St Bartholomews

Primary 1 – Liam

Primary 2 – Talia

Primary 3 – Enid

Primary 4 – Ava

Primary 4/5 – Brogan

Primary 5 – Eva

Primary 6 – Stuart

Primary 7 – Luca

Cool Class: Primary 6

Winning House: Lochend

Tea with Mrs B at 2 pm

As you can see above, there is always fabulous news to share at St Bart’s. Our boys and girls have more than maintained their fantastic start to the new school year- long may it continue.

I trust that everyone has received their newsletter, ( if not, please check your child’s school bag). This provides very useful information and dates related to the first two terms. Please feel free to hang this from the fridge door to remind yourself  of important dates.

On Monday,we will be visited from  8 senior pupils from St Ambrose, many of who are past pupils. They will be offering a helping hand to our class teachers and of course, to our boys and girls. We are all looking forward to working with you.

Tuesday is our first Parent Council meeting and will be held in the staff room at 6pm. We have moved these meetings to a Tuesday, at the request of the chair of the Parent Council so that elected members of the local council can more readily attend. Council members are often busy on Monday evenings with scheduled meetings and it was thought more pertinent to facilitate their potential attendance. A very warm welcome is extended to all of our parents, especially our new Primary 1 parents to get involved in the life of the school. We look forward to seeing you then.

Ms Jan McCrone, our Continuous Improvement Officer, will be visiting St Bart’s on Tuesday afternoon to meet with Mrs Bolland. I know that she will be extremely impressed with our boys and girls smart appearaand fabulous manners. Mrs MacIntyre will be meeting with a music specialist who will be demonstrating a fantastic music system that will make mass celebrations, assemblies and school shows even better!

On the subject of music, we are very lucky to have Sally Wilkinson visit us on Friday. She will be  working with our Primary 5 pupils,using  Kodaly. Boys and girls, you are in for a treat!

St Bartholomew’s will be a very busy place on Friday afternoon with preparations well underway for Comicon on Saturday. If you are lucky enough to have a ticket for this fabulous event, we very much look forward to seeing you then and joining in with a huge variety of fun filled events.
Mrs Bolland

Primary 1 – Layla

Primary 2 – Aaron

Primary 3 – Brooklyn

Primary 4 – Eve

Primary 4/5 – Kaitlyn

Primary 5 – Sophie

Primary 6 – Leah

Primary 7 – Ellie

Cool Class:  Primary 1

Winning House: Lochend

Tea with Mrs B – 2 pm today

A huge thank you to our parent helpers for walking children to mass on Friday to celebrate the feast day of St Bartholomew. Fr O’Kane was joined by Fr Martin ,as homolist,who was a previous pupil at st Bart’s. What a lovely treat for the children to meet him! Fr O’Kane suggested that all of the pupils from St Bartholomew’s help with creating a new sign for the church and make a competition out of it! We are looking forward to contributing to this very important task.

After interval, we had our first whole school assembly where we discussed our new routine attached to the house system. Children have been put in houses, dependent on sibling grouping and are having a strong focus on encouraging children to feel a strong identity with their house. Everyone will be working hard to gain as many points for their house as possibly. Great rewards will be bestowed upon winning houses! Details will follow…
We had a very special treat on Friday afternoon with ‘The take away theatre company’ who entertained pupils and adults alike. St Bartholomew’s day was certainly full of fun. Well done boys and girls for your excellent manners and appreciation.
Our first parent council meeting will take place on Tuesday 4 the September. I would encourage many of our parents to get involved with the life of your child’s school. We look forward to seeing you then.
Our first term’s newsletter will be with you shortly and will inform you by text when to look in your child’s school bag for it. This will keep you abreast of important dates and events during the first term.

Mrs Bolland

Primary 1 – Gabriel

Primary 2 – Layla

Primary 3 – Jasmin

Primary 4 – Ellie

Primary 4/5 – Shay

Primary 5 – Molly

Primary 6 – Sean

Primary 7 – Brooke

A huge thank you to all of our parents and carers for ensuring the incredibly smart appearance of all of our boys and girls. The children have received many positive comments about how smart they look and it is clear to see that they have great pride in their appearance. We were discussing this matter at assembly on Friday and talked about ‘look smart, think smart’, which I think is very appropriate. I look forward to the children’s continued smart appearance.

