January/February 2024
This session is flying past and Term 3 is no exception…Christmas seems like such a long time ago! Please read on to find out what is going on in Royston Primary.
Staffing
Our staffing situation has been quite fluid this session and continues to be moving forward. Miss Kelly and Miss Johnstone have both had beautiful baby girls! We wish them lots of love and laughter with their little ones! (We don’t tell them about the sleepless nights!!)
Mr Darren has now started in post as support for learning worker. Mr Darren is very familiar with the school and the pupils. He has been a great addition to our staffing and pupils relate very well to him.
Miss Armstrong is now the teacher in P6/5 whilst Miss Johnstone is on maternity leave. She has settled well and is working extremely hard with the pupils in her class.
In addition, both P7/6 and P6/5 have teaching students on their final placements. Miss Slaven and Miss Barton are working hard to bring the pupils exciting and engaging lessons.
We continue to work in partnership with Re:Hope Royston, who provide volunteer reading partners on a Tuesday and Wednesday. Some pupils have been selected to have their own volunteer who will read with them and support their understanding.
Library Visits
All pupils in school are taken to the library once per fortnight. Almost all pupils have library membership now and can chose books to take home to read. Pupils can use the library ANYTIME. When the pupils go with school, the library staff work with our pupils to ensure they are familiar with the library set up. They support them with themes and do activities with them. However, pupils can go change their books at any time – maybe at the weekend! The purpose of this is to encourage pupils to utilise this fantastic resource frequently so please do encourage your child to go to the library sometimes.
After School and Lunch Clubs
At present we have a number of after school and lunch activities running, or about to begin. These are:
P6 EuroQuiz training – Monday lunchtime
P3-5 Art Club – Monday after school
P5-7 Football – Monday lunchtime
P5-7 Basketball – Tuesday lunchtime
P5-7 and P2-4 Dance – Tuesday after school
P2-4 and P5-7 Coding – Tuesday after school
P1-3 Mindfulness – Tuesday after school
Makaton – Wednesday lunchtime
P5-7 Football – Wednesday lunchtime
P5-7 Football – Wednesday after school
P3-5 Board Games – Wednesday after school
P2-4 Fun Sports Club – Thursday lunchtime
P2-4 Multi Sports – Thursday after school
P5-7 Athletics – Friday lunchtime
The majority of our activities are run by school staff and we are extremely grateful to them for doing this out with their contracted working time! Staff undertake activities they think pupils will enjoy and do so in their own time; this is not a requirement for any member of staff. We are so lucky to have the most amazing staff team who care deeply about the pupils and the opportunities they have in school!
If your child wants to join an activity and they haven’t already, please tell them to ask Mr Steer or me about it. There are still spaces in some of the clubs.
School Website
We have been spending some time updating our school website. Please go on and have a peek – there is information for most classes!
https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/gc/roystonprimary
Anti- Bullying Development work
Following on from last term activities, we have created an action plan to keep us moving forward on the right track. This month we will be launching a first draft of our anti-bullying policy. We will be seeking the views of parents/carers, pupils and staff. We will be looking for a small focus group of parents/carers willing to come and talk to us about it…what they like and what could be better! Please look out for further information on this – coming soon!
Parent Appointments
Parent appointments will be on Thursday 7th March. This is an opportunity for you to speak with your class teacher and hear about your child’s progress in school. It is crucial for your child that you make every effort to attend – the most successful learners are those who’s parents engage in their learning. If you are unable to attend the scheduled day/time, please contact us; we will be happy to arrange an alternative for you, given the importance.
Primary 7 Residential Trip
Primary 7 pupils will soon be venturing off to Perthshire Dalguise Outdoor Education Centre for their residential experience! This experience will be from 15th-18th March. Mr Thomson and Mrs Atala will be the adults attending, and we are extremely grateful to them for giving up their own weekend to accompany our pupils! Pupils will be getting some further information and kit list very soon. There is a small contribution for each pupil to pay of £20; this can be paid any time. (A little heads up, each child needs to take a sleeping bag and pillow this year! If you are struggling with this, tell us and we can help!)
