Literacy – Royston Primary School

30 November, 2023

November Newsletter

November/December 2023

We had an incredibly busy term 1, with term 2 is shaping up much the same! How can we be nearly in December already! Please do read on as I share some current information and dates that you will want to know about.

Staffing

Miss Kelly has now started her maternity leave so is no longer in school. We wish her lots of luck as she embarks on the new and exciting adventure of being a parent!

Mrs Mair has now returned from maternity leave. She works three days each week; Monday-Wednesday, and is teaching mainly in P7/6 and P6/5 (with a little bit of work in P4/3 also) We are delighted to see her back in the Royston team!

Mr Doherty has increased his work pattern from three days to four. His working week is now Tuesday-Friday and he is class teacher for P7/6. Mr Doherty is a valued member of staff and we are pleased that he has increased his working days!

Miss Gorrell has now left her post as support for learning worker. We currently have a vacancy which is advertised, and we hope to interview and fill this post as soon as possible.

In addition, we have a number of ongoing students working with pupils. Strathclyde University teaching students provide a literacy and numeracy clinic for individuals across our school and give pupils some extra intensive teaching time to support their development.

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.

Our main priority is that our pupils know who the trusted adults are in school and what their purpose is. This is very important to us; pupils need to know why they may be working with individuals and what the expected goal is. Please do let us know if you have any questions or concerns regarding staffing, I am happy to talk this through with you.

Gardening

Currently our gardening work in partnership with North Glasgow Community Food Initiative has currently paused.

Class teachers are still engaging pupils in outdoor learning, so please continue to ensure your child has appropriate clothing for learning outside.

Parent Portal

Thank you to all parents who have successfully managed to sign up for parent portal. It is really important that we get everyone signed on as soon as possible. Any future consent forms will be completed via parent portal due to GDPR restrictions, and any updating of parental information needs to be done through the portal. We will soon have outings for ALL children in school; please get signed up asap so that you don’t miss their consent form for this. We well also soon be adding various school communications to the portal such as newsletters, letters etc.

If you are having difficulty or are unable to do this successfully, please do pop into the school office or speak to me – we can help!

Head lice

We appear to be having a little flair up of head-lice at the present time. Please do check your child’s head (boys and girls) regularly for the eggs or creatures and go straight to the pharmacy for advice if you spot anything. It is absolutely impossible to keep head-lice completely out of primary school, especially for small children, but quick treatment helps to keep instances to a minimum.

Bullying Development Work

As per our school improvement priorities this session, and listening to our parent voice, we are undertaking development work around anti-bullying. Staff have undergone intensive training on anti-bullying in order to ensure consistency in knowledge and understanding school wide. All staff have completed various e-modules with organisation ‘RESPECT ME’. We continue to deepen our knowledge and progress with our research around this theme.

Anti-Bullying week is coming up (13^th-17^th November) and we will be launching our anti-bullying theme in all classes. Pupils will be learning about bullying; what this looks like, how it can make people feel, what to do if they feel they are being bullied etc. Class teachers have a week full of excellent activities in line with this year’s Anti-Bullying 2023 Focus ‘Listen up: Respect our Rights’. Pupils will share their thinking and opinions on Bullying in school and be actively involved in designing suitable strategies to manage incidents as they occur. We will also be seeking the views of parents. It is incredibly valuable to hear your thoughts on this important matter. Staff only see things from school perspective, but you see things much more fully! Pupils only spend 15% of their time in school, they spend 85% under your care outwith school! We need to work together to combat bullying for our Royston pupils!

Parental Engagement

In relation to above, we would like to invite all parents into school on Friday 17^th November from 10.30am – 12.15pm. This is to go into your child’s class and see some of the anti-bullying work they are doing. Your child can explain what they are working on and share their learning; all pupils love it when their parent/carer is able to come along!

Once you have spent some time in class, we will then gather all our parents together for a short presentation based on the work we have done around anti-bullying. We are also hoping to create a parent focus group to support this development and we will discuss this at our presentation. We really hope to have a great turn out for this event as I know you will be keen to engage in such crucial work.

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.

Secondary Transition

Parents of pupils in primary 7 should now be thinking about transition to secondary school! I know it can be difficult to come to terms with your child moving on from primary, but we need to start making plans now.

ALL P7 pupils are currently in the Springburn Academy catchment. All pupils have been allocated a place at Springburn. If you wish your child to attend a different secondary school, you are required to complete a placing request form online. Many of you have done this already and we have helped some people to do this. If you are finding it difficult to complete the online form, please do let us know, we can help. If you do not complete a form for your child, they will automatically attend Springburn Academy.

School Communication

I just wanted to give a wee reminder that most communication from school will come via email. We have email contacts for every pupil’s parent/carer and we regular send out communication this way. We also get a notification if an email cannot be delivered to a particular address. Recently we can see that all emails are being received by all contacts. I would urge you to open and read the contents of the communication, as there is often very important information contained. If you wish to change your email contact, please just let us know.

Sponsored Sports Day

I wish to formally thank all parents, carers, families and friends for supporting our event with great enthusiasm! The pupils had such a fun day, enjoying a range of activities from yoga to obstacle courses! Your sponsor money goes a long way in supporting our up and coming festive events! Thank you so much!!

Parental Surveys

Thank you very much to all those who took the time to complete our parental survey at the end of term 1. We really appreciate all the comments made and aim to work on these to make the improvements you and your children would like to see.

Toy Sale

We will be hosting our annual Toy Sale on the 23^rd November. If you have any pre-loved/new/used toys that you want to clear out, please bring them our way! In addition, if you have any carrier bags that you want to clear out, we will take these too! We are always struggling at these events to have enough bags for pupils – any donations gratefully received!

Pupils can bring money on that day and all pupils will get a chance to go and buy some things! It is always a little crazy, but pupils appear to love it!!

Christmas

We are planning out a month of fun for pupils, with various different activities for each class.

We have booked whole day outings for every pupil as follows:

P3-7 will be visiting New Lanark Christmas Experience 2023 on 6^th December. Pupils will leave sharp in the morning and travel by coach. They will be involved with the singing elves, trying out some ice skating, visiting Santa’s grotto, and watching a show in the festive room! Sounds like a great day ahead!

P1-2 will be visiting Goulding Winter Wonderland 2023 on 14^th December. The buses will leave sharp in order to maximise the day. Pupils will walk through the wonderland trail and visit the singing penguins. They will have a visit to Santa’s toyshop and have unlimited rides on the fun fair rides. They will also get to visit Rudolph and the donkeys!

The cost per pupil is around £30 – most of which we can use sponsor money, dress down money and other contributions. However, we do still ask that each child pays a contribution of £4 for the day.

We have many other Christmas plans which are not yet finalised…we will share these with you soon!

Jane McShane

headteacher@royston-pri.glasgow.sch.uk

0141 552 287

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