Category Archives: Wider Achievement

Number Talks Parents’ Session

Thanks to all parents who attended our Number Talks session on Friday.  They had a brief overview of the rationale behind ‘number talks’ before heading to the classes to watch their children take part in a number talks lesson with their teacher.  All parents commented on how helpful it had been.

A huge thanks to all staff and children for leading this for parents on Friday.

 

 

A message from Active Schools

Would you like to help your school? Do you have an hour a month or an hour a week? Do you enjoy sport?  If so please contact Ross in  Active Schools for information on helping at your child’s school.  As little or as much as you like. If you would like to come and watch a sports club and have a chat about how you could help or just fancy  some more info please just get in touch with me on 07990 565 846 or ross.logan@westlothian.gov.uk .  visit us at www.activewestlothian.com

P2 busy back at school!

Primary 2 have had a very busy first week back!

Jacob- We were looking at the sound ‘qu’ and going over all of the sounds we already know.

Jessica-Lily- We wrote a ‘Recount’ of the Easter story. Jesus has now risen from the dead!

Ethan- A recount is when you are retelling a story you already know.

Wiktoria- In literacy, we were text explorers and we did a new activity called ‘Blankety Blank!’

Sophie- We have been giving people directions in maths this week! You tell them which places to go by using lots of different words.

Rory- Like forwards, backwards, left, right, clockwise and anti-clockwise.

Joshua- We did the ‘cha cha slide!’ because it gives you lots of different directions and movements to go in!

Lena- We also learned about symmetry. Asymmetric means the shape is different on both sides and symmetrical means its the same on both sides. We used mirrors on our symmetry hunt.

Leylan- We learned how to wash our hands properly for health and wellbeing. You always have to use soap and water and you don’t rush, you take your  time!

Maisie- Mrs Alexander sprayed us with a water bottle to show us how far germs travel when we don’t cover our mouths. Everyone thought it was really funny because we got soaked!

Logan M- Rory had talcum powder on his hands and we pretended that it was germs. He spread the ‘germs’ to other people and around the classroom and the talc went everywhere!

Jack- This shows us how far germs can go if you don’t wash your hands and cover your mouth when coughing and sneezing.

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Parent Council St Patrick’s Night

A huge thanks to our committed and hardworking Parent Council who organised a wonderful event for the St Nicholas PS. community on Friday night. We had a ceilidh (run by our PE teacher, Mrs Smith), Irish dancers, raffle, Irish Bingo, a disco and delicious hot food by the Canon Hoban staff.  A huge thank you to the following partners who helped make this happen by donating to our raffle: Potter Around in Kirknewton; Houston House Hotel, Uphall; Kirsty Loves Hair, Broxburn; Final Touch Beauty, Broxburn; Florist in Argyle Court, Broxburn (10% off Mother’s Day Flowers plus free delivery if you mention St Nicholas); Lawson’s Butchers; Tesco, Bathgate; Morrison’s Livingston; Scotmid, Broxburn, Lindt Chocolate, Livingston; Dance Store; Broxburn.

We are very lucky to have our Parent Council who work tirelessly alongside us to improve outcomes for our children.  Children, parents and staff all had a ball! Looking forward to the next community event.

Prizewinners’ lunch with Mrs Brown

The winners of the St Nicholas Reading and Writing competitions had a lovely lunch with our Head Teacher, Mrs Brown, today.   They went on a bus to the other end of Broxburn, had a delicious lunch, and were treated to a book of their choice.  Thank you very much to our local partners, Glow Worm Books, for looking after our prizewinners so well and for sponsoring these competitions for us.

And well done again to our fabulous readers and writers.

Eco Vertical Learning Group – Big Schools’ Birdwatch

The Eco Group did the RSPB’s Big Schools’ Birdwatch today, noting the different types of birds that are in the Broxburn area, before we uploaded our results to find the Top 10 birds around St Nicholas.  We then worked to create bird snappers – older pupils working alongside younger pupils.  Thanks to our P7, P6 and P5s who took such good care of our younger St Nicholas children, working with such care, skill and patience.  The snappers were very fiddly to put together but we got there with them. Well done everyone!

