Last week saw us celebrating our Scottish heritage further when Rooms 11 and 12 attended a Burns event hosted by Hamilton Town House Library.  The pupils had researched Rabbie Burns and created books about his life and works.  4 of our pupils also represented St. Mary’s at Hamilton Burns Club poetry recital competition on Wednesday night, which involved 6 schools in the local area – St. Mary’s, St. Elizabeth’s, Woodhead Primary, Woodside Primary, St. John’s and  Hamilton College.  Johnny opened the competition with a fantastic recital of ‘Address to the Toothache’, whilst Niamh, Uzair and Chloe all made us extremely proud with their recitals of well known Burns poems.

On Tuesday, we had a great start to our Masterclass sessions.  Our junior and senior pupils were involved in many varied activities including karate, knitting, gardening, guitar, cooking, ukulele, arts and crafts, French, Technologies and many more.  Led by members of school staff and volunteers, our pupils will develop their skills over the next 5 weeks – keep up to date with masterclass photographs on our Twitter feed.

Over 80 pupils joined us at the Lenten Eucharistic Service at 8.30am at St.Mary’s Church, Fr.O’Brien was amazed at the high number in attendance and looks forward to celebrating with us every Wednesday morning during Lent.

Rooms 11 and 12 visited Bannockburn Heritage Centre in Stirling on Wednesday to conclude their interdisciplinary topic on the Scottish Wars of Independence.  The pupils had a wonderful time taking part in workshops, studying artefacts and joining in a re-enactment!

Nursing students from the University of West of Scotland delivered health talks to classes on Wednesday on ‘The Journey of Food Through The Human Body’.  Partnerships such as this, enhance the knowledge of our children in exciting and motivating ways.   We are very lucky to have formed these type of partnerships with various stakeholders and thank the university for giving us this opportunity.

On Thursday we had our latest COGS meeting, involving all of the children from Primary 1 to Primary 7.  Pupils discussed the wellbeing indicators of feeling ‘Included’ and ‘Healthy’.   We discussed what being included means to them and the various ways pupils feel they are included in decisions that are made in St. Mary’s Primary.  The children also discussed the difference between mental and physical health and the ways St. Mary’s encourages and supports their mental and physical wellbeing.  The results from our COGS meeting will be included in our monthly newsletter at the end of this month.

As always, thanks for reading,

Mrs. Elaine Fitzpatrick

We only had a 3 day week last week, however as per usual it was an extremely busy one and felt a lot longer than 3 days!

We began by celebrating Ash Wednesday mass at St. Mary’s church, led by Primary 5 pupils.  This mass marks the beginning of Lent.  Throughout this season we will be thinking of those less fortunate by raising money for SCIAF and other charities through various activities,  culminating in our Charities Week.

This week we welcomed 2 Post Graduate students from Strathclyde University and one Bachelor of Education student from Glasgow University joining us until the Easter holidays.  Miss Charlotte Brannan will work with Mrs Phillips and Room 3 until 18th March and will then work with Room 10 and Miss Graham.  Mr Sergiu Vornic will work with Mrs Campbell and Room 7, whilst Mrs Gillian Paterson is working with Mrs Seenan and Room 11.  I am sure that they will have a wonderful school experience at St. Mary’s Primary School, learning various effective strategies and deepening their knowledge of Curriculum for Excellence, thus preparing them for life in the teaching profession.

This week we started rehearsing our musical pieces for our Summer Show ‘The Mikado’.  Our Primary 7 pupils are very excited at the prospect.  We will be auditioning for parts next month, when the children are more familiar with the storyline and songs.

Unfortunately, we had to cancel our Internet Safety Evening, which was planned for Wednesday of last week.  It was with much regret that I took the decision to cancel after the hard work that Mr Rimmer, Mrs Phillips and Primary 7 had put in to prepare the presentation.  The lack of response from parents to attend the event meant that only approximately 20 people would hear the message of how to keep their children safe online.  I feel very strongly that online safety is something that affects every single parent, even though we may not realise it, therefore we must think ‘outside of the box’ of a new way to reach all of our parents.  Primary 7’s efforts will not have been in vain as they will deliver the presentation at our future learning showcases for the various stages throughout the school.

Our football team had an excellent result last week at the James Nisbet Shield and got through to the finals at the Jock Stein Centre this week.  Well done boys and good luck!

We were very privileged to be part of the baptisms of 5 of our pupils on Friday afternoon.  In front of friends, family and classmates, Fr. O’Brien baptised Luca, Joshua, Caleb, Eve and Lucy.  We welcomed them into the Catholic faith and are delighted to be part of their faith journey, especially with those who will be receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation and First Communion this year.

On Sunday 14th February, we celebrated Catholic Education Week at St. Mary’s church with the pupils of Primary 3, Primary 4 and Holy Cross students.  Primary 3 and Primary 4 made their enrolment promises to prepare for the Sacraments of Reconciliation and Holy Eucharist.  Our pupils read the Prayers of the Faithful, praying for all of those involved in Catholic Education and David Hayburn, from Holy Cross High School, spoke impeccably  about what it means to be a Caritas student and the works of Mercy they are involved in.

We are looking forward to another busy week ahead.  Remember to keep in touch with all of our activities through our Twitter feed.  We now have 70 followers!

