As you can see from the above photo, P4-7 are all set to entertain you at this afternoon’s concert. Tickets are still available from the office, priced £3.00.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter (@bartholomew_st)! Updates will be posted throughout the day during tomorrow’s trip to the pantomime in Glasgow.

Please remember that your child will require a packed-lunch for tomorrow’s trip and should also be in full school uniform. We will be leaving at around 10.00am and back at St Bartholomew’s before the 3 o’clock bell. It’s going to be a fantastic day away!

Some super Christmas wall displays have appeared around the school over the past week or so and I thought it might be nice to share these with you today. We have chilly penguins by P1 Stars, paintings of the nativity by P7, an advent calendar by P1 Rockets, some nativity silhouettes by P5, Christmas symmetry by P4 and some beautiful stable scenes by our nursery children. Thank you, boys and girls, for bringing Christmas into the main entrance area!

By close of school yesterday, we had a total of ten followers on Twitter (this includes Mark Millar and some bloke called Graeme Young!). We’ve got some way to go before we catch up with St Mary’s Primary, Whifflet: they have an impressive 214 followers! Please log-on, search for @bartholomew_st and start following St Bart’s before the trip to the pantomime on Thursday.

The P4-7 concert is now only a day away. The children will be taking to the stage at 2.00pm to kick-start everyone’s Christmas with a selection of festive carols and songs. There are still some tickets available from the office, priced £3.00.

Snow has already arrived in the north of Scotland and I imagine it won’t be too long before It appears on the forecast for Coatbridge. It’s very, very rare for schools to close as a result of snow, but it’s also best to be prepared for the possibility. Should there be heavy snowfall in the coming months, please make the North Lanarkshire Council website, the Head Teacher’s blog, Twitter and local radio your first ports of call. Announcements will be made on all of these if the school has been forced to close due to adverse weather. Please can I also ask that, if at all possible, you avoid telephoning the school office to ask if the school is open as it is vital we keep the lines free to receive and make essential calls. If there’s no announcement on the Head Teacher’s blog, Twitter or the North Lanarkshire website, the school is open. Should heavy snow force the school to close, suggestions and ideas will be made available on our website to help keep your child busy at home with meaningful learning activities.

Primary 7 have been learning about World War II this term. Check out the P7 class page for photographs of the children’s amazing Anderson Shelters. They really are fantastic!

Finally, just a reminder to check your child’s hair regularly for head-lice. These annoying little creatures are a problem now and again for every school. However, if all St Bart’s pupils’ hair is checked on a regular basis, we’ll be able to keep them at bay! Thanks for your help.

St Bartholomew’s is now on Twitter! This will not replace the website or Head Teacher’s blog, but will be used to post short pieces of important information and provide parents, carers and friends with up-to-the-minute updates when we’re out and about on trips and excursions. Our new Twitter page will be given a major trial run this coming Thursday when the whole school heads off to the pantomime in Glasgow. Unfortunately, we can’t take you all with us (sorry!) but we can keep you up-to-date with photos and comments via Twitter throughout the day. It would be absolutely fantastic to have lots of followers before Thursday arrives, so please download the Twitter app (or log-on via a computer), search for @bartholomew_st and start following us today!

The electricians have now completed their work in the oratory, leaving us with a prayer space even more beautiful and peaceful than before; all that remains is to give the room a fresh coat of paint in the new year. The refurbished oratory has a new feature ceiling, accent lighting above each of the Stations of the Cross and spotlights to pick out special features such as the altar back-drop. We are one very, very blessed primary school! And this leads me onto my last piece of news…

December is certainly turning out to be a month of good news for St Bartholomew’s. A letter arrived on Thursday from Bishop Joseph Toal granting the school permission to have the Blessed Sacrament reserved in the oratory. The school was gifted a beautiful tabernacle by the Passionist community, Glasgow, back in June and we are both delighted and honoured that the Bishop of Motherwell has granted permission for this to be placed permanently in our oratory and used to reserve the Blessed Sacrament. Bishop Toal writes:

“With the provision of the oratory and its good use by the pupils, staff and local community I think it will be a blessing for the school to have the Blessed Sacrament reserved there also…. I look forward to visiting St Bartholomew’s School and praying in the oratory…. and I pass on my blessing to the whole school community.”