 

 

St Nicholas Writing Competition – The Judging Begins

Our Pupil Council began the judging process today, looking at entries for the St Nicholas Writing Competition.  Here they are hard at work reading the entries.  The standard of writing was very, very high.  Winners for the both the reading and the writing competitions will be announced on Friday 11th of January at assembly.   Thanks Pupil Council for your help and giving us your views and insights into what makes a great story.

Gymnastics Champs!

Huge congratulations to gymnasts, Abbie Thomson, Anna Keogh and Chloe Laing – members of the St Nicholas Team – who scooped the award of 2nd place in the Scottish Gymnastics Primary Schools Finals in Perth last weekend, where they competed against schools from all over Scotland!  Well done also to Anna Keogh who took the award for 2nd Place for her individual performance.

We are all so proud of you girls – well done to all of  you!

 

 

Well done and congratulations!

A huge well done and congratulations to St Nicholas Primary School girls who took part in the West Lothian Schools Gymnastics Competition last week at Craigswood Sports Centre, Livingston.  Our Level 3 team came first across the whole of West Lothian and were awarded best individuals too.  All our girls were a credit to themselves, their parents and St Nicholas Primary School.  We are all very proud of your achievements!

Hip, hip, hooray for St Nicholas’ Sports Day!

A great time was had by all today, and the sun shone to make it perfect!  Thank you to all our children for being such great sports, their families who came to spectate (and take part in the races), staff for their hard work and to our PE teacher, Mrs Smith, for putting such a big effort in to a very well organised, fun day for the whole community.

 

 

 

Street dance champion!

A huge well done to Ollie in P6 who came first place in a street dance competition at the weekend.  Ollie spoke to the whole school today at assembly as he shared the secret of his success – practising every night!  At St Nicholas we know that the key to mastering anything is to practise and persevere and keep that positive growth mindset at all times.  Well done Ollie – everyone is very proud of you.  A great achievement!

“Stickman Production”

****Video will follow soon!!! (Problems uploading)

 

Primary 6a worked really hard to produce their “Stickman” puppet show to perform to the younger classes during book week. Every child had a part to play in this show whether it was narration, puppet mastery, lights or ICT. Primaries 1, 2 and 3 thoroughly enjoyed the show. Excellent work Primary 6, a great example of creative, independent work!

Primary 6b will be completing and performing their performance very soon. We are very excited to see it!

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JRSO UPDATE- Ben and Ollie

Hello, the JRSO’s have been on a traffic survey around Broxburn and we tally marked every Car, Lorrie, Bus, Van, Motorcycle, Bicycle, Emergency Vehicle, Farm Vehicles and Other .We calculated the traffic. We would also thank everyone for not parking on the yellow zig zag lines. Here the traffic results. We are going to be studying these and finding ways of minimising traffic around our school.

Chris Riddell, Maths challenges and Spanish Ambassadors!

Primary 6 has had a lot of fun this week!

On Thursday we watched a live interview with author and illustrator Chris Riddell who gave us some advice on how to doodle with confidence.

In Maths we have been learning about angles and we have also reinforced number concepts by using concrete and visual materials a lot. We have challenged ourselves by doing some tricky problem solving in Maths too!

In Language we revised when to use paragraphs- and also understanding the main idea of each paragraph.

In Spanish we learned about the objects of the classroom (lapiz, mesa, lista…) and classroom instructions (Mira, escucha, formad una fila…).

Finally, a special mention for Piotr and Grace, who have been Language Ambassadors for the school this week. You did a great job teaching the colours to all the pupils of St Nicks. Well done!

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PFFA

The Pope Francis Faith Group were busy this week grilling Daniel.  This was all part of their learning on the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  The gift of “Knowledge” was their focus for this question and answer session where they had to work together to come up with questions for Daniel as someone who is undertaking priesthood training.

 

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Christmas and more!

This week in Maths we have continued with our fractions topic (expanding and simplifying) and in Language we have done work on antonyms and synonyms.

