Mr Steer – Page 3 – Royston Primary School

1 December, 20221 December, 2022

November Newsletter

October/November 2022

Here we go with term 2! All sorts of things have been happening and more planned for the upcoming few weeks! Read on to find out more…

Sponsored Skip

I just want to say a huge THANK YOU for all efforts in this sponsor. A massive £1025 was raised in sponsorship…this is the largest total we have ever raised! As I continually say, every penny put into the school fund goes back to the children in some way or other. This money will be used to support all of our December activities for the children…we have big plans this term!

Staff and Staffing

I would like to congratulate almost all of our teachers who have recently completed level 2 accredited Makaton training! They are an amazing bunch who have worked very hard for this accreditation! All classes are learning Makaton now as an inclusive approach to communicating with all learners. Pupils are learning that we are all different and we ALL have our own needs, but just because we may be ‘different’, we shouldn’t be excluded.

I have happy/sad new also! I am absolutely delighted to say that Mrs Mair is expecting a baby! Baby is due in a few weeks and Mrs Mair will finish for maternity leave on 21^st November. We can’t wait to see Mrs Mair come back for a visit to have some baby cuddles! Primary 1 will get a new teacher – the new teacher will be confirmed as soon as I know.

We will be having a new administration person joining Mrs Spence in the school office. Her name is Ms Morrison and she will be with us every Tuesday and Wednesday. We look forward to her starting with us next week.

Halloween

Pupils had a fantastic afternoon at their Halloween party! It was great to have everyone back together dress up and ready to party again! Thanks to the parent council for their amazing tuck shop efforts!

Billy Jean King Tournament

All primary 6 and 7 pupils will be attending the tournament at the Emirates Arena next Wednesday. I think they will really enjoy the experience. Pupils will be transported there and back by bus and will need to take a packed lunch. We are hoping a couple of parents will be able to come along and help to supervise in this busy venue – please get in touch with Mr Steer if you would be willing to help.

New P1 enrolment

Next week is enrolment week for new entrants for August 2023. Enrolments forms should be completed online. If you have any issue with this, please let us know and we will try to help. I can’t believe we are talking about the new session already!!

P7 Transition

I have been talking to many of our primary 7 parents about transition to secondary school. It cannot be assumed that our P7 pupils will automatically transfer to St Roch’s Secondary, although this is the popular choice amongst parents. Our catchment secondary school is Springburn Academy. If you do not wish your child to transfer to Springburn, you must complete an online placement request form. The link to the form has been sent to P7 parents already. You should complete this asap to give your child the best chance of success. St Roch’s will only be able to accept placement requests if they have the space and teachers to accommodate them. If you do decide to put in a placement request form for an alternative to Springburn, you will not hear a decision until April/May time. This means that in order to give our pupils some kind of transition experience, we will do some activities with Springburn Academy. This makes no difference to which secondary school your child will eventually attend.

Homework

New homework grids are ready to come to you and your child on Monday 7^th November – first Monday of the month. These will be given to pupils and emailed to you, thus meaning that everyone has a copy of the tasks to be undertaken.

Attendance

I’m becoming a little concerned by our number of absences across the school. I totally appreciate there are times when pupils are not well enough to come to school and need to be at home being looked after. However, we have lots of absence for minor colds, coughs, aches and pains, and we have a number of absences that are not explained at all. It is in your child’s best interests to be in school every day. It is much harder for pupils to settle to a routine when it is continually broken by the odd day absence here and there. When we look at each individual pupil’s progress tracker in literacy and numeracy, it is very clear to see how progress and learning is negatively impacted for pupils who’s attendance is under 90%. Please do send your child to school every day possible. If they are unwell in school be assured, we will call you.

Pupil Interim Report

Interim Report cards will come out to you next week. These are fairly short and will give you an idea of how pupils have settled into the new school year.

Parent Appointments

We are literally over the moon to be able to welcome all parents back into school for formal parent appointments! For 2 and a half years we have spent a lot of time talking to parents on the phone due to virus restrictions…and this isn’t great for you or us!! We look forward to welcoming parents to appointments on Thursday 17^th November. Appointments will run from 3.30pm-7.30pm. All parents will be allocated an appointment time. If you are unable to make it to your time, please contact the office and we will make an alternative arrangement. Our appointments for parents requiring an interpreter will be on Wednesday 23^rd November. I look forward to seeing you very soon.

