Onthank’s Excellent Learning Experience

Last week, we shared our newly developed Onthank’s Excellent Learning Experience.

Our pupils brought this to life by creating a podcast explaining what the Excellent Learning Experience means to them and how it is used across our school. In addition, our talented Primary 7 pupils produced a video to explain each aspect of the Excellent Learning Experience and how it supports learning in our classrooms.

Click the link below to take a look at our video!

Onthank’s Excellent Learning Journey Video

Onthank’s Excellent Learning Experience

Over this session, we have been working together as a school community to develop what an Excellent Learning Experience looks like at our school. Pupils, staff and parents have all played an important role in shaping this shared vision.

To bring our ideas to life, we used our school mascot, Paddington Bear, and his suitcase to represent the important things we believe should be “packed” into every excellent lesson.

We are delighted to share that some of our pupils have recorded this month’s podcast explaining more about our newly developed Excellent Learning Experience, in their own words. Their enthusiasm, ideas and confidence really shine through.

Big Walk and Wheel Event

Onthank Primary School and Additional Support for Learning Centre are taking part in this year’s Big Walk and Wheel Event. The Big Walk and Wheel is the UK’s largest walking, wheeling, scooting and cycling to school challenge. We are encouraging as many of our pupils across the whole school to take part in this 10-day challenge. The event takes place from Monday 16th March – Friday 27th March. Pupils will record how they travelled to school in their classes each morning. Our Junior Road Safety Officers will be leading this event.

Pupils can store their bikes and scooters in the bike shed.

 

 

P7 – Careers Who am I? Live Lesson

P7 pupils joined a careers live lesson which focused on pupils understanding the skills and qualities that they have and how these can contribute to their future career. P7 pupils enjoyed working with Skills Development Scotland and linking their personal skills and qualities to meta-skills.

 

October’s Podthank

Here is October’s Pod Thank Podcast created by our talented P7 pupils.  Our pupils’ Podcast will help our community to learn more about what we do as a Rights Respecting School.  The focus this month is our
new ‘CARES’ school values.
There is also a pupil voice School dinner review- top marks for our kitchen team!
The sound effects and guitar intros are created by pupils with musical talents.

Reduce, Re-use, Recycle

Uniform Recycling 

  We are delighted to continue Onthank’s School Uniform Recycling System. We are committed to continuing to meet the important ECO School Status criteria and are also proud of our achievement of being recognised as a UNICEF Gold Level Rights Respecting School.

We are always very keen to teach our children about the importance of looking after the planet, while looking for new ways that we can contribute towards ECO and Sustainability Global Goals.

 We also appreciate that the buying of school uniform adds extra costs to families and want to try to help with this as much as possible, as well as finding sustainable ways to recycle the vast volume of un-named uniform items that lie unclaimed in our lost property area.

We are therefore inviting you to help support us, the planet and each other, by handing in any items of school uniform which are clean and in good condition, but are no longer required by your child. These items will then be sorted and recycled and a regular uniform stall will be set up to give you the opportunity to view and take away any items of uniform that can be put to good use by your child. All items are free and there will be no charge for any item at this stall.

 

                   

Onthank’s Soccer Aid

⚽ONTHANK’S SOCCER AID⚽
UNCRC Articles 24 and 31
 
Our partner school, Abbey Foundation, in Uganda experienced heavy rainfall and their toilets collapsed and were damaged. P7s, along with Miss Telford, planned and led a Soccer Aid event to try and raise money to help them with their rebuild to access a basic need and to promote children’s rights. Check out some of the highlights in the video below with lots of fun activities included such as stage tournaments, inflatable dartboard and goals, bubble football, blind football, football tennis, rob the nest and a staff vs P7 game. All children received an ice pole and certificate for their efforts and winners got an extra break time.
An amazing £487.50 was raised – thank you to everyone who donated, it is greatly appreciated!
Special thanks to Blair and the Football Fun Factory, Craig at Bubble Soccer World and former Scotland player Brian McClair and Kirsten for helping make the days extra fun! We had a BALL⚽

Podthank Episode 1

P7 have created our very first podcast.  We know you are going to love episode 1!

 

VE Day Celebration🇬🇧

Many classes celebrated 80th Anniversary of VE Day. P2/1 hoisted a VE Day flag to mark the occasion.Thank you to Isaac’s family for donating the flag to us.

