Author: Mr Neale

Iona House met today and created some lego models of things we can ‘reduce, reuse or recycle’. We had fabulous models of bottles, boxes, trees, wellie boots and gardens.

On Tuesday, P6 visited Almond Valley Heritage Centre in Livingston as part of our ‘Whitburn and West Lothian’ topic. We learned about the role mining played in our local history and found out about the lives of miners. We also got to meet some of the animals that live at the centre.

Today, as part of World Book Day, P6 joined the boys and girls from the nursery to take part in a paired reading activity. There were lots of smiles and happy faces during our reading.

P6 have been very busy recently and wanted to share a few highlights from the past few weeks. We have been learning how to measure, using our Outdoor Learning space to help us estimate distance and check our measurements. We also had our class trip to visit Edinburgh as part of our Harry Potter topic. In class, we created our own wands and took part in some Wizards duals and have enjoyed taking part in some collaborative construction work.

Today at St Joseph’s, we held our first whole school GlaSTEMbury event. Children worked in groups to create water courses, shared their knowledge of fractions, create shelters and build tents, create 3D models, build simple support structures and explore plant and animal life in our school environment. We ended our day with a ‘Party in the Playground’ to celebrate all our good STEM work from this year.

A big well done to our P5/6 Titanic modellers. Each model shows a huge amount of imagination and hard work has been put into each one. Well done boys and girls!

A big thank you to everyone who has returned permission slips for our ‘Names on Labels’ drive. So far, Iona House have visited over half the classes in the school and labelled many items of clothing. We hope to have visited all classes before the end of next week.

 

P5/6 and P5 had lots of fun exploring the Scottish Parliament Building this morning. We saw the debating chamber and some of the exhibits within the Parliament building. After eating lunch in the shade of some trees in the Gardens, outside the Parliament, we travelled to see Imaginate’s ‘9 to 5’ show – we had a great day out!

Our Iona House Captains have noticed a lot of school jumpers and ties being lost or left unclaimed. As part of St Joseph Primary Schools drive to reduce, reuse, recycle, our House Captains have asked to hold a ‘Name on the Label’ day in which we will write your child’s name on their school jumper and tie labels. Each class will receive a letter in the next few weeks with details of when our house captains will make a visit to your class. While letters for each class will be given out at different times, please return the slip promptly when your child receives their letter.

Iona House Captains

A big thank you to all the parent speakers who came into school to speak with our classes this week. We learned lots about different careers in STEM and had a fabulous time learning about sustainability, linking with West Lothian College, bridge construction, examining water under a microscope and learning about heavy construction projects. We have all had a fabulous science week!