The month of October has been very eventful, even though there was a week’s holiday within this month we’ve still managed to offer our pupils a wealth of learning opportunities, in class, throughout the school and further afield.
Beginning with our October Parent Evening, a huge thanks to all who came along. We were delighted to have 89% of parents/carers come along and hear all about their children’s work and take time to enjoy the wonderful learning environment in which our children learn. Thanks also to Caroline from North Lanarkshire Council Financial Inclusion Team who joined us on the evening to offer advice to parents/carers in respect of finance. A most useful addition to our Parent Evening.
On Tuesday 8th October we all enjoyed participating in our Octagonal October Obstacle Course. This was a sponsored event to help raise funds for our Fabulous Fund Raisers. Every child in school and nursery joined in the fun. A HUGE thanks to all who contributed, we raised an OUTSTANDING £3883.00!!!!!!
We are indebted to our Health Committee, Mrs Loose, Miss Forsyth, Mrs McCoy and Mrs Duffy for all their hard work creating the course, setting out each event and organising all the timetables on the day. Great fun was had by all.
Following this we asked each of our 9 committees and our House Captains and Vice Captains to seek the views of all of our pupils and staff with regard to how can we best use this money raised to further enhance our school and play ground. Here are all the committees feeding back to our Fundraising Group and myself.
The committees are:
Health Committee, ECO Committee, Digital Leaders, Enterprise Committee, Junior Librarians, Language Ambassadors, CaFi Council, Playground Patrol, JRSO & House Captains and Vice Captains.
Some of the ideas suggested included:
Sunken trampolines
Flower garden
New footballs
Tyres
Bouncy Hoppers
Basketball nets
New benches
Fruit trees
New bins for our yard
Outdoor chalk board
Comfier seats in class
Hula hoops (not the crispy kind!)
I have passed all the information onto Mrs Munro, chairperson of our Fabulous Fundraisers, we’ll keep you posted on our progress.
Our Language Ambassadors all enjoyed a very special treat in October, they went off on a field trip to The Glasgow Film Theatre, here’s Madame Ali telling us all about it:
On Tuesday 22nd October the newly appointed Language Ambassadors faced their first linguistic challenge:- a trip to the GFT cinema in Glasgow to watch a French cartoon film. The children had a wonderful time and seemed to understand the humorous storyline despite the fact that it was all in French.
Well done Ambassadors! A huge thanks to Mrs Robertson (Ethan’s mum) who came along on the day to accompany the children and to Madame Ali who organised this unique learning experience.
On Friday 25th October Primary 5 treated us all to some delicious home baking, tasty tea and comforting coffee. A wonderful coffee morning which raised and amazing £725.88 well done to all who helped with baking, organising, serving, selling raffle tickets, donating prizes and enjoying eating the cakes!
On this morning we made our first draw of the year for our 200 club, three lucky prize winners won £75, £35 & £20.
A Wee Reminder: P5, 6 & 7 will not have an assembly this year as we will be performing an Upper School Show Extravaganza on 31st March and 1st April……..Watch this space for the BIG REVEAL of what our Show will be.
During October many of our classes have taken advantage of the beautiful Autumn weather and changing season to explore outdoor learning. Here’s Primary 2b out and about enjoying the falling leaves (and learning lots at the same time).
Learning looks so much fun P2!
This week our children have all enjoyed our Hallowe’en Discos courtesy of our Fabulous Fundraisers. All three discos were a great success, thanks to all the Fundraisers and teaching staff who came along on the evening to join in the fun. Special thanks to Mr O’Brien who gave up his birthday celebrations to come along to support his class at the disco, hope he got home in time for cake. Copy and paste the link below to view lots of short videos and photographs of all the fun and the amazing costumes.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!BF9A3KQps18NlBvEJad3frGwR2Gk?e=10bgEc
On Wednesday morning our ECO Committee got to work organising all the Bag2School collections. The team helped to sort the bags and deliver them to the ‘van’. Great work ECO Committee. Many thanks to all who contributed to our Bag2School collection.