We have been doing lots of “Christmassy” activities too. For example, we have done some Christmas Art, practised for our school Christmas concert and learned about Christmas and New Year in Spain.

On Friday we had an Assembly to celebrate the achievements of the children attending after school clubs (Zumba and Football). WELL DONE! Also well done to our Junior Road Safety Officers for giving the children of St Nicks lots of tips on how to stay safe.

We finished our Friday by celebrating New year like people do in Spain. We had grapes with the 12 chimes and wished everyone a happy new year by saying “¡Feliz año nuevo!”

FAST Launch at St Nicholas Primary

St Nicholas Primary have been given a wonderful opportunity to host FAST sessions at our school. The programme was developed by Middlesex University and is funded by Save the Children.

The FAST programme runs after school for 8 weeks.  The weekly sessions are 2.5 hours long where a series of structured family activities take place including; communication, listening, turn taking, community building, meal sharing and relationship building.  These are key techniques to help build stronger families.

Our programme will run every Tuesday from 3.30pm until 6pm, starting on  Tuesday 17th January 2017 and our final session will be on Tuesday 14th March.

On this occasion we are offering the programme to children who are in their pre-school year at Nursery or in Primary 1. We have places for 20 families to participate.

The video link above will give you a flavour of how the programme works. Our FAST team members are also delivering a short presentation at the Nativity performances this week.

An information leaflet and invitation will be sent home soon to the pre-schoolers and Primary 1 pupils. We hope you can join us in the New Year.

 

 

40th Jubilee Mass and Walk Down Memory Lane

On Friday the community took part in our 40th Jubilee Mass and following that, there was a reception with a chance to view old St Nicholas memorabilia.  St Nicholas staff and friends of the school from the past mingled with the new, and a great time was had by all.

Many thanks to the parish of SS John Cantius and Nicholas for gifting the school with a beautiful new chalice to celebrate this important occasion.

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Happy 40th Jubilee St.Nicholas Primary!

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We would like to say a huge CONGRATULATIONS to all the pupils of St.Nicholas! I am sure you will agree they were absolutely fantastic and put on an amazing concert.

Saoirse- “We were effective contributors because everyone joined in, sang out loud and were so happy to be performing for our community”.

Rosie- “We were successful learners because we worked so hard and we didn’t give up! We also learned so much about the 4 decades of our school!”

Fraser- “We were confident individuals because we were showing our talents and if we made a mistake, we continued to perform really well!”

Grace- “We were responsible citizens because we had the responsibility to learn different pieces of music really well, we had to help others, remember our parts and get ourselves organised!”

We would like to say a HUGE THANK YOU to every single person who helped to make our concert so successful.

Our highlights:

  • The face paints and the songs! And the whole thing because I really liked other classes’ songs and costumes.   – Blake
  • I liked the P7’s Bring it all back to you because it was really loud and I liked the slideshow. Also, the P7 narrators were excellent and P7 really organised the whole thing!        -Alex
  • Being able to dress up as people from different decades and I thought it was really nice that some of the girls did highland dancing.  – Abbie
  • Everyone got to participate even though they might have been a wee bit shy, they still did really well!              -Natasha
  • I liked it when the parents started clapping, I think they really enjoyed it!                                                                -Karolina
  • The primary 1 and 2 children did so well especially since they are so little! The signing was really amazing.   -Shaelyn
  • I actually really liked the primary 3 children. Their dance was great!                                                                          -John
  • I liked the primary 5 children because I loved the guitars, saxophones, keyboard and the rap!                    -Ehlana
  • I really liked the way Primary 4 organised their song because there were so many of them and their song was amazing and cheerful! -Piotr

 

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Junior Road Safety Officer (JRSO) Blogpost

Hello, We are the Junior Road Safety Officers !!!  (JRSO).

We protect St. Nicholas children from not getting hurt from any kind of vehicles. We also hold completions.

We went to a meeting at Broxburn Primary school.

We got taught how to plan for assemblies. After that we learned how to not have nerves on the day of the assembly and also got sneaky tips.

We got a JRSO Safety book, Badge and a goodie bag to go with the job. The goodie bag contains