St. Brendan's Primary School and Nursery

Welcome back – School Blog One of our new academic year!

Welcome back to our first whole school blog for the new academic year which will be updated regularly throughout the year to share all the exciting things happening across our school community, from classroom learning and wider achievements, to special events, celebrations of faith and extra-curricular opportunities.

It has already been a very busy and positive start to the term. Our learners have settled quickly into their new classes and routines and there has been a real sense of enthusiasm and energy throughout the school.

We look forward to keeping you updated on all the highlights, big and small, that make our school such a special place to be.

St Brendan’s celebrate 20 years of GIRFEC

Getting it Right for Every Child (GIRFEC) is Scotland’s national framework to make sure every child gets the right support to grow, learn and succeed. It was first introduced in Lanarkshire in 2006 and this year it reached its 20th anniversary.

As part of the celebrations and review of GIRFEC, our school was very proud to be chosen as an example of good practice. Education Scotland and Mr McPartland, Chief Officer for Education South in North Lanarkshire visited on Tuesday 9^th September to see GIRFEC in action and talk with our pupils.

This is a wonderful recognition of the hard work of our staff, pupils and families in putting GIRFEC into practice every day.

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Celebrating the year of the Jubilee

On Thursday 4th September, our Primary 7 learners voyaged together to Carfin Grotto to join pupils from across the Motherwell Diocese for a special Mass celebrating the Year of Jubilee. The celebration, led by Bishop Toal, brought together thousands of young worshippers who were blessed with a beautiful day during this uplifting occasion of faith and hope.

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Community Friday

On the first Friday of each month, our school comes together to celebrate Community Friday. Each month has a different theme or focus, giving our learners the chance to explore how they can make a positive difference both within school and in the wider community. Activities are designed to encourage our pupils to develop as responsible, caring citizens who contribute positively to their community and the wider world.

This week our focus is Eco. At assembly this week Mrs Ferns spoke with the children about the importance of looking after our local environment and wider world. Mrs Ferns has been working closely with pupils of all ages and stages within the school who are part of our Eco Committee with the aim of making St. Brendan’s Primary an eco-friendly, sustainable school for us to enjoy now and for future generations. Today our pupils took part in a range of activities focussed on supporting and improving water in our local environment and wider world. Pupils learned more about the water cycle, saving water, marine and freshwater habitats.

Whole school sponsored litter pick

We are excited to announce a planned whole-school litter pick to take place from Monday 8th September – Friday 12th September

As part of our commitment to  making St Brendan’s an eco-friendly school pupils are being provided the chance to make a positive impact on our school grounds and local community whilst raising funds for pupils to attend The Glasgow King’s theatre pantomime at Christmas. Every class will take part in collecting litter and will be provided with a sponsor form to take home and complete, alternatively donations can be made through our just giving page.

We look forward to seeing our pupils’ enthusiasm and commitment to making a difference and thank you in advance for supporting this great cause.

Pupil Council

We are delighted to congratulate our newly elected Pupil Council, chosen by their classmates to represent the voice of the St. Brendan’s pupils this year. These young leaders will play an important role in sharing ideas and help to shape school life. We are confident that they will approach their responsibilities with enthusiasm, creativity and a strong sense of citizenship. We look forward to seeing the positive impact they will make throughout the year.

Celebrating our successes

At this week’s assembly, we were thrilled to celebrate our pupils’ outstanding achievements as they received awards for being successful learners, confident individuals, effective contributors and responsible citizens. As always it is inspiring to see their hard work, determination and kindness being celebrated. Congratulations to all our award winners—you truly embody the values we strive for every day here in St. Brendan’s.

Celebrating Father James

Tonight, Friday 5th September at 7:00pm a thanksgiving Mass will be held at St Patrick’s, Shieldmuir, followed by a reception in the Parochial Hall to celebrate Father James who will be retiring after an extraordinary 52 years of service in missions and parishes across the Diocese. To celebrate his remarkable ministry, Father James, originally from Carfin, was ordained in 1973 and has served in Angola, Portugal and Scotland, touching the lives of countless parishioners along the way. We give thanks for his dedication and wish him every happiness in his retirement.

Primary 4 Class Blog

Primary 4 have settled into their new class with great enthusiasm and confidence. They have quickly adapted to new routines and shown a positive attitude towards learning. In the first few days of this new school year, we worked together to create a class charter which follows the UN rights of the children to create a warm and welcoming classroom environment where everyone feels ready to learn, play and feel safe. The pupils selected the theme of ‘Roblox’, and each pupil designed their own avatar representing themselves. They created their own ‘Roblox’ world inspired by our chosen class rights.

Our learning so far:

Literacy

In literacy pupils have been working hard to consolidate and learn a range of new phonemes and common words. With growing confidence they have been learning to apply these skills across their reading and writing activities. The pupils have been enjoying their new novel and reading books through guided discussions. They have been deepening their knowledge of new reading strategies to support their understanding. Working together, the pupils have engaged in collaborative tasks, sharing ideas and building on each other’s contributions to deepen their learning. Towards the end of this term the pupils will also engage in non-fiction reading and written tasks to extend their learning across the curriculum.

This term we are working on imaginative story writing and writing information reports. This week in grammar we looked at the importance of adjectives to up level our sentences. We loved playing a competitive game of ‘Adjective Action hunt’ where we worked in teams to use adjectives to describe nouns. The game got very competitive and we all had great fun!

Numeracy

In numeracy the pupils have been developing their understanding of place value as they begin to work with bigger numbers. We have been reading, writing, ordering and partitioning numbers up to the value of 10,000. We have loved extending our knowledge through participation of written and active tasks.

This term pupils will also be learning to identify a range of simple 2D shapes and 3D objects and extend their knowledge of addition and subtraction to 1000.

Learning across the curriculum

We have been busy learning across the curriculum over the past two weeks. Through health we have explored the importance of a growth mindset. We enjoyed taking part in an active group task where we identified the characteristics of a fixed and growth mindset. We then used this knowledge to create informative and colourful visualisers of them both.

In PE we have been working hard to develop our football skills. We have been developing our skills of dribbling and passing. We have also enjoyed exploring our athletics topic and enjoying some competitive relay races in our MUGA.

In RE we have been exploring the implications of Jesus’ command to love God and love our neighbour. We discussed the 10 commandments and enjoyed a game of charades where we had to identify the commandment. Through exploration of our church St. Brendan’s, we discussed the ways in which the Bible is the inspired Word of God and that we should treat it with reverence and respect. We identified where the Bible can be found in our church and enjoyed creating lovely pieces of dot artwork of these places inspired by the famous artist George Seurat.

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Celebrating our successes!

This week our class received ‘Brendan Bear’ for showing a positive attitude at assembly. We are so excited that Brendan gets to stay in our class for a week, we can’t wait to show him all our super learning.

This week 2 of our girls shared their success of a cheerleading medal and certificate. Well done girls, a super achievement!

A very warm welcome back to the new school year. Our first full week is complete and the children have settled in to their new classes and are already working hard.

As I mentioned in our newsletter last week, thank you for the effort in supporting our school uniform. The children look very smart and show a strong sense of community when wearing our uniform. I appreciate the huge effort that everyone has made. If you require any pre-loved uniform, including shoes, please contact the office via telephone or email, stating sizes and items required.

An important letter is in your child’s bag this afternoon – please ensure you take the time to read over and check the details are correct. It is critical that this information is accurate in case we have any need to contact you.

All forms MUST be signed and returned to school by Thursday 28^th August 2025, even if there are no changes to the information held.

Bishop Joseph Toal has written to parents and carers who have enrolled their child in a Catholic school within the diocese of Motherwell. A copy of the letter can also be accessed via the link below.

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Our new Primary 1 pupils will be formally welcomed to St Brendan’s Parish Community at the family Mass on Sunday 14^th September at 11am.

Here is a snapshot of our new classes hard at work…

Please visit the blog regularly as we will be updating on a Friday with news from the classes and around the school.