All posts by Mrs Cooney-Schoenhofen

Minutes from Parent Council meeting

Please find below the minutes from last week’s Parent Council meeting:

Holy Family P.S.

Parent Council Meeting – AGM

Wed 18th September 2024, 6:30pm to 7:30pm

Agenda

1 School Prayer
2 Welcome/Introductions
3 Head teachers report – Mrs Harley
4 Nominations for PC positions
5 Christmas coffee morning
6 Potential Christmas Fayre organised by Leeann Gillespie
7 Other fundraising
8. Halloween Disco
9. Mr Creilly Leaving
10. A.O.C.B
11. Next Meeting

School Prayer

Jesus, Mary and Joseph,

Guide us, protect us, and help us to do good things for Holy Family Primary and our community.

Amen

Attendees:
Gillian Mackissack – Ella P2
Adele Duffy – Chair
Natalie Battersby
Carol Anne Doherty
Laura Murphy
Yvonne Currie – Treasurer
Lyndsay Donnelly – Secretary
Mrs Harley

Apologies:
James Duffy -Sophia P1

3 Head teachers report – Mrs Harley
• Mrs Harley provided copy of constitution -for review and update
• Copy of CoC to be read an signed by all members

• Activities supported by cluster support teacher
o Number Box
Read, Write, Ink
o Comprehension group
o Rainbow Reading
o Direct Intervention
o English language teacher
o ASNA – targeted support
• How are kids identified? – via HT and interaction with class teachers?
• Community of faith – School attendance at Fth Browns Mass was well attended
• Mother Angeline statue blessing – 6th November – will review kids’ attendance
• Confirmation prep in progress with support from FFM
• Residential session – parental input session – details required from the facility and dates to be confirmed
• Attendance – figures are positive across the school with HFPS scoring the best in the cluster @92%
o Target set at 95% (no more than two weeks absent per school year)
o Mrs Harley sending visual to all parents via email and comms channels
o Looking at strategy to encourage pre-holidays attendance
o Reminder ***Ability to report absence via Parent Portal
• Newsletter issued via link to GLOW and can be accessed there

4 Nominations for PC positions
2 new nominations for PC members – LD to email to arrange attendance at next session
Monisha Jose P1
Sandra Maguire P2
Chair – Previously Adele, replaced by Gillian McKissick
Secretary – Previously Lyndsay Donnelly, replaced by Laura Murphy
Treasurer – Previously Yvonne Currie replaced by Natalie Batttersby
Bank Mandate to be changes to include all three signatories
Vice Chair – Role Vacant

5 Christmas coffee morning/ Potential Christmas Fayre organised by Leeann Gillespie
• LD/AD – arrange time with LG to discuss proposal

6. Other fundraising – Possibilities – Bucket Collection, Silent disco

7. Halloween Disco – Dates to be confirmed – LD to contact Calvin for DJ support

8. Mr Creilly Leaving

9. A.O.C.B

10. Next Meeting – Sept Meeting changed due to availability, review dates for Oct due to poss clash with Halloween discos

Parents Portal

 

You will be able to access your child’s school report on ParentsPortal shortly. If you need further information, please contact the school office.

P4 February Learning Update

In February, Primary 4 welcomed back Mrs Cooney. The children have all worked so hard learning all about Shape and Tessellation in maths. They had some hands-on investigation as discovered that squares, rectangles, triangles and hexagons tile really well with each other as you can see in these stamper pictures: 

They also looked at tiling with more than one shape and came up with some beautiful patterns that all the teachers would love to have in their bathrooms for sure! Some are here:

It is now Lent so we do something a bit different every Friday in the lead up to Easter to raise food and money for the food bank and our Lenten charities. Recently we had Odd Sock day and wore our most unusual socks:

It hasn’t all been silly socks, though. The children have been working very hard on Writing and concentrating on the Recount genre. We planned a piece together all about a typical week in Primary 4 and here you can see the plan and then a link to the finished piece. Top contributors earned Star Writer status – well done!

P4 group recount

Our First Holy Communicants are preparing to make their Sacrament very soon. Mrs Daisley is helping to guide them in this as are their parents at home and for this we are very grateful. Thank you to all parents who are helping with homework and extra research projects as part of our topic on Scottish Inventors, too.

Christmas Jumper Swap! Book Swap Reintroduction

The Eco Team met on Friday and came up with TWO fantastic ideas to help reduce waste:

Christmas Jumper Swap

Textile (Clothing) waste is a BIG problem. Items like children’s Christmas jumpers are rarely worn for more than one season because children grow out of clothes so quickly. Some statistics on textile (clothing) waste:

  • Each person in Britain throws away about 3.1kg of textiles every year, and that 1.7kg of fashion waste is landfilled yearly per person.
  • The United Kingdom is second in terms of annual spending on new clothing, with  an average of £980.50 per person.

So, here at Holy Family, we want to address this by hosting a Christmas Jumper Swap where you can donate Christmas jumpers that are too small and take away, for free, a Christmas jumper that will fit you!

FAQs

  1. You don’t need to donate to get a free jumper.
  2. If you have lots of jumpers that are too small, we’ll happily take all of them off your hands.
  3. Please give generously!
  4. Can you make sure they’re washed and dried before donating please? Thanks 🙂

Book Swap Reintroduction

There is a display area just inside the main door to the back playground which used to be used for a Book Swap. Covid restrictions meant we had to stop that but now we are delighted to announce we can reintroduce it! If you would like to take a book from this display, help yourself for free! If you would like to donate any books, bring them in and display them here for others to take. Please give generously!

Mrs Cooney will fill the Book Swap area with Christmas/winter-themed books to kick off the Book Swap in seasonal style!