Toy Sale

We will be holding our annual Toy Sale on the 25^th November. We hope this might give you the opportunity to have a clear our prior to Christmas! Please bring any unwanted toys to the school – any time between now and 25^th November!

Winter jackets and shoes

Just a little reminder to ensure your child has appropriate footwear and jacket for wet weather. We don’t stay inside when it rains! Apparently there is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing!! As I say to pupils, we live in Scotland – it rains A LOT! If pupils are well dressed, there is no reason for them not to go outside for exercise and fresh air when the weather is rainy! We will only keep pupils inside during breaktimes if there is a weather risk…eg high winds, weather warnings etc.

Photographer

School photographs will be taken on 18^th November. We will be taking individuals, family groups and class groups. I encourage you to dress your child smartly in shirt and tie if you have that.

City wise

CityWise mentors will be re-commencing with us again on Monday 7^th November for P7 pupils. CityWise mentors support our pupils to explore themselves – their strengths, what makes them unique, friendships etc. and will also have conversations about future plans. Our mentors are from Glasgow University and come to Glasgow to study from all over the world. It is such a great opportunity for pupils to learn and have time to self-reflect.

Committees and Houses

We are soon to re-commence our committees in school…these have been refreshed to increase pupil interest and motivation. We have the following committees…

Pupil Council

Sport Captains

Eco

Equalities

Health and wellbeing

SNAG – School Nutrition Action Group

RRS – Rights Respecting Schools

Digital Leaders

We have decided to change things a little by involving ALL pupils in a committee. Previously it has been a small group per committee but this session we want to involve all our pupils in one committee each. Our first meeting is 11^th November – ask your child about it after school that day!

All pupils are also in a House group – Ruby, Emerald, Sapphire or Diamond. Our house groups P1-7 meet on the last Friday of every month and take part in collaborative activities to give them a sense of House belonging!

Parental Engagement Sessions

Week beginning 21^st November all classes will be welcoming parents into class! I don’t know exact days and times for this but these will come out very soon. Classes will decide whether they want their parents to come see some work they have been doing or whether they would simply like you to come and work alongside them! Pupils and teachers are thinking about this just now. Look out for more details soon.

Christmas Fayre

Parent council have their thinking caps on just now – hoping to make this Christmas Fayre bigger and better than ever! It is great to be in a position where we can plan our events again – we have been so restricted for so long. Watch out for more details coming soon.

Christmas

Eek – Christmas is fast approaching and we have lots of exciting things lined up! Many of our activities are things we have done before but not been able to do for a while now…it’s nice to get back to the fun stuff again!!

Mr Doherty will soon be looking for choir members. We have a number of gigs lined up for the group to sing their heart out and shake their bucket! Rehearsals will be starting soon! As soon as we have a finalised list of dates we will share this with you.

P4/3-P7/6 will be attending the King’s Theatre Pantomime on 13^th December in the afternoon, to see Beauty and the Beast. Pupils will return to school approximately 4pm.

P3/2 and P1 will be attending Platform Theatre on 14^th December to see Sleeping Beauty. This is an afternoon performance but pupils will arrive back to school for 3pm school finish.

The cost for all pupils is £3. This is a heavily subsidised cost for the outing and can be paid any time between now and the panto date as above.

We will be having a refreshed version of our Christmas Grotto this year! Pupils will embark on the journey through Christmas with lots of exciting and interesting activities to take part in! I don’t want to spoil any surprises so I can’t share any more information with you! Grotto dates are 8^th and 9^th December and are in school.

P1 and P3/2 will be performing in the Christmas Nativity this year! This will be in the morning of the 16^th December. More details to follow. 16^th December will also be Christmas jumper day!

All Christmas parties will be during week beginning 19^th December – more details to follow when we have them!

Jane McShane

headteacher@royston-pri.glasgow.sch.uk

7 September, 2022

September Newsletter

August/September 2022

Welcome back all families P2-7 and a warm welcome to our P1 families just starting out on their primary career! It has been lovely to be back into routine again and pupils have had a smooth start in their new classes…although there are a few tired faces just now! Only to be expected! Please have a read at important information below and, as always, please do get in touch if you have any questions or concerns.

