On Friday 29th of November, parents and members of the local community joined staff and pupils for a Big Book Breakfast to help raise money for Mary’s Meals.

Everyone enjoyed flapjacks or porridge (to remind pupils that some people only get to have one meal  a day) while they spent time reading and sharing their thoughts on their favourite books.

On Tuesday 12th of November, parents came to Abernyte Primary to discuss the progress of their children with teachers at the Parent Contact Evening.  As well as talking with class teachers, parents had the opportunity to view a display of pupil work and new school resources and were encouraged to write feedback on post-its and stick it on the flipchart.  Below are some of the comments made about the school and curriculum:

“What a brilliant report from Eco-schools Scotland.  I hope you’ll be putting that in the local newsletter.”

“Excellent work being done by Primary 7 getting ready to go to high school.”

“Fabulous displays! What a lot of hard work!  Well done all involved!”

“Really lovely to see what fun and varied activities the children do as sometimes we hear very little from them, so thank you for all the hard work, it’s really appreciated.”

“Thank you for looking after our kids and teaching them so well.  Love the activities that you involve them in.”

“It is wonderful to see children learning in a ‘family’ environment, where the children genuinely care about each other and look out for each other.  They understand the importance of their own family and their local community.  They are active in tasks, encouraging to each other and have fun learning in class.  Well done Abernyte on installing the true value of family – something each and every child will be able to take with them wherever they go.”

Our new teacher, Mrs Holt, has quickly taken on board the responsibility of the P4-7 class. As well as being a perfect fit within the staff team, she has embraced her leadership role as co-ordinator of the Rights Respecting Schools initiative. As a warm up for the P7 Citizenship Day at Perth High School (PHS), she organised a Whole School Citizenship Day for us at Abernyte. Working in mixed age co-operative learning groups, with all staff involved, the children considered how they could be good citizens from a personal perspective to a global perspective. A great platform for the children to use their higher order thinking skills, discussions on personalities, politics and behaviour were intermingled with games and biscuit baking – the latter activity giving Mrs Holt and Mrs Khazaka the opportunity to put their recently honed skills gained on the “Cooking Bus” into practice!