World Book Day📚⚽️

We were delighted to welcome Captain Conker and Darryl to our school to read to our P1 and P2 pupils. They left us copies of  Captain Conker and The Dastardly Plan to read ourselves. Lots of other activities took place throughout the school. Here are some wonderful photographs of  us celebrating World Book day.

 

 

 

Scottish Poetry

Well done to all pupils who learned their Scottish Poems and recited them in class. We held our Class Winners’ Competition and everyone was excellent. Thank you to all Pupil Council Reps and all Rights Respecting School Ambassadors for their part in voting. Thank you to our Chairs: Lucy, Olivia, Abigail and Shannon for playing their part in the competition.

New Partner School in Uganda

We are delighted to inform you that we have a new Partner School in Uganda. We look forward to sharing our school news and finding out about Abbey Foundation Nursery and Primary School. 

Please see email from HT : Kayto Abbey
Abbey Foundation Nursery and Primary School is our school that provides education and care for orphans in Sourthern Uganda. 
The school caters to both orphans and some local paying students and is located just a few kilometers outside of the town of Lwengo.  The student population is mostly from Southern Uganda where many children have been affected by HIV/AIDS. Many of the students’ parents were killed by AIDS.
 Our vision is to have a sustainable school providing much needed education with continuity from pre-school to vocational courses. With a stimulating environment, innovative resources and a dedicated team of staff and volunteers.
 Our school enriches the lives of children and families in the greater Lwengo region and help form future leaders for Uganda.
The news of partnering with your school through British council website were received with joy!!
We look forward to hearing from you again and working together for a strong partnership between our schools.
I am grateful

P1 Enrolment

P1 Registration

For children who turn age of 5 years between 1 March 2025 and 28 February 2026 and whose parents and carers wish them to attend school should be registered for education during the week Monday 13 January 2025 until Friday 17 January 2025.  To register you should complete an online application and submit no later than Friday 17 January 2025.  Register at: – https://www.east-ayrshire.gov.uk/schooladmissions

To register your child you will require to upload a copy of your child’s birth certificate and two proofs of your residence in the catchment area in the form of a Council Tax Notice or Utility Bill.  Should you require a copy of your child’s birth certificate for Registration, this can be obtained at www.certificates.scot

If you are unable to register online then please phone your local school who will assist you to register your child.

Placing Requests

Parents and carers who wish to make a placing request must first enrol their child/children at their catchment school.

Placing requests for the session beginning August 2025, should be received by 31 January 2025.  Requests must be completed and submitted online at: https://www.east-ayrshire.gov.uk/schoolplacingrequest

Santa visited Onthank🎅🏼🧑🏼‍🎄

We were delighted to welcome Santa to our school. He delivered presents for all of our P1-P3 pupils. Thank you to our generous Parent Council for helping Santa to choose  books for all our P1-P3 pupils. Thank you also to Santa’s Elves for helping to wrap them all. The whole school was outside to sing/dance with Santa. Merry Christmas to all.

 

Onthank Christmas Fayre

Thank you to everyone who came along to our school Christmas Fayre. We were delighted to welcome so many visitors to our school. Thank you to all who gave their time to help out and to those who donated home baking, toys, books and games. Our pupils did a great job making their crafts and working their own stalls. They have worked hard over the last few weeks to get the Fayre ready. A huge thank you to our Community for supporting us. It definitely made us all feel Christmassy.

 

World Children’s Day

We celebrated World Children’s Day by taking part in an online UNICEF Assembly with over 25o schools across Scotland. We learned about the importance of Climate Change and how this links to Children’s Rights.

We worked in groups to brainstorm our ideas. We are keen to encourage our School and Community to take action!

Seeds of Change NLK

A huge well done and thank you to  Elise, Olivia, Thea, Lewis and Hayden who who represented  our school at the Fellowship of Kilmarnock Churches event  at the New Laigh Kirk. The theme of the event was ‘Seeds of Change: Caring for Our Environment’. We were able to share with the congregation what we do as an Eco School.  All pupils were a credit to the school.  We sent in posters which were displayed in the church. Well  done to our poster winners: Thea, Thomas & Clara.  

Pudsey visited Onthank Primary

Thank you to everyone for your kind donations. We have counted £417 so far. We were delighted to welcome Pudsey to our school this morning. We also had a fun time dancing outside with Mr Swan. As you can see from our photos we all had a fabulous day.