An additional thank you to all of our parents and carers who have adhered to our new rules regarding the playground. As you know, it is very important that the children are allowed some time to prepare themselves for the day ahead, prior to, oand during lining up at the bell. It is very much appreciated that parents are supporting this and gathering behind the pencils or the low wall in order to allow their children to become independent. It is already making a real difference!

On Thursday and Friday last week whilst I was in and around classes, it was clear to me that the vast majority of our children are delighted to back at school. I am sure that many parents and carers will agree with this as 6 weeks can be a long time without the routine of school and daily interaction with friends. All of the St Bartholomew’s team are delighted to see the children back after the holidays and look forward to working with your children for this next session.

Friday is the feast of St Bartholomew. In order to mark this very important day for our faith community, all of our pupils and staff will attend mass at St Bartholomew’s church for 10am mass. We would love it if you could join us for mass on Friday morning as it would be a lovely opportunity for our entire faith community to gather at the beginning of a new school year. We look forward to seeing you there!

Mrs Bolland

This young lady has appeared in my office on numerous occasions this year and all for very positive reasons! She has won a number of trophies and medals over the year and was especially proud to show them off. Well done and keep dancing…

On Monday, we have the Community Police visiting our Primary 4 to Primary 7 pupils. The main purpose of this visit to reinforce a positive message about looking after our community and to be good citizens. I am hopeful that this will encourage boys and girls and their families to look after our wonderful school over the holidays when incidents of vandalism can become more frequent.

On Tuesday, Fr O’Kane will be celebrating mass in honour of our Primary 7 pupils. We will hold an awards ceremony after mass where some lucky pupils will receive special awards and prizes for their positive contributions to St Bartholomew’s. All pupils will receive a high school tie, pen and  personalised tee shirt in addition to a leavers certificate. Some very worthy children will receive a Pope Francis award with a Parish commendation. We are all looking forward to recognising the fantastic work of these wonderful boys and girls.

On Wednesday, the Primary 7 boys and girls will take part in the long awaited beach party. Our loyal parent group have been organising a bouncy castle, DJ, photo both and chippy dinner with some special treats thrown in. Our boys and girls really look forward to this final social event and it is a very fitting farewell.

On Thursday, school finishes at 1pm.  Lunch will be served earlier on this day to ensure that our boys and girls don’t go home hungry! I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our parents and carers for their continued support this year, it has been very much appreciated. On behalf of myself and all of the St Bartholomew’s staff I would like to wish everyone a fantastic, safe holiday and look forward to seeing you all on Thursday 16th August.

Mrs Bolland

Primary 1 – Aaliyah

Primary 1/2 – Chloe

Primary 2/3 – Cheyenne

Primary 3 – Emily

Primary 4 – Fin

Primary 4/5 – Sophie

Primary 5/6 – Luka

Primary 6/7 – William

Primary 7 – Jennifer

Mr Fowler – Brodie

Cool Class Cup: Primary 5/6

Winning House: Lochend

Healthy Snack Winning House: Lochend

From the above photographs,it is very evident that  both of these girls are very proud of their achievements. One of the young ladies has achieved personal success, outwith school, something that we are always happy to share. The other young lady has come a long way in progressing her writing skills. What fabulous achievements. Keep it up!

The week ahead contains the following key events:

Today, Primary 2/3 will be visiting Almond Valley as part of their topic related studies. This is a fabulous trip and the children are very much looking forward to joining in with all the fun and excitement that this venue provides. A big thank you to our parent helpers for dedicating their time and efforts to help supervising the children. We couldn’t do it without you!

On Tuesday, we welcome Ms Kirkland and Ms Reid to our school, who will be visiting on school related business. Mrs Carlin will be visiting some of our prospective primary 1 pupils at their current nursery as part of our transition programme and also to provide a warm welcome to St Bart’s.

On Wednesday, Mrs MacIntyre will be leading training for a new reading for enjoyment programme that we are introducing next session. There are a number of exciting initiatives that the leadership team are preparing for implementation next session. Watch this space…

On Friday, our pre school children in the nursery are graduating. This is such an important milestone for these boys and girls and we are  very proud at St Bartholomew’s and wish them all well in their school careers. Well done! Mr McLaughlin, our head of service will be visiting St Bartholomew’s and I know that he will be incredibly impressed with our wonderful pupils. You are most welcome.

Mrs Bolland