Sincere thanks to Bishop Toal from our whole school community.

St Bartholomew’s received fantastic news yesterday following an official announcement by Angela Constance, the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning. I applied to the ‘Access to Education Fund 2014’ just before the October holidays for money to boost the performing arts in St Bartholomew’s and found out yesterday that the application has been successful. This means that £5000 will be heading our way to pay for a new sound system for the hall as well as a set of guitars and electronic keyboards for the music room. The sound system will allow our pupils to participate in musical and dramatic performances of the highest quality. The musical instruments will be used to deliver pupil-parent after school clubs in the new year and will also be used for Personalisation and Choice modules.

In their email, Education Scotland said: ‘Your proposal was considered to be both exciting and potentially of great benefit to children and young people experiencing barriers to learning. You have therefore been awarded the full amount of your bid to proceed with your proposal as outlined in your application.” We’re absolutely delighted!

The coffee morning organised by the Faith in Action group yesterday raised the fantatsic sum of £185.63 for the work of Father Ben in Uganda. Thank you to everyone for your support and generosity.

The Faith in Action group have also raised money and gathered in items for the Innocents Society. Unfortuantely, Sr Maria Goretti will be unable to make it to today’s assembly. However, a representative from the charity will attend to collect the gifts from the school.

Last, but not least, please remember to check out the website later today for our Pupil of the Week awards, the winning house, and the Cool Class.

The Faith in Action group are holding a coffee morning at 11.00am this morning to raise money for Christmas charities. This will take place in the Get Together Room and all parents, carers, staff and friends of the school are very welcome to come for a cuppa, a nibble and a blether… all in aid of a good cause!

Please remember that tickets for our various Christmas performances are now on sale, priced £3.00. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to be entertained by the talented pupils of St Bart’s! The P4-7 concert is now less than a week away… don’t leave it too late!

The rewiring work is now beginning to draw to a close. The computer suite was fitted with internet points this week (which literally involved running kilometres of cables above the false ceilings!). This work will deliver ultra-fast internet access for pupils and now provides St Bart’s with a computer suite which will be the envy of many a school!

Although our oratory still remains out of commission, the prayer group continues to meet each Wednesday at 8.50am. Numbers have been fairly low during the rewiring, so this is just a wee reminder to everyone – pupils, parents, staff and parishioners – that the group will meet as usual this morning in Mrs O’Neill’s classroom.

Many of you will already know that St Ambrose High School is being inspected this week by HMIe. I will be meeting with some of the inspectors first thing this morning to talk about the transition from P7 to S1 and to share with them the various ways St Ambrose HS supports St Bartholomew’s through the year. It has been an extremely busy week for Mrs Douglas and the St Ambrose team, but I have absolutely no doubt that the fantastic work they do from day-to-day will be recognised and highlighted by inspectors this week. We remember the whole St Ambrose school community in our prayers today and thank them for their ongoing support.

One of the ways St Ambrose supports St Bart’s is through their sports leaders programme. This involves two teams of senior pupils delivering PE lessons to our P6 and P7 pupils every Wednesday afternoon. They do a fantastic job and certainly put the boys and girls through their paces!

Tickets are now on sale for both the P4-7 Christmas Concert and the P1-3 Nativity, priced £3.00. The children have been working extremely hard over the past month or so and are sounding fantastic. The P4-7 concert is a week tomorrow (Wednesday 10th) and the Nativity is two weeks today (Tuesday 16th). Both performances will begin at 2.00pm.

The parish Pray for our School group meets in the school today at 11.00am. Due to the rewiring, the oratory has been out of commission since August. However, this hasn’t stopped this faithful group of parishioners continuing to gather together once a month to pray for St Bartholomew’s. As usual, the group will enjoy a cup of tea and a blether with some of our P7 pupils.

The Christmas Fayre raised an AMAZING £2074! Thank you to everyone for your support!