Classes

This session we have 5 classes…

P1 with Mrs Mair (and Mr Thomson on a Friday)

P3/2 with Miss Bonner

P4/3 with Miss Kelly

P6/5 with Mrs Young and Mr Doherty

P7/6 with Miss Johnstone (and Mrs Steer on a Wednesday)

Mr Thomson is working in the Orchard this year

Mr Steer is supporting numeracy across the school.

Mrs Steer is supporting literacy across the school.

As you will see below, our attainment figures are healthy and we continue to seek our new and exciting strategies to keep pupils fully engaged in learning.

Attainment across the school

We are very proud to share our attainment information with you – it demonstrates just how hard our pupils and staff are working every day to achieve the best!

In reading achievement is 76%

In writing achievement is 73%

In listening and talking achievement is 84%

In numeracy our achievement is 80%

Almost all percentages have increased and there is a steady upwards trend…good news!!

Attendance

As we embark on another school session it is important to follow up on the above percentages by addressing attendance. If pupils do not attend school with great regularity, they will not achieve to their full potential. We spend a lot of time in school talking about why learning is important and the purpose of aspects of learning. I cannot stress enough that evidence tells us that our pupils who have the highest attendance in school also have the best achievement. At present our school attendance is around 95% – this is very good and tells us that we do not generally have an attendance issue. This is more great news!

Please do try to get your child to school every single day! I know some mornings can be difficult with tired grumpy children, but once they are here, almost all of the time, they are absolutely fine! Please also be assured that we will contact you if your child is unwell – we do care about the pupils and their health and wellbeing is of utmost importance.

Meet the teacher

Yesterday all parents (apart from P4/3 parents) were invited into school for an informal chat with the teacher, a look at some resources and a wee slice of pizza! This event was very well attended – thank you for taking the time to come along! The food looked good but was all gone when I went for a slice!!

I hope you found it useful. Parental partnership is absolutely crucial in your child’s learning journey. Children who have parents willing to engage with school (as much as they can) will achieve more. Your knowledge of your child is the best and we utilise that to best support your child in their learning. Parents have so much to contribute to the learning process! Pupils only spend approximately 15% of their life per school year in school. This means that they spend 85% of their life per school year out of school. We squeeze in as much learning as possible, but the majority of a child’s learning happens out of school! Parents, you are the main educator – steer your child to be the best person they can be!

Communication

In keeping with our environmentally friendly processes, we are trying to increase our email communication with families. Instead of having paper copies of letters and information, we will regularly email these out. Please check your emails every day if possible as we do always have lots of information to share! We have email contacts for almost all families, please let us know if your address changes.

North Glasgow Community Food Initiative

We work in close partnership with NGCFI. Their gardener Charlotte has already started fortnightly sessions with every class. Charlotte plans and leads each session with the support of class teacher where pupils will learn about food technology and science, in addition to literacy and numeracy. We continue to try to ensure pupils are learning outdoor as much as possible. It is fun, healthy and provides an exciting stimulus for learning.

School Improvement Plan

Every year we write a school improvement plan to keep us on track with the improvements we identify as part of our self-evaluation processes…surveys, questionnaires etc. Some of the work we will be doing…

Increasing our attainment in literacy and numeracy – what will we do next to keep this moving in the right direction.
LCFE – Language and Communication Friendly Establishment accreditation. This is to ensure effective communication for all learners throughout the school – no matter their level of need.
Continue to increase our skills around digital literacy – everything changes at such pace…I think we will always be working on this!
Continue good work on our LGBT journey with all pupils. Often with our primary pupils this focuses on ‘What makes Me Me!’ We celebrate our differences… eye colour, hair, hobbies etc.
Engage in some new research and development work around ‘Anti-bullying’. We will never be blasé about bullying in Royston Primary, and we seek out consistent knowledge and understanding around the theme.
Increase our parent/child working groups…as we now move away from lockdown and C-19 restrictions, we are able to welcome many of you back into school for all sorts of purposes! Look out for information on this! Lots of exciting opportunities for family learning.