We finish our month with some wonderful news. Corporate Communications in North Lanarkshire Council who organise the Motherwell Lights Switch On, in conjunction with Motherwell Shopping Centre invited schools to participate in a Christmas Card Competition. One of our pupils from P5a is the, very deserving, winner! Well done to MAIREAD ROSS, a worthy winner. Mairead’s winning design will be unveiled at the Motherwell switch on she will be invited along to assist with the lights switch on which is on Saturday 16 November in Motherwell shopping centre, car park next to COSTA from 4-6pm. Mairead’s design will be projected onto the side of Pure Gym façade during the event. Mairead has also won some shopping vouchers from Motherwell Shopping Centre, and so has the school. How Exciting!
The organisers were so impressed by our children’s entries they asked:
The work from the children was fabulous, some really good artworks. Because of this we had the idea to use the artwork that the children created for some social media advent calendar posts and some more E-card – this is not confirmed yet. We were wondering if this would be okay?
We said YES! Well done to all who entered and to Mrs McCarthy and Mrs McLaughlan who entered their classes. Here’s the proud winner with her equally proud classmates and teacher:
Next week is a very exciting week for our school and nursery. We will have a Validated Self Evaluation (VSE) which will involve 9 personnel from North Lanarkshire Council coming along to our school community on Tuesday 5th and Wednesday 6th November. The VSE Team will visit all classes and the playroom, meet with focus groups of pupils, parents and staff and spend time looking at all the paperwork which is in place behind the scenes of our wonderful school community.
We look forward to welcoming:
Mr Kevan Egan Continuous Improvement Officer, Mr Brendan Duffy, Continuous Improvement Officer, Ms Pat Scullion, Attainment Officer, Pauline O’Neill, Continuous Improvement Officer, Ms Karen Greechan, HT St. Michael’s, Mrs Bernadette Hunter, HT Greenlees PS, Ms Carrie Nicol, HT Berryhill PS, Ms Jackie Fulton, Head of Centre Forgewood Nursery and Ms Donna McCann, Support for Learning Manager. What a lot of visitors!
In our latest School Improvement Report we graded our school and nursery at ‘5’ which translates as ‘very good’. The VSE process will validate our assessments of our school community. I am confident the Team will be most impressed with our pupils, staff and parents and will love the variety of learning opportunities on offer for our children and their families.
Speaking of the nursery……..it’s all going on down there!
This month the children have been looking at the change in the weather. They listened to the story of ‘Rosie’s Hat’ and the adventures the hat had during a very windy day. Outdoors they recorded the temperature using a thermometer and measured the rainfall using rain catchers. October brought some very wet and windy days and the children were able to fly their kites and use their umbrellas to keep them dry. Each group recorded their findings on a weather chart where they had the opportunity to draw different weather symbols and predict the next days weather. There was a lot of sun predicted but unfortunately their predictions were wrong. Some children recalled their own weather stories and these are displayed on our learning wall.
Our first Forest Kindergarten block started this month and all our nature detectives adventures are recorded in the floorbook in the cloakroom. Please have a look and see what our children get up to exploring the natural environment.
October also brought our fabulous Octagonal Fundraiser which was so much fun, the Health Committee excelled themselves providing fabulous activities that were perfect for little bodies. I’m sure you will agree when you have a look at the photographs.
As the month progressed it began to get darker and creepier down in the nursery as the house corner was transformed into a ‘Spooky House’. The children chose a range of costumes and Hallowe’en resources to put in the house. There were brooms, cauldrons and various sizes of pumpkins to role-play with. As Hallowe’en approached some children had the opportunity to carve pumpkins with scary faces and make ghost from a range of fruit. In art they explored slime and green jellibaff using their senses to describe what it felt like. They made ghost hands, spiders and bats In the writing area they described their costumes which they were going to wear at the party. All children had the opportunity to draw their costumes in the group floorbook. Some children made up a scary story that they proudly displayed on the learning wall.
Outside they took part in a pumpkin throw number game and played ‘ghost, ghost, bat.
Party day arrived and the children were excited to show off their costumes, they played ‘pass the pumpkin, musical goosebumps, spooky statues and sang and danced to some Hallowe’en songs. Before they left they all had spooky snack. Great fun was had by all! What a fabulous end to a very busy month!
As always, thanks for reading our Blog. Please leave a comment or two.
Mrs Shields