Thanks for reading,

Mrs Fitzpatrick

Head teacher

As you may have noticed, my blog was hijacked by senior pupils last week!  Primary 7 volunteered to add their own blog to our website to let everyone know more about their Primary 7 learning experiences.  Watch this space for regular updates.

Each Monday morning, our Primary 5 pupils are developing their musical skills through the South Lanarkshire Council Youth Music Initiative under the tuition of Mrs Jacqueline Devlin.  Our children are enjoying using percussion instruments, concentrating on the glockenspiel, and hopefully will be able to entertain the rest of the school in a few weeks time!

Over the next few weeks each of our classes will visit Hamilton Town House Library.  The children will take part in various activities to develop their research skills.  This week, room 6 thoroughly enjoyed their visit, deepening their knowledge of how fiction and non fiction books are organised and how to use this to help them with their Egyptian topic.

Primary 4 pupils had a wonderful time on their First Communion retreat at Holy Family parish, Mossend.  This trip helps them in their First Communion preparations by educating them in various aspects of church life such as parts of the mass, priest vestments and church furniture.  They also had the opportunity for meditation and reflection upon the importance of the sacrament.

All classes took part in Internet Safety week activities this week.  All pupils from Primary 1 to Primary 7, discussed the benefits of the internet and how to keep themselves safe when online.  Primary 7 pupils will present their findings on the evening of 11th February, all parents are invited to this presentation.

Friday, 5th February was a Staff Development Day, whilst pupils enjoyed a lovely day off!  We opened our doors to teaching staff from other schools in the Holy Cross Learning Community to develop our knowledge and skills.  In the morning, Mrs Devine had organised various science workshops for all to take part in.  Experts from SSERC (Scottish Schools Education Research Centre) led the workshops on flight and space.  In the afternoon, Mrs Seenan had arranged for Dianne Anderson from Education Scotland to talk to all staff about the use of Scots in primary schools.  All staff agreed that it was an extremely beneficial day providing them with lots of knowledge and resources to use with pupils in their own schools.  Thanks to Mrs Devine and Mrs Seenan for their contribution and commitment to the day.

Photographs of all of the activities that happen in our school throughout the week can be viewed on our Twitter feed.

As always, thanks for reading,

Mrs Fitzpatrick

During the month of January, Room 12 have been so busy. We have been absolutely slaving away! Getting back into the school routine was hard, but we got there eventually. There were a variety of learning experiences which we all enjoyed, centered around Scottish Language and Culture.

When it was announced that we were having a mini topic on Robert Burns we were over the moon! As part of the Robert Burns topic we had to learn a poem and we chose “To a Mouse”. It was eight verses long, but we learned it off by heart! Also, we were entered into a Robert Burns competition in the Hamilton library whereby everyone had to create a journal on his life and works. Some people also created a quiz or wordsearch about Robert Burns Day!

Another thing we did to celebrate in the Robert Burns tradition was to do an assembly and share our knowledge of him with the rest of our school. This was in the morning of Rabbie Burns Day(25^th) and then, in the afternoon, we went to share our happiness of being Scottish and entertained the Morrison shoppers, performing a showcase about Robert Burns. We did a variety of singing dancing and reciting poems at Morrison’s. Amazingly we raised a staggering amount of almost £100! Wow!

A traditional meal is always served at a Burns Supper- Haggis, Neeps and tatties. To close this mini topic we too had a Burns Supper in school! It was fun!

As well as learning about Robert Burns, we went outside in the cold snow and built a snowman (or should I say slushman!) Fab teamwork! Anyway our hands were very cold picking up the snow, however, we all enjoyed it!

For the next few months we have got lots of things planned – going our school trip to Bannockburn and The Children’s Cafe, but the thing we are all looking forward to the most is our residential trip to Kingswood Outdoor Learning Centre. You will be hearing more about these things very soon!

We began this week celebrating Rabbie Burns Day.  Primary 7 presented a wonderful Rabbie Burns assembly to the whole school, educating everyone on the life of Burns, reciting poems along with some Scottish dancing and singing.  They then entertained customers at Morrison’s in the afternoon.  On Tuesday, Primary 7 continued the celebrations with a Burns Supper – the hilarious toasts to the lassies and laddies can be seen on our Twitter feed.  We now have 50 followers on Twitter!  Thanks to Mr Rimmer, the feed is updated daily with photographs and news of school events.

We are very fortunate to have so many dedicated staff and volunteers to organise extra curricular clubs for our pupils. Our Primary 2 lunch time club run by South Lanarkshire Active Schools for the next 4 Tuesdays has been a great success.  The children have loved taking part in multi sports, developing their skills and working in teams.

On Wednesday night St. Mary’s staff went to the Education Mass at Our Lady of Good Aid Cathedral, celebrated by Bishop Toal, to mark the beginning of Catholic Education Week.  The theme of Catholic Education Week this year is ‘Learning to be merciful’, echoing this, the Year of Mercy.  Archbishop Tartaglia’s letter to all parishes reinforces the importance of Catholic Education and of Catholic teachers.  Pupils of St. Mary’s and Holy Cross High School will mark Catholic Education Week at 10am mass on Sunday, 14th February.  This will also be our enrolment mass for primary 3 pupils making their Sacrament of Reconciliation and our Primary 4 First Communicants.

As always, thanks for reading this week’s blog – I hope it keeps you up to date with everything that is happening in our wonderful school!