Parental Partnership

In keeping with the above theme, I wish to thank those who participated in our parental partnership survey in June 2022. This information is really useful to us. We had 29 responses.

Everyone felt they had a trusting and respectful relationship with staff. The individual comments were very positive.

The majority (20 out of 29) felt they could contribute to their child’s learning. We wish to support parents in this more effectively by engaging in more parent and child learning activities. We hope to see an increase in this number over the coming session. There were a few comments about learning only being for ‘in school’ time. As suggested above, we all work together in the learning journey

Almost all (28 out of 29) felt that school are responsive to their child’s needs. This demonstrates that we have a good knowledge and understanding of your child and their learning style.

Almost all (28 out of 29) felt their child was happy and safe coming to school.

This is extremely positive feedback for us and helps us to strengthen the good work we have been engaging in. I would really like for more parents to engage in surveys. In this instance we had 29 responses out of a possible 88.

Homework

As a result of parental and pupil feedback, we are reviewing our homework procedures. There are aspects of our current homework plan that work well and others needing updated and refreshed. As a staff, we will be addressing this, using the information you shared via survey to help us. In the meantime you can expect reading and spelling homework to be coming out very soon. We will keep you updated on developments.

Sponsored Skip

We will be doing a bit of fundraising between now and Christmas! We have already booked some Christmas treats for the pupils and we need to up our school fund to support this!!

Pupils will take part in a sponsored skip on the 6^th October. Pupils will engage in a range of skipping type activities, learn some skipping games etc over the course of the day. It will be great fun and I hope we will raise a bit of money!! Sponsor forms will be handed out nearer the time!

Parent Council

Our parent council is beginning to grow! It is great to see some new members join…still room for more though! The parent council support school in all sorts of ways and we rely on their input.

The parent council will be holding the Annual General Meeting on the 21^st September at 9.15am in the school dining hall. All parents will be made very welcome. This is an excellent opportunity to strengthen parental partnerships. What better way to find out about your child’s learning in school than to be in the building and see!

A few usual items…

Please remember we are a nut free school. We cannot have any products containing nuts at school. We have people with severe allergies and cannot be in the vicinity of nuts.
Royston Primary promotes healthy lifestyles. We only allow water to drink in school – best for the body and best for the teeth. Pupils should not bring fruit shoots, fizzy drinks, capri suns etc into school – these things contain high levels of sugar. We also encourage pupils to bring healthy snacks – fruit or vegetable for example. Some pupils are shocked that we would ask this of them because they do not eat fruit and vegetables. It would be great if you could introduce your child to some healthy foods.
Dress down day is ALWAYS the last Friday of the month. If we are on holiday the last Friday of the month then we miss dress down day, it does not get carried over to the following week! Usually dress down day costs 50p per pupil – this money goes straight to school fund!
We have a soft entry system in Royston Primary. This means that pupils can arrive at school any time between 8.45 and 9.15am, and their teacher will be ready to welcome them. We do encourage pupils to aim for 9am though! This is good practice for having a time schedule and means that formal teaching input will begin a little quicker!
Jewellery is not permitted when taking part in PE. This is not a school rule but one imposed by council. In order to satisfy our school insurance, all jewellery must be removed. If your child is unable to remove their own jewellery, please remove it before they come to school on gym days. I also get a little concerned when pupils wear jewellery to school in case it gets lost. Some items of jewellery are very precious and should always be kept at home.

Jane McShane

headteacher@royston-pri.glasgow.sch.uk

0141 552 2872

13 May, 2022

May Newsletter

May 2022

Oh my goodness, there is so much information to share with you this term!!! Lots of things going on in RPS…it’s hard to keep track!! Read on to find out more…

After school clubs

We have planned various exciting opportunities for P3-7 pupils after school. We have drama, rounders, coding and many more! Some people ask why we rarely offer clubs for our youngest pupils – this is very simple! Our P1 and P2 pupils are often extremely tired at the end of the school day, and being in school from 9-3pm is enough! Pupils in P3-7 are more able to manage a longer day happily. If your child has not signed up for a club and wishes to join something, please give us a call and we will try to accommodate your request.

