Please see above our brand new Vision, Values and Aims. Working closely with all stakeholders in our school community (school community includes nursery and school) we have decided what forms the ‘roots’ of our school and how we ‘branch out’ to meet the needs of all pupils, parents/carers and staff in our school community. Across the top of the roots you can see the skyline of Motherwell and in the centre of our trunk are our children, safe in our hands. Can you spot the hands cupping the child’s face?
Our tree has no leaves, this is purposeful. Our children, staff and parent/carers are our leaves. Just like foliage on trees each year we grow new ones and old ones leave us. Each year our leaves will change and adapt to meet the individual needs of all in our school community.
A huge thanks to Mrs McCarthy who has created this wonderful image which really captures the essence of our school community. Please have a chat with your children about our Vision, Values and Aims, I’m sure they’ll be able to tell you all about it. This image is in every room in our school, in our playroom and on display in our front hall.
During this first full week of school our pupils have been enjoying lots of new learning experiences. This year we have four specialist subject being taught, they are:
French/Spanish with Madame Ali
Music with Mrs Devanney
Drama with Mrs McCoy (P5,6&7 terms one and three. P1-4 terms 2 &4)
S.T.E.M (Science technology Engineering and Maths) with Mrs Duffy (P1-4 terms one and three. P5,6&7 terms 2 &4)
Primary 7 pupils are leading the way with ‘active learning’, below you can see them in action working on active numeracy tasks.
Here’s a taste of some of the fabulous learning on-going in August:
Our library is looking amazing. It is a delight to see it being used for such a variety of learning opportunities. Here we see Primary 3 enjoying some relaxed reading time, with Mrs Gillespie actively promoting reading for enjoyment. We also see our proud ECO Warriors who had opportunity on Wednesday to meet with North Lanarkshire Council Personnel to have their voices heard with regards to Single Use Plastic across North Lanarkshire Primary Schools.
Last session our fabulous eco-warriors had been leading the way forward in the fight against plastic pollution. Recognising the need to reduce single use plastics, they undertook an audit to determine how many plastic sandwich cartoons and straws are used annually in our school and how many this equates to across NLC’s primary schools. Their results were staggering! They shared their findings with NLC’s Chief Executive, Mr Murray, and are delighted that Mr Murray has agreed to engage in tackling this problem.
On Friday of this week we were honoured to take part in a very special Mass being held in Carfin Grotto celebrating the unique opportunity to celebrate the relics of St. Therese coming to Scotland for the very first time. Mrs Jacqueline Murphy, our R.E. Co-ordinator attended the Mass with two of our P7 pupils. Each school was given this 3 person allocation. We are very proud of Caitlin, Taylor and Mrs Murphy who felt spiritually uplifted and honoured to have been part of such a wonderful day. Many of our classes have been studying St. Therese throughout the week. Here’s Mrs McCarthy’s class proudly showing off their wonderful work. We look forward to Jude and Leah sharing their power point presentation with us on Monday at assembly.
Here’s a resume of the day from Mrs Murphy. Caitlin and Taylor shared this information with all in our school:
Today, we had the honour of attending a very special mass in St Francis Xavier Church Carfin. We waited in the church while the relics of St Therese of Lisieux were carried in by some senior pupils from Taylor High School accompanied by Scottish music played by a piper. The mass was attended by one teacher and 2 pupils from every primary and secondary school in the Motherwell Diocese. The school chaplains and other priests concelebrated mass with Bishop Toal. At the end of the mass we were allowed to venerate the relics by placing our hand on the glass case in which is stored the remains of St Therese. It was lovely to think that St Therese was present with us in the church in such a special way. The relics will be in Carfin until Sunday evening when they move on to the next place of St Therese’s pilgrimage to Scotland. The details of services in the Church will be available on the school blog and we would really recommend you take the opportunity to visit the relics on this unique occasion which might never happen again in our lifetime.
It is hard to believe we are only 13 school days into our new school year and so much has already happened. What a dynamic learning environment our staff and pupils have created, superb.
Meanwhile, it is just as busy down in the nursery, once again, our excellent nursery has enjoyed a super start to the year. Here’s all the gossip from Mrs MM Murphy:
We welcomed back all our returning children on 14/8/19 and we couldn’t help noticing how much they had grown over the holidays. They were more than ready to take on the BIG responsibility of being a buddy to our new children. Our new recruits are settling into the nursery routine with the help of their group buddies. The staff are enjoying getting to know our new children as they tell us all about themselves in the group floorbooks.
This week the children have been discussing their own take on the rules by way of a mindmap, all their ideas are displayed on the ‘Learning Wall’ along with some fabulous work. Please stop and have a look.
You can see from the photographs that the children are starting to foll0w some of our rules and routines. They are wearing their aprons to play in the water, washing their hands before snack and tidying up when they are finished.
We have had our first visit from Childsmile and all children have been allocated their own toothbrush. Look out for shiny clean teeth next week.
So far this term we have had a tennis taster session and an athletics taster session. The children listened and followed the instructions given during the fun games. The tennis and javelin proved to be very popular activities testing their hand to eye co-ordination. Move over Andy Murray and Jessica Ennis as we have some budding athletes in our nursery!
As the month has progressed we have ventured out of the playroom and garden to visit the softplay area in Firpark school. The children used the facility well while learning to share and take turns already trying to follow two of our nursery rules.
On Friday the Super Snowdrops graduated from their ‘Play On Pedals’ course with 9 children now pedalling independently. All children received a certificate of achievement. A super result from the Super Snowdrops.
Our lending library will be available soon, details will be issued shortly.
Thanks for taking the time to read our Blog and enjoy all of our pictures.
Please, please, please leave a comment or two, we’d love to hear your feedback.
Our next Blog is scheduled for the End of September.
Mrs Shields
Many thanks to Mrs Shields for allowing me to attend the mass at Carfin Grotto on Friday. Venerating the relics of St Therese was a really uplifting experience for myself and pupils Caitlin and Taylor who were a credit to our school and their families.
I love the Visions Values and Aims poster. They say a picture paints a thousand words – this is a fantastic example of that. Well done to Mrs McCarthy and everyone involved in creating such a perfect image of what you are doing in our school. Terrific.