Accreditations!
We have great news to share! As you will know, Royston Primary were working towards gaining accreditation for being a language and communication friendly establishment; and we got it! Pupils and staff have worked tremendously hard on this development and should extremely proud of their efforts. We thank Mrs Steer for leading us successfully through this process. We will continue to sustain the work undertaken as it has made a real difference to consistency across the school.
More great news! Last week we had Glasgow City Council Nurture quality assurance team visit to assess our nurture practice; both in the Orchard and across the school as a whole. This was extremely successful and the team visiting were very impressed with all that they saw. Excellent work staff and pupils; and especially Mr Thomson for leading the way in Royston Primary in Nurture!
Parental Engagement
We have some parental engagement sessions approaching that I would like to share with you:
P3/2 parents are invited into school on 20th February at 2.30pm. Miss Gilyeat and Mrs Steer have some resources to share with you and are keen to support parents helping their child at home with literacy.
P2/1 parents’ are invited into school on 26th February at 2.45pm. Mrs Steer has resources and strategies to share with you for literacy.
Mr Thomson is planning for STEM parent and child workshops for Term 4 April-May time. Please look out for further details.
We will soon share with you further details (involving all classes) on parental engagement for week beginning 11th March – please look out for more information!
Congratulations to those P1-3 parents who completed the Families connect programme over the last few months. They completed a range of activities around maths, languages and well-being that will help them support their child well at home. This programme will run again next year so speak to Mr Thomson if you would be interested.
Breakfast club
Just a wee reminder for parents. Breakfast club is open from 8am every morning in the dining hall. We have very small numbers just now and I wonder whether parents/carers know this service is available. Pupils who are in receipt of free meals are entitled to a free breakfast. Otherwise the standard cost is £2.
LGBT Inclusive Education
Primary 7 pupils will be attending a half day workshop at City Chambers on 22nd February about LGBT Inclusive Education. This is an ALLIES (Action and Learning for LGBT Inclusive Education in Schools) workshop delivered in partnership with TIE – Time for Inclusive Education.
Inclusion, in its widest sense, it a thread that runs through all aspects of school learning; it does not stand alone. It is important that when we use the term LGBT Inclusive education, that we remember this is about educating our children to be INCLUSIVE. It is NOT about encouraging children to make choices about their sexuality, it is simply teaching children that we do not exclude others based on aspects of their personality or who they are, e.g. gender, age, colour, ethnicity etc.
I’m sure you will agree that teaching about equality is important in our world today, and for the future.
Mother Tongue Groups
We have started a new initiative in school to encourage children to speak their home/family language, and celebrate that they can do this confidently! We have approx. 18 languages spoken amongst our pupils and families and this is something we should all be really proud of. What an excellent learning environment where pupils are surrounded by such diversity and culture.
Every second Thursday we invite pupils who speak a different language to English to join with others and engage in activities whilst speaking their family language. The pupils seem to be enjoying these sessions, as are the adults who are in awe of our pupils’ language skills!
We will soon open this out for some parents to get involved. If you speak a different language to English and you would like to get involved, please do let me know!
School Uniform
I have been noticing recently that our standards in uniform have slipped a little. I’m keen to get this back on track and ask for your support in doing so.
We want pupils to be comfortable and ready to learn and so we do not insist on shirt and tie, as some schools do. Pupils can wear shirt and tie or school polo shirt, along with school jumper or cardigan. If you do not have uniform items, please do let us know and we can help.
Pupils wear uniform to represent their school. They wear it to demonstrate their sense of belonging, in addition to safety and security reasons. We want our pupils to be proud of Royston Primary and what it stands for. We want them to wear their uniform to show this. Please support us with this.
We ask that pupils do not wear branded clothing, e.g. Nike, Hugo Boss etc. This clothing is very expensive and could get easily damaged during school activities. It also creates a divide between children who have branded clothing, and those who do not. We simply ask that all pupils wear our school uniform as it creates an ethos of equality for all pupils. Thank you for your support with this.
Jane McShane
headteacher@royston-pri.glasgow.sch.uk
0141 552 2872