Homework

We are starting to think ahead to next session and exploring what we offer as homework for pupils. We know that the benefit of some forms of homework is minimal or even non-existent, therefore we need to find the best way of ensuring purposeful and enjoyable activity out with school. We are hoping to get your help with this! We will shortly put out a survey on the subject of homework to our parents and carers. We will also be surveying pupils. We are keen to hear all views on this matter in order to provide the best service we can, meeting all our learners’ needs.

School trips

I am absolutely delighted that we have booked up for all pupils to go on a summer trip! Almost all pupils, when surveyed, say that one of the best things about school is going on trips! I’m pretty sure I loved trips as a child myself!

P1, P3/2 and P4/3 will be going to Briarlands Farm Park in Stirling on the 15^th June.

P5/4, P6/5 and P7 will be going to Heads of Ayr in Alloway by Ayr on the 9^th June.

Both locations are a fair distance away and in order to maximise the experience, buses will leave school sharp at 9am and not return until approx. 4pm (traffic permitting)

Pupils will need a packed lunch and we are asking each pupil to pay a small contribution of £3 for their trip. This can be paid any time. Specific consent forms will need to be completed as both locations are out with the Glasgow boundary.

Gardening

In partnership with North Glasgow Community Food Initiative all pupils will be engaging in outdoor gardening sessions. Our pupils do spend time learning outdoors and so I know you will be aware of dressing your child appropriately for all weather! This is very important right now as we can go from sunshine to rain in a matter of seconds! Please make sure your child has a waterproof jacket or similar, and sensible footwear every day.

Transition

Transition at both ends of the school is fully under way. Our nursery pupils getting ready for primary 1 have been visiting school this week to have a little tour and get a feel for what school is like. Next week and the week after, children will be visiting in groups to spend some time in the classroom with the teacher and some of our current P1 pupils. Parents and carers can remain in school to meet with senior staff who will be able to answer questions and discuss any matters arising. Thereafter we have some fun events for our nursery pupils to join with! We have sports day and a Teddy Bear picnic lined up – both of which will be supported by school staff.

Primary 7 pupils are gearing up for high school! Such an exciting time, anticipating what secondary school will bring! This year thankfully, all pupils will get the chance to visit their secondary schools for either a day or two days, as follows…

Smithycroft Transition Days – 17^th and 18^th May

St Roch’s Transition days – 24^th and 26^th May

Cleveden transition day – 24^th May

Springburn transition days – 15^th and 16^th June

On all occasions, pupils will make their way directly to secondary – individual school letters have been given out to pupils with specific information about the days above in addition to parent information sessions.

Reports

Teachers are working hard on completing their class reports and these will be sent home at the end of this month. I’m sure you will be very impressed with your child’s efforts! They have been working fantastically hard at school! We have no further scheduled parents’ appointments but if you would like to discuss anything in particular with the teacher, please just get in touch and we will arrange that. At any time of the school year we are happy to make arrangements to meet with parents about any queries or concerns.

Sports Day

We are very happy to be having a sports day this year where we can invite you all along to watch! (we might even invite you to participate so wear your running shoes!!) This will be held on Tuesday 31^st May 10-12noon for P1, P3/2 and P4/3 and 1-3pm for P5/4, P6/5 and P7. We are lucky again this year to be able to use St Roch’s secondary pitches and we pray for a beautiful sunny (but not too hot!) day! We will be ably supported by our CityWise mentors who work closely with our P7 pupils and we have invited our nursery pupils along too – the more the merrier! Please do come along if you have time – it’s always better when we have an audience to cheer everyone on!

Prize Giving

Our prize giving this session will be on the afternoon of 17^th June, times TBC. We have not been able to have a proper prize giving since 2019 so this will be very exciting…and a new experience for many of our pupils and parents. We invite you along to see our Star and Worker of the Year for each class, in addition to our other awards. More information to follow.

Leavers

We have planned a leavers event/party for the afternoon of 10^th June. Primary 7 pupils and families will come together for some fun, award, prizes, gifts and much more! Bring some tissues, it might be a little emotional! We are planning out the theme and detail of this event right now so more information will come to you soon.

