Friday Bundle 20.08.21

Hello everyone

We have thoroughly enjoyed having all of our children back in school.  They have appeared so happy to be back and are settling in really well.  We also had many new children and families starting with us on Wednesday too and it has been a pleasure to welcome you all into the Netherlee school community. The school is once again full of happy, excited and enthusiastic children and staff J – what more could a HT and school community hope for, as we look forwards to a productive school year and positive times ahead.

COMMUNICATION: As always, please remember that we are here to help at any time and no question, or concern, is ever too small.  Please don’t feel that you are taking up our time and wondering or worrying about something at home.  We can very often sort, fix or resolve things very quickly for your child so please do get in touch with myself, either of my two Depute Heads (Julie Roberts or Lynn Sweeney), the stage leaders or your child’s class teacher at any time- just call the school office (570 7260) and ask for the appropriate person to call you back or, email (SchoolMail@netherlee.e-renfrew.sch.uk)and someone will get back to you very quickly.  Please avoid placing notes in schoolbags as this is an unreliable method of communication.  Children often forget to hand letters to their teacher or notes can get lost or misplaced.  Our email and phone systems of communication really do work fantastically well and these are the safest and most efficient way of getting in touch with us.

SCHOOL UNIFORM: Our children have returned to school looking very smart in their school uniform and we greatly value and appreciate your support with this.  Children can of course continue to wear the school burgundy hoodie indoors as I’m aware that many families have bought several, additional hoodies last session.  ERC Education Department is currently reviewing its Dressing for Excellence Policy and I will of course share this with you when it is available.  I’m delighted by the response to our Uniform Recycling Rails- many parents have made use of this initiative already and we will continue to run this each week, on a Friday, at the following times: Primaries 1 – 3 8.50am-9am Clarkston Road Gate and Primaries 4 – 7 3.05pm- 3.15pm Side Gate, next to Acorns Nursery.  Please just pop by and help yourself to anything that you can make use of- there is a super selection of items available- thank you to the many parents who have also donated items for this.  The Red Donations Box is always available at the top of the main entrance, outdoor stairs and we continue to be very grateful for your ongoing uniform donations.

FULL PE HAS RETURNED TO THE CURRICULUM: We are delighted that we are now able to reintroduce indoor PE.  However, as it isn’t safe for children to undertake indoor PE, nor the full PE curriculum without changing into dry, PE appropriate shoes, from Monday 30th August, children will require to bring a pair of trainers, or similar, to school to change into on PE Days. Your child’s teacher will let you and your child know which days they have PE and this additional pair of PE shoes can be left in school, in a named bag, or can be brought home each day, whichever is most convenient for you.   In addition to this, children can now get changed for PE lessons.  We are going to reintroduce this gradually within the school and therefore children can continue to wear a school polo shirt on PE Days and only require to change the bottom part of their uniform into black (if possible) shorts or black (again, if possible) tracksuit trousers.  If children prefer, they can continue to wear a shirt and tie on PE days, and simply remove their tie for the lesson.  Please get in touch if you require any help with this.   

SNIP AND HOMEWORK: We are always very interested to listen to the views of our parent community and, in line with our new School and Nursery Improvement Plan 2021-2022 (SNIP) which is available to view on our website (https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/this session, we are keen to get your views on Homework within Netherlee.  We will very soon be carrying out a review of our Homework Policy and your views, as well as the views of teachers and pupils, will be sought as part of this review.  We will be in touch soon about this however, in the meantime, we will continue to use Google Classrooms for posting homework which will start week beginning 30th August.  Please ensure that your child can log into their Class Google Classroom prior to homework starting and if they have any problems at all with this, or with any aspect of accessing their homework via Google Classrooms, please get in touch as soon as possible and we will be able to help with this.  P1 parents, further information  will be sent home to you next week so please wait until you receive this from us.  Thank you.

MEET THE TEACHER: We had very much hoped that we would be able to welcome you back into the school for our annual “Meet the Teacher” session.  However, as per Scottish Government guidance, we are not able to do this quite yet however, next week, I will share information with you about our online version of this coming up very soon.  

FREE Swim lessons Letter -Sep-Oct 2021 from ERC

I’m sure you may have some very tired children coming home from school today after a busy first week back at school.  I hope they, and you, have a restful and lovely weekend.

Mrs Yvonne Donaldson

Head Teacher