The Living Egg project arrived in school on Tuesday of this week. As always, Primary 7 have responsibility for this project. By Thursday we had ten healthy chicks – five girls and five boys!
Primary 7 will be busy this week continuing to care for their new arrivals and welcoming visitors from throughout the school to see them.
This week I had the opportunity to visit all classes in the school to discuss learning with our pupils. The focus, in line with our school improvement plan, was on reading skills.
Pupils spoke confidently about their ability to skim, scan and identify important aspects of text. Some children were identifying unknown words and using context clues and prior knowledge to work out their meaning. When they checked their ‘clever guess’ in the dictionaries they were delighted with how accurate they had been. The pupils in Primary 1 loved using their mirror ball to predict the story from the title. The upper school worked collaboratively in their circles taking responsibility for their own activities. Great debate was evident in some groups as they discussed their understanding of the text read.
It was fantastic to see how we are developing skills in reading throughout the school.
The Food Technologies Room officially opened this week. Another aspect of our improvement plan, this has been led by Mrs McCart, out Principal Teacher. The Parent Council had a preview of this fabulous resource on Monday evening and were most impressed. Mrs McCart brought together all resources from the Food Bus visit, equipment sourced using Sainsbury’s and Morrison’s vouchers and money donated by fundraising from Parent Council. The staff will now have opportunity to further training to enable all pupils to have access to this area in the future.
On Thursday our Masterclass initiative began for pupils in primaries 5,6 and 7. Unfortunately, due to staffing two classes have had a delayed start. However, the other nine classes had a super start. Pupils thoroughly enjoyed their first session and are looking forward to further developing their knowledge and skills next week.
On Thursday evening Miss Speirs, Mrs Kinnie and myself attended the Artsnet production in Hamilton Townhouse. Eight of our senior pupils were performing this year with three having principal parts. The performance of our children, and the other schools in South Lanarkshire, was outstanding. The pupils used art, drama and music to convey very important messages about being Safe and Sound while using the internet and in particular social media. I was immensely proud of the pupils from St. Cuthbert’s who committed themselves fully to this project attending rehearsals, learning lines, developing new friendships and performing superbly well for two shows. Well done!
Finally, World Book Day was celebrated on Friday as part of our Lenten Fundraising programme. We had a whole array of characters from princesses to Mary Queen of Scots, Horrid Henrys to Katie Morags!
In the nursery this week Mrs Collins tells us about the highlight of the week.
What a way to finish our transport theme – a fabulous trip to the Transport Museum. On Thursday morning, 87 adults, children and staff left the nursery at 9.30am between two buses and arrived just after 10 at the Riverside Museum. Children and their parents all had a great time with the tall ship being a firm favourite. The children spoke about the experience enthusiastically on Friday and drew fantastic pictures . The bus journey also provided lots of fun with some great singing taking place. A great experience for everyone involved.
Please remember our input for parents tomorrow evening on internet safety at 6.30pm in the school hall.
Many thanks for reading our blog,
Mrs Hendry