Parent Council

I would like to formally thank our parent council for all the work they have undertaken in our playground. The parent council, supported by Rosemount Development Trust, organised and facilitated the installation of our ‘Living Wall’. If you have not seen this yet, please do pop down to the front playground and have a look. The Living Wall helps to improve the air quality for our pupils and families as it helps to reduce the impact air pollution has in the environment. I’m so glad the parent council have stuck by us throughout the pandemic – they have had to re-think how they can offer support to the school and what a great job they have done! If you are interested in joining the parent council to help the school, please do get in touch and we can help make this happen.

Outdoor Learning

At the end of last session parental surveys told us that parents and carers want us to encourage outdoor learning and improve the environment the pupils have to use. We have taken this on board. In addition to the installation of the Living Wall, plans are set for an outdoor classroom – installation of this has been delayed due to covid and is now expected to be built during the summer holidays. We will also be fitting out a section of the playground with grass in addition to having high quality basketball nets concreted into the playground. I am very hopeful that when pupils return in August, everything will be fully fitted and ready for use. I’m sorry primary 7 pupils, you can come back and have a wee play when you have time!

Classes and Staff

I have no definite plans to share at this time regarding classification and staffing, although I am fairly certain that almost all of our staff will remain with us in August. The only certain change at present is that Mrs Mair will be leaving her role as nurture teacher and return to primary 1 class. Mr Thomson has completed his additional nurture training and assessment and will be taking over the nurture teacher role come August. As soon as I have my staffing in order from the council I will share that information with you.

Congratulations!

I would like to formally congratulate Mr and Mrs Steer on their marriage! Mrs Steer (Miss Fraser) and Mr Steer had a beautiful wedding day during the Easter break and are now happily married! This feels very special for our school community as Mr and Mrs Steer have been in RPS since almost the beginning of their teaching career. I’m sure you will join me in wishing this wonderful couple a long and happy marriage!

Parent Pay and Parent Portal

Yet another new system to get our heads round!! Parent Pay is the system to pay for school meals if pupils do not receive either registered or government free school meals. However it is now also the system for pupils to order their meal choice for each day they have a school dinner. To help your child do this you need to register an account – activation codes have been sent out on various occasions to help you do this. If your child does not pre-select their meal choice at home, they are able to do this in class. Parent portal has been set up for you to manage all data relevant to your child. Come August when we undertake data checks (names, emergency contacts etc), you will dp this via parent portal. Information on setting up your portal has been sent out. If you require support with this, please do contact the office.

Holiday Dates

This term has a number of holidays as follows…

Friday 27^th May – May holiday

Thursday 2^nd June – Queen’s Jubilee holiday

Friday 3^rd June – Queen’s Jubilee holiday

Friday 24^th June – school closes 1pm for the summer holidays

Partners

As this will likely be the last ‘normal’ newsletter of the session, I would like to thank some of our regular partners for all their hard work and effort over the session…

CityWise – our P7 mentors from University of Glasgow

NGCFI – leading our gardening and cookery sessions

Beverley from ‘With Kids’ – therapy sessions and transition work

SAMh – transition sessions with our P7 pupils

Re:Hope Church group – volunteer readers and chess expert!

RYA – have engaged with us in so many different things! Boys Health group, girls health activities, play sessions etc. Amazing organisation!

Jane McShane

headteacher@royston-pri.glasgow.sch.uk

0141 552 2872

24 February, 2022

February Newsletter

February 2022

Term 3 has come with a bang! This newsletter is a bit late as we have been so busy trying to plan and deliver new and exciting experiences for your children! Read on for up to date information on events and points of interest.

Staffing

Staffing is very good just now and remains stable. Since January we have had a little flurry of COVID cases – both pupils and staff, and we remain mindful of all mitigations in place to help protect everyone. You will receive a standard letter reminding you of mitigations and self-protection each time we have a positive case in school.

We offer a warm welcome to our 2 new support for learning workers – Miss Cullen and Mrs McIntyre. They are such a great addition to our staff team and have settled well to the Royston way! Pupils have started to build lovely positive relationships with both of them.

Regular partners

Following on from staffing information I thought it might be useful for you to know about some of our school partners. These people come to school regularly to work with various children at different stages.

