This week has been very topsy turvy due to staff absence, Miss Roy gave us all a big fright when she ended up in hospital undergoing an operation on her gall bladder! She is now home and on the mend. We send her our best wishes, we miss her cheeriness around the school!

Our new i-pads arrived and Mr Duffy spent a few hours setting them up and getting them into classes. It is lovely to see the timetables for next week include the use of the i-pads as part of the planned learning experiences!

Miss Chamber’s attended a drama course after school on Monday evening. A number of staff choose to attend training after school hours as this makes it easier to avoid having to get cover for a class.

On Tuesday 27th Mrs Archibald and Mrs Lettis attended a training day for the Primary One refresh pilot programme, they have been very busy over the last term setting up play activities to reinforce the learning taking place. We have invested a large part of our budget to buy new resources for the children. They are really enjoying them and our assessment of their progress shows that they continue to learn at a fast pace!

Mrs McKinnon and I spent some time this week working on the new website page on GLOW. watch this space……

At our staff meeting this week we looked at God’s Loving Plan resources. There will be a meeting for parents early next term before children begin the programme. We also spent time revisiting our assessment processes.

We had an excellent turn out of P3 and P4 parents at our Sacramental meetings on Tuesday evening. Class teachers took the parents through the learning which will take place in class and then father King and father Kryztof explained what the church expected of parents. All children who were not represented at the meeting have been given a letter home this week asking them to contact the clergy if they wish their child to receive the Sacraments.

We had a visit this week from Graeme Paterson who goes around schools talking to children about the First World War – staff and parents were very impressed by the way he engaged the children. He works completely free of charge and should be commended for the brilliant work he does!

Our Divided City rehearsals continued this week – we seem to get the snow each time the children have to walk to Castlehill Primary! Mr Finnon reports that the children are growing in confidence and working well with the children from Castlehill. We can’t wait to see the finished show in March.

Our after school clubs have started up again and we currently have football, badminton and Pope Francis Faith Award clubs running.

Mrs Archibald attended her second day of Solihull training this week. Primary one coped well without their teacher for two days this week!

The free lunch initiative for P1-3 is going very well so far however I am concerned by the amount of waste each day. If your child is having lunch perhaps think about the amount of snack they have at ten thirty? A number of children have a drink, crisps and a sweet at ten thirty then are expected to eat lunch at twelve thirty – something for parents to think about?

And finally…. this week I visited Mrs Allen in St Timothy’s Primary on the day she retired after forty years teaching. We receive great support from our colleagues in other schools and I am always a bit sad when someone we have the greatest respect for retires and moves to pastures new. I wish her every good health and happiness in the future.

A selection of photographs from this week’s Twitter page.