Welcome to our school Reflective Friday Post.
February has been a busy month with lots of exciting experiences for our young people. We are looking forward to our 2 day Developing The Young Workforce programme which will focus at the P5-7 stage and will involve those pupils in a rotation of activities aiming to establish their personal skills and qualities and how these can be used to identify future suitable forms of work.
Our after school clubs are continuing in fundamentals, musical theatre, football, netball, sumdog and cross country. The commitment of the children to these activities is fantastic and the increase in their associated skills base is already clear to see.
Our Thinking Circles questions have related to our monthly SHANARRI focus of being Respected and have explored ways in which we can all show respect to one another and receive it in return. We linked this to Catholic Education Week and set our question within the context of all faiths. The main theme of our responses was that showing respect and kindness was integral to loving your God and living his values in your daily life.
We had a focus on Internet Safety as part of Internet Safety Day on the 6th March using the CEOP and Thinkuknow resources. The children showed a high level of awareness of how to keep themselves safe online and what behaviours were not acceptable. I would ask you to familiarise yourself with these websites and discuss these issues with your children as part of this effort to develop their understanding of keeping safe online.
On the 7th March we enjoyed Global Big Play Day where all classes participated in a day of free play without electronics of any form. The purpose of this is to encourage team work, turn taking, use of imagination and problem solving and the feedback from the pupils reflected this with comments such as playing made them feel free, happy, enthusiastic and normal. This is definitely an experience we will look to repeat next year if not on a termly basis and I will follow up on the children’s request for an after school play club.
Our P6/7 pupils enjoyed great success at the NLC athletics festival on the 2.2.18 and our P3 pupils were similarly enthusiastic in their participation at the Active Schools Play Festival on the 9.2.18. We are currently looking forward to the NLC Cross Country heats on the 28.2.18 and have been practicing hard in preparation for this.
Our teaching staff have recently undertaken additional training by the SAMS group in the use of ipads to support numeracy and have shared this with the rest of the staff as part of our school improvement plan priority to enhance teaching and learning in this area. Miss Gallagher has also undertaken full day training in Microsoft 360 which she is implementing in her whole school McCrone lessons. Mrs Leblond and Mrs Stevenson have also undertaken training in Primary Engineering which we will link to our Developing The Young Workforce focus and STEM subjects in particular.
The children should have completed their learning journeys today and set new targets forMarch. Please take some time to go through this with your child as we value your input and want to work closely with you to ensure success.
Mrs F Wilson