Citywise – this is a voluntary organisation linked to Glasgow University. University students apply and train to become mentors for selected P7 pupils. The mentors work with pupils to develop their confidence and self-esteem, in addition to planning a vision for their future. In the process the pupils also gain a little insight into further education and learning beyond school. The mentors are all different nationalities and share their experiences of education with the pupils. It is an excellent opportunity.

Reading Partners – As some of you may know, the school building is used on a Sunday by Re:Hope church group. The members are very nice and like to support the school whenever they can. At present 3 of the members come to school on a Tuesday afternoon to read and play chess with some of our pupils. They do this on a voluntary basis. Pupils can read, play chess and chat with the volunteers, all under careful supervision by authorised school staff. It allows pupils the opportunity to read and gain from other people’s experiences in life, learning about developing a friendship with a new person. Excellent opportunity to develop life skills.

Royston Youth Action Boys Health Group – The health groups have been a successful venture at RYA for some time and, because of their success, we invited RYA staff into school to work with some of our boys. Mark and Mark from RYA come along to school on a Wednesday afternoon to work with 7 P6 boys. They address aspects of self-care, self-image, gender stigma and solution focusing. The boys are really enjoying this opportunity and we are grateful to RYA for supporting us in this way.

North Glasgow Community Food Initiative – We continue to work closely with NGCFI who deliver cookery and gardening sessions for our pupils and families. Pupils absolutely love the opportunity to learn how to cook in the teaching kitchen and Maggie, our sessional cook, works very hard to deliver interesting and exciting sessions. Maggie is starting work with P6 pupils this week and the new block of family cooking has just started too. Gardening will be due to begin again after the Easter break with the sessional gardener. In addition to these sessions being simply good fun, there are a vast amount of learning opportunities involved. The curriculum is divided into 8 core aspects – literacy, numeracy, health and wellbeing, social studies, technology, science, expressive arts and RME. Within the cooking and gardening sessions pupils are always engaging in talking and listening, in addition to reading recipes and writing evaluations (literacy). Pupils are weighing and measuring (numeracy). Pupils are engaging in health and wellbeing by learning about food groups, growing and harvesting and healthy eating. Pupils are engaging in social studies, technology and science also by learning about cultural aspects of food/celebrations, understanding the science behind cooking and growing and using technology in the processes.

Play therapy – we work closely with Beverley from ‘With Kids’ who engages with individuals and groups in therapeutic interventions. This is to support and enhance self-esteem, confidence, understanding relationships and friendships. Beverley is also supporting transition preparation for some of our P7 pupils.

As you can see there is significant focus on pupil wellbeing in order to ensure our pupils come here to school ready to learn and engage. If they are struggling with aspects of mental and emotional health, their capacity to learn will reduce, which dictates the importance of focusing on wellbeing.

Parent Appointments

Continuing to work within the confines of COVID restrictions, we will again be offering telephone consultations for parents regarding pupil progress in place of ‘in person’ meetings. We would much prefer to meet you face to face but this is not allowed at present – we are ever hopeful that we can do this again soon!

Parent consultations will take place next week as follows:

Mr Thomson, Miss Johnstone and Miss Carmichael (P1, P3/2 and P4/3) will make their phone calls on Monday 28^th February between 1 and 3pm.

Miss Bonner, Miss Kelly and Miss Fraser (P5/4, P6/5 and P7) will make their phone calls on Tuesday 1^st March between 1 and 3pm.

Any parent that we know requires an interpreter will get a phone call between Tuesday 1^st March and Thursday 3^rd March from an interpreter who will ask questions as requested by school. These questions will allow you the opportunity to ask questions of us and share any concerns you have. We will follow these up when we receive your responses from interpreter services.

Please do ensure we have the correct phone numbers for you – if you have changed your number and not let us know yet, please contact us to have it updated on our system.

Please remember we are going to call and answer the phone if you possibly can. If you are unable to take a call on the set date, please contact us in advance and we can re-arrange. Teachers will attempt to call each parent up to 3 times during their consultation session.

Trips and Outings

Thank goodness we are in a position where we can start to think about getting the pupils out and about! We have the privilege of being a fairly small school and as such, we love to get our pupils out into the community and beyond to experience learning in a different and exciting environment.

P7 will be attending a ‘non-residential’ activity week beginning 21^st March. We felt that a residential type of experience wasn’t the safest thing to do right now and were concerned that this could potentially be cancelled, leaving us with nothing. Our P7 pupils will be travelling to Luss each day Monday-Thursday during their week, and working with highly skilled and qualified instructors from ‘Adventure West’. They will engage in a variety of activities from paddle boarding to rock climbing and abseiling. The cost per pupil is almost £200 but this has been significantly reduced through funding and very generous anonymous donations! The cost per pupils is now £10. This can be paid at any time. More detail to follow.

P1-7 summer outings are being organised just now. We are looking into different options, transport providers and costings. More details to follow soon!

Transition

Transition activity for P7 pupils is on-going. The situation in Royston Primary is somewhat unique as almost all pupils opt to make placing requests away from the catchment secondary – Springburn Academy. This presents some challenge in that we cannot formally engage with the secondary school staff receiving until we know the outcome of the request made by parents – late April. However, we do invite secondary staff in from Smithycroft, Springburn and St Roch’s to visit and get to know our pupils. We have also been working very closely with SAMh who have been delivering transition sessions for our pupils. Our play therapist has been working with a small group of P7 pupils on some transition activities and pupils all have the opportunity to discuss their worries and ask questions to school staff.

We have a healthy list of new entrants for P1 and staff are beginning to arrange visits to nurseries to meet with our new pupils. In May we will have planned school visits for all new entrants – this may be on an individual basis our as a class group – this will depend on COVID restrictions nearer the time.

Rosemount Development Trust Bikes

We were very lucky to be included in the new cycle initiative facilitated by RDT. Any child who does not have a bike were being offered one! It sounds like there should be a catch – but there wasn’t! All pupils were asked if they had a working bicycle. If they did not have one, they were offered one. All bicycles offered were brand new and correctly sized to individual pupils. Pupils were also given helmets and information on cycle repair.

If you feel you missed out on that and your child does not have a working bicycle, please just get in touch – there are still bikes available.

Curriculum Rationale

We are looking at refreshing our curriculum rationale and updating our school values. Our current values have been in place for 5 years and they might be getting a bit stale! The curriculum rationale is simply a document which states how Royston Primary will deliver the curriculum as set by the government, in its’ own unique way and incorporating meaningful learning for the pupils of the Royston community. In order to progress with this, we need some help from our service users – yourselves and your children! We have started discussions and surveys with pupils and this will continue into term 4. Mrs Young who is leading this initiative is looking for some parents to be involved in supporting this. She is contacting parents at present to bring together a small focus group to consider different options and share their views. In addition, a parental survey has gone to everyone to seek views.

Social Media

We are becoming more aware of inappropriate use of social media for pupils across the school. The legal age to engage in snapchat, facebook, tiktok etc is 13yrs. Pupils are engaging in online intimidation, singing and dancing to completely inappropriate songs and being exposed to disturbing content. Pupils do not have any access to any of these things in school and therefore it is frustrating when significant amounts of time have to be taken up by my staff team on dealing with the aftermath of such activity. Please simply do not allow your child access these media platforms – supervised or not. There is a very important reason for there being an age restriction – the content is not suitable. This is a parental responsibility and we would be so grateful if you could consider this as a priority within your household.

LGBT awareness raising

In line with council priority we will be engaging in some awareness raising of aspects of LGBT. At present staff are gaining their training accreditations so as to ensure appropriate and sensitive management of this aspect. The awareness raising will be around demystifying some of the information that pupils have limited knowledge on and increasing their understanding about ‘everyone is different and unique’.

School Holiday Dates

School will close on Friday 1^st April 2.30pm for Easter break. We will re-open on Tuesday 19^th April.

School will be closed on Monday 2^nd May for May day.

School will be closed on Thursday 5^th May to pupils only for elections.

School will be closed on Friday 27^th May for half term.

School will be closed Thursday 2^nd and Friday 3^rd June for Queens Jubilee.

School will close for summer break on Friday 24^th June 1pm. School will re-open for pupils on Wednesday 17^th August.

Lots of dates to remember – just thought I would do a wee update!

Jane McShane

headteacher@royston-pri.glasgow.sch.uk

0141 552 2872