I hope everyone had a very enjoyable October break. We returned on Monday morning and probably had one of the busiest week’s in our school year to date. From student teachers to Digital Mascot competitions to Hallowe’en discos and school photographs!
I will try and give you a quick round up!
Before the October break we had our Parents’ Evening. Unfortunately we had our lowest turnout ever – 89%. Many parents have spoken to teachers this week so I know this number will rise but we had so many families on holiday prior to October break more than 10% of our pupils had no one at Parents’ Evening. We will look at this for next year. On the night we were promoting our new school app and asked people for views on our communication. The majority of people indicated a digital mode of communication is best e.g. text messaging. The summary of the consultation issued this week explained that every text sent to parents costs 4p! We have decided to continue with the app and utilise the notification facility instead of texting. We will review this in December and hope it is successful. This week we will publish the newsletter on the app as we move forward to become a digital school. The app can be downloaded free from your app store – just search for St. Cuthbert’s Primary and look for our school badge! We have had over 250 successful downloads to date! Please return the tear off slip if you such to continue receiving communication in paper format.
Our Digital Leaders, under the guidance of Miss Prentice, have been running a competition to design our digital mascot Codey! The 4 finalists were displayed at assembly on Friday and the whole school voted with their feet to decide on the winning design by Marcus Leslie! Well done everyone! Photographs are available via the app!
Our annual Hallowe’en Disco took place on Wednesday evening. This was a super night. The effort pupils (and staff) put into costumes is amazing! All the puppies are back under control and Cruella has hung up her wig! Again look at the app for photographs. Many thanks to our Parent Council, staff and DJ Paul for enabling this to take place. Huge congratulations to all pupils for their costumes and participation on the night!
School photographs were taken on Thursday and the photographer will return in next few weeks to take whole class pictures. I will communicate the exact date when it is confirmed.
All classes, except P1, brought home their Christmas Card designs on Friday. Please return orders with money in bags asap. P1 your beautiful designs should be dry on Monday and ready to take home! All returns have to be in school for Friday 3rd November.
Yes the Christmas word has been mentioned …. All classes will begin preparation for Christmas celebrations this week. This is an important time of year to celebrate the birth of Jesus. It also enables us in school to take forward many aspects of our Expressive Arts curriculum in a meaningful way. Please support your child’s learning in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, over and above the events shared, we also had hard work in each of our classes …
Primary 1 have been learning about the uniqueness in Health and Wellbeing and can identify similarities and differences between themselves and others. One of our senior pupils visited the class to discuss this important topic. Primary 1 also received a letter from a skeleton whose friend was broken and needed P1’s help! P1 worked together to help rebuild the skeleton
P1/2 have been developing their gymnastics skills in PE learning different ways to travel and balance. In Re the focus was on who cares for them in all areas of their lives and they are every excited to show off their excellent Christmas card designs.
P2/3 have been learning about what plants need to grow and sequencing the steps. They have also been developing their sentence structure. P2 focusing on use of full stops and P3 developing their sentences with the use of conjunctions.
P3 created some wonderful pieces of writing this week. They have also been learning Spanish numbers 11-20.
P4 have been hard at work preparing for their Mary’s Meals Afternoon Tea fundraising event. They have been practising their speeches and their dancing! They also welcome Miss Thompson, student teacher, to their class this week.
P5 have been very creative this week! They designed their Christmas Cards, shared their amazing Titanic models, started work on their Christmas crafts for the fayre and wrote their own Hallowe’en spells!
P6 have been focusing on exchanging in numeracy 4 digits from 4 digits. Work has started on their next piece of writing which is a descriptive piece about he emergency services. In Spanish they have been learning the calendar and in Manadarin the focus has been the months of the year!
Pr7 have been creating PowerPoints all about the Scottish Parliament. They have been developing their use of effects on the programmes and will give their presentation to the class this week. They have started to read Divided City been practicing their prediction reading skills.
In the nursery this week the children celebrated the custom of Diwali. They then read the story ‘Room on the Broom’ as they started their celebrations for Hallowe’en. The Nursery parties are usual session times on Tuesday – please come in fancy dress!
Childsmile also visited this week for the tooth varnishing programme. This week all children made a visit to the school library in preparation for the start of the lending library next week with our parent helpers.
This week please remember that the lunch menu has changed to the Winter Menu. Menus given to all pupils – please look in bags! We now have only 3 options – blue tray, red tray and the combo plate. The combo plate is a cold option consisting of a half wrap, half sandwich and a cold pasta pot. These are all served together on a plate. This was introduced to children fully at assembly on Tuesday. On Thursday this week we also have the interviews for Nursery Buddies! Good luck Primary 6!
Many thanks for reading my blog,
Mrs Martina Hendry
Head Teacher
