It has been a busy week at Holmston!

Scottish Shortbread for Syria

The Primary 1’s and Mrs MacInness’ group have been busy making shortbread in celebration of Burn’s Night.  They decided to link this to a very worth while initiative from UNICEF called #Bake for Syria.  The ‘Scottish Shortbread for Syria’ will be on sale, in school, on Friday the 26th of January and Thursday 1st of February at break.  Any left over biscuits will be sold in the playground at the end of the day.

Holocaust Memorial Day

The upper school pupils learned about Holocaust Memorial Day and the Kindertransport at assembly last week.  To follow up on this Primary 7 participated in a very inspiring lesson exploring the life story of Renie Inow, who escaped Germany before WW2 on the Kindertrasport.  They  investigated the ‘Power of Words’ and learned the importance of their thoughts and opinions – Primary 7 felt empowered to write some very inspiring postcards to Renie.

Some quotes from their work…

Your story made me feel inspired to stand up for children’s rights  Carly

I didn’t know what Kindertransport was and your story helped me find out.  Alana

Your story has inspired me to keep in touch with my friend in England more and to go and visit my Gran more.  Grace

The pupils linked their learning to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.  They looked at a list of all the rights and could very easily see which articles were important and directly related to the protection and safety of children.

Nelson Mandela 27

Pupils across the whole school have been participating in Show Racism the Red Card.  They have been working extremely hard with Mrs Messner during Creativity time to explore and investigate apartheid and Nelson Mandela.  In celebration of Mandela’s 27 years of freedom pupils have produced wonderful pieces of work that demonstrate their knowledge, creativity and understanding.

Rights Respecting Schools Ambassadors

Church Visit

Our ambassadors are preparing for their visit to the Auld Kirk on Sunday the 4th of February from 11am – 12pm.  While there, they will share our journey as a rights respecting school!

RRSA Videos

A small number of pupils have begun work on our very own Holmston Rights Respecting Video!  We cannot wait to continue with this and hopefully interview some pupils and members of staff!

Dinner Hall Charter

Our Ambassadors have all completed a homework challenge – to create a design for our new dinner hall charter.  The dinner hall staff have been invited to a meeting with Primary 5, the RRS Ambassadors, Mr Hardy and Mrs Reid on Wednesday the 31st of February to choose the winning design!

A few of our entries so far…

 

Phew!  Looking forward to next week!

During our Rights Respecting Schools day of celebration (3rd of October 2017), the upper school worked with Miss Gunning to choose articles, from the Convention of the Rights of the Child, that were most important in our playgrounds.    Primary 7 used the information gathered in the morning to create designs for an upper school playground charter.  In the afternoon the parents came in to see what we had been doing for the day. Later on the P7 class, Miss Gunning and the parents voted for the best design for the upper playground. The winning design was a rainbow, clouds and pots of gold, by Katie in P7.

We created these charters to show the rights that are important to  children in the playground. These include keeping safe and including others. Every child is entitled to these rights, so we must make sure everyone is treated equally.

The Rights Respecting Schools Committee all worked together to create the infant playground charter. Here is the infant playground charter – originally designed by our P6 Rights Respecting Ambassador, Amy.  The complete designs have been printed onto  large waterproof banners, courtesy of Owen Kerr Signs.

We can’t wait to display our charters outside in the playground for all to see!

Thank you to Miss Gunning for helping us to create these charters!

Written by Alana, Katie, Orla, Piper and Erin (P7)