and other native Scottish mammals. Nigel gave an engaging presentation on the importance of red squirrels to our ecosystem and how
This week, our Primary 5-7 pupils took part in their second workshop on friendships, led by Matthew from Youth Work. The workshop was a wonderful opportunity for the children to deepen their understanding of friendships and relationships through fun and engaging activities. During the session, the pupils worked in pairs and small groups to discover more about each other’s interests, likes, and even their biggest fears. This activity was a
