Hello again everyone,

If you have a child in P1-3, I hope that you have found the information shared with you earlier in the week useful.  The teachers have been in school this week and we are all ready and very much looking forward to seeing our P1-3 children on Monday.  As the children will be enjoying lots of playing and learning outdoors, we would be very grateful if you could please provide your child with a change of outdoor footwear suitable for all weathers. These can, if you wish and it is easier for you, be left in school and we ask that they’re put in a named plastic bag so that they’re easily identified. Thank you. I hope all your wee ones are looking forward to Monday as much as myself and the staff are. 🙂

For our P4-7 children who will be continuing to use our Hub provision going forwards, we are planning to take our pupils outdoors, as often as possible, to take part in P.E. lessons and outdoor learning in order to provide an additional challenge and enjoyment to their learning, as well as being mindful of course of promoting positive health and well-being. We would therefore be very grateful if these children could bring a change of outdoor footwear, in a plastic bag, and a warm jacket with them to school whenever they are joining us in the hub each week. Thank you for your help and support with this.

As we continue to provide Remote Learning for our P4-7 children just now, we have been very keen to take on board any suggestions and feedback from children, parents and also of course my staff in order to ensure that we are mindful of the ongoing well-being of all.  Thank you to the parents who were able to join us at the live parent meets this week and for sharing your ongoing very positive comments and also some useful ideas and suggestions which have been great too.  We are therefore going to introduce a “Step Away Friday Fun Time” for stages P4-7. During this afternoon, the children will be provided with a variety of non-screen activities to complete and teachers will ask the children to choose what they would like to engage in for the afternoon.  These will include some suggestions for getting outdoors, art work, listening to set pieces of music, yoga, following a special interest project and lots more ideas but… they won’t involve looking at a screen.  Teachers will really look forward to hearing from their children throughout the week, what they have been choosing to do during the Friday afternoons and will explain this more fully to their classes on their Google Classroom.  We hope that the children will enjoy these activities and that this will also allow some breathing space for families.

East Renfrewshire Active Schools are challenging anyone with a connection to East Renfrewshire – school pupils, parents, grandparents, staff – to walk, cycle or run to Tokyo (5759 miles) and they would like your help! Active Schools are tracking the miles using an app called STRAVA.  If your family would like to take part in this challenge, it is free to sign up for a STRAVA account. Strava will ask you if you want to pay for the app – but there is no need to as the free app is absolutely fine for this challenge. IMPORTANT INFORMATION: To download and use the STRAVA app you need to be at least 13 years old, so an adult will need to download the app and accompany primary children while they are taking part, making this a family challenge rather than solely for our pupils. More information and details on this challenge can be found in the attached document ‘Let’s Get to Tokyo’.

Each year, East Renfrewshire Education Department produces their Standards and Quality Report for the previous school session, in this case 2019-20. If you would like to read the report, you can do so by clicking on this link https://www.eastrenfrewshire.gov.uk/department-performance-information.

Have a good weekend everyone, take good care of yourself and also each other, please get in touch at any time if you need anything at all or if you would like to discuss anything to do with your own child.

Mrs Yvonne Donaldson