Many congratulations to our four new House Captains. Each of the candidates prepared a speech and presented it to their peers on Friday afternoon, after which a secret ballot was held. They were up against some stiff competition, so all four should be very proud of this fantastic achievement.

I have no doubt that our newly-elected house captains will give 100% to their new posts, working hard to support younger pupils and playing a lead role in helping St Bartholomew’s Primary be the best school it can possibly be. Well done, once again, to this year’s house captains:

Drumpellier: Eilidh
Lochend: Euan
Monklands: Heather
Summerlee: Morgan

Friday already!… and that means our weekly whole-school assembly, including eight new pupils of the week and a brand new winner of the Cool Class Cup. As always, check out ‘Success’ at the bottom of our website homepage to discover this week’s proud winners.

Please remember that the karaoke night to raise money for our new SMARTBoards is now only three weeks away. The Gartsherrie Club has been booked for Friday 19th September. It’s sure to be a fun and entertaining night, so make sure you put this date in your diary. Further details will be sent out from the Parent Council in due course and tickets will go on sale very soon.

I have been asked to speak at the Scottish Learning Festival at the SECC on the evening of 24th September. Unfortunately, this falls on the same day as the parent information evening mentioned in this month’s newsletter. Apologies for any inconvenience it may cause, but the information evening has now been moved to Tuesday 23rd September at 6.30pm. The evening will give you the opportunity to hear how St Bartholomew’s endeavours to get it right for every child in the school and how you can support and keep up-to-date with your child’s learning during the course of the year.

Our annual sponsored walk is now less than two weeks away (Thursday 11th September, weather permitting). As you know, we need to find around £16,000 this year to replace the ageing SMARTBoards in our eight classrooms. We hope to raise £6000 of this from fundraising events and the sponsored walk gives us a great opportunity to make a big jump towards our target. Last year’s walk raised almost £1200 and it would be fantastic to raise the same again, if not more! Please remember that every little counts… even one or two sponsors will help us achieve our dream of fitting state-of-the-art SMARTBoards in every classroom by the Easter holidays. Thanks for your support!

Contractors are making excellent progress on the rewiring of the school. The Primary 2 and 3 rooms are now finished and Mrs Deeney, Mrs Polsinelli and their pupils can look forward to getting settled into their permanent classrooms over the next couple of days.

The contractors will move onto the central part of the school (oratory, staffroom, foyer, offices, toilets, Get Together Room) as from today, so there will be disruption to these areas over the coming weeks. First to be affected will be the oratory. This is now temporarily out of commission, so this morning’s prayer service will take place in the Get Together Room at the usual time of 8.45am.

It is very likely a start will be made on the school offices next week. This will mean that Mrs Smillie, Mrs Clare and I will, at some point, need to find temporary office spaces for a few days. I will keep you informed via the blog of these arrangements.

Apologies in advance for any inconvenience the rewiring work may cause. It will all be worth it in the end!

I read last night that Mother Teresa (Blessed Teresa of Calcutta) was born on this day, 26th August, in the year 1910.

Mother Teresa was, of course, the foundress of the the Missionaries of Charity, a religious congregation which ministers to the poorest and most vulnerable members of society in 133 countries around the world. As well as the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, members take a fourth vow: to give wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor.

Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her inspirational work. She died in 1997 and was beatified in 2003.

I’ll leave you with some of the simplest but most inspiring words of Mother Teresa. Let’s fill St Bart’s with smiles today!

Our school community celebrates the feast day of our patron, St Bartholomew, today with a special Mass in St Bartholomew’s Church at 10.00am. All parents, carers and friends are most welcome to join us. If you don’t know much about St Bartholomew, you may be interested in checking out the Information section of our website where you’ll be able to click on ‘Our Patron’ and read all about the special saint we honour today.

I made a slight error on last week’s blog. The Primary 1 photograph for the Advertiser will be taken on WEDNESDAY, not tomorrow.

Finally, at this time of year, we always remind parents and carers to check their child’s hair regularly for head-lice. This is a problem every school faces during the course of a year, but being vigilant and treating lice promptly really does help keep the little blighters at bay! Thanks for your help.

It’s hard to believe we’ve reached the end of the first week of term already. And what a great week it’s been! The children have settled in extremely well, especially our new Primary 1s who have taken the first week of ‘big school’ in their stride! Well done for all your hard work, boys and girls, and thank you to all the teachers for getting the year off to such a great start. I’m looking forward to awarding our first Pupil of the Week certificates at assembly today, along with the Cool Class Cup. Click on ‘Success’ at the bottom of our website homepage later today to find out the proud winners.

A photographer from the Advertiser will be in St Bart’s on Tuesday to take a photograph of our new Primary 1s (all 38 of them!). The boys and girls already look ultra-smart in their new school uniforms, but I wanted to give parents and carers a bit of advanced warning in case you want to do a final check on that school tie come Tuesday morning or use a wee bit extra hair gel to get that perfect look! I’m looking forward to seeing our fantastic P1s smiling out from the pages of the Advertiser in a few weeks time!

Finally, please remember that St Bartholomew’s has a Breakfast Club every morning from 8.15am onwards. The children can purchase cereal, toast and juice for a very small amount of money and enjoy their first meal of the day in the company of their friends. It would be great to see some new pupils join our Breakfast Club regulars.

The weekend forecast is for sunshine. Have a great weekend and see you on Monday!

John Wilson will be in St Bartholomew’s to take school photographs on Tuesday 9th September. Letters have now gone out to all Nursery – P7 pupils, so please check school bags.

St Bartholomew’s Day falls on a Sunday this year, so we will mark the feast of our patron saint this coming Monday, 25th August. Our whole school community will join the parish for Mass at 10.00am in St Bartholomew’s Church. All parents and carers are most welcome to join us, and any offers of help with accompanying the children to and from the church would be very much appreciated.

As many of you know, Mike Russell, the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, visited St Bartholomew’s back in June. We were delighted to receive this level of recognition for the day-to-day work of our phenomenal pupils and staff. The Cabinet Secretary has written to thank us; his letter can be viewed below. Well done, once again, to the whole team for making St Bart’s the fantastic school it is!

It was a great first day back yesterday. The children looked fantastic in their uniforms and this was matched by their enthusiastic smiles and super behaviour. There were lots of happy teachers in St Bart’s yesterday! Well done, boys and girls!

As mentioned in the newsletter which went out yesterday (this can also be accessed in the ‘News’ section of the website), the interactive whiteboards throughout the school are now over ten years old and are in urgent need of replacement. Each board costs around £2500, so there is a significant amount of money for the school to find. If you’re unsure what a Smartboard is, here’s the sort of unit we’re planning to fit on the walls of all eight classrooms:

Thrifty use of the school budget over the past two years has allowed us to purchase over £20,000 of core resources including reading books, iPads, topic materials, musical instruments and science equipment. With these resources in place, we are now in a position to devote the bulk of this year’s budget to the new interactive whiteboards. However, even the most creative use of the 2014/15 budget will not free-up sufficient funds to purchase boards for all eight classrooms, so we will need to raise an additional £5000-£6000 through fund-raising over the next six months.

The Summer Fayre kick-started our fund-raising campaign and a number of events have been organised for the coming months. The first major fund-raiser will be the annual sponsored walk on Thursday 11th September (weather permitting) and the Parent Council have also organised a karaoke night for the evening of Friday 19th September. Please support our various fundraising events as much as you possibly can; all money raised will directly benefit your child over the coming years.