Welcome back, I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year! As always we have had a very busy first  two weeks back, with the children and all the staff settling quickly into the school routine.

It has been a very busy week in school. I have been enrolling the boys and girls who will join us in August 2017 and look forward to welcoming them to St. John’s when we begin the Primary 1 Induction programme. We had our sacramental meetings with Father Stephen, and Mrs Quadrelli on Monday evening. We spoke to parents and carers of Primary 3 and 4 pupils about preparations for our forthcoming Sacrament celebrations and our patron’s Feast Day Mass, which we will celebrate on Thursday the  26th of January.

The Partnership Group Annual General Meeting took place on Wednesday the 18th of January and I am delighted that Mr Tops has been re-elected as Chairperson, with Mrs Cairney as Vice-Chairperson/Clerk, Mrs Tops as Treasurer, Miss Livingstone as Fundraising Co-ordinator and Mrs McLean as Parish Representative. I look forward to continue working with them and the other members of our Partnership Group, and thank them for all their efforts and hard work in supporting our school.

On Thursday the girls and boys from Primary 5/6/7 visited Glasgow Science Centre to find out about the Clyde in the Classroom project in which they are going to be involved.  Clyde in the Classroom is a hands-on project which uses the life history of a native Scottish species, the brown trout, to promote awareness of river ecology among young people across the River Clyde catchment.  The project encourages children to engage with nature and develop a sense of pride in their local environment. The children are responsible for the care of brown trout within their classroom and will work weekly with the Clyde River Foundation scientists. The children had a great day and found it very interesting and informative. They have had their first visit on Friday afternoon from one of the scientists, who set up the tank for the fish eggs and explained to the class what they have to do. Mr Hall tells me our visitors will arrive on the 1st of February and we will keep you up to date with their progress.

It’s been back to the hard work for the boys and girls of St. John’s and here is a flavour of some of the learning taking place in the classrooms:

Primary 1/2

The girls and boys have been learning Scots language through their new topic Katie’s’ Pairty. They have enjoyed making shopping lists and writing invitations for the ‘pairty’ as part of their writing lessons. In numeracy and mathematics, Primary 1 are working on addition within 10 and Primary 2 are working on ordering numbers to 100 and place value.

Primary 2/3/4

The children are really enjoying their new interdisciplinary topic about dogs. They are comparing and contrasting  a dog’s anatomy with that of a human being in Science. This week they studied the characteristics of dogs. In Literacy, they have written thank you letters for  their Christmas gifts. In numeracy and mathematics,  the boys and girls are learning about measure, with a focus this week on length. The Primary 2 and 3 children are using non-standard units of measure such as footsteps and hand spans, while Primary 4 are using metres and 1/2 metres.

Primary 5/6/7

The pupils of P5/6/7 are really enjoying their class novels, ‘Shadow’ by Michael Morpurgo and ‘Goodnight Mr Tom’ by Michelle Magorian. The children are really engaged in the stories and are thoroughly enjoying the reading tasks linked to the books. In numeracy and mathematics, the P5/6 pupils are working on addition and subtraction while P7 are learning about the order of different mathematical operations using the BODMAS rule. In religious education, the children have been learning about saints associated with Scotland.

Thank you for reading my blog.

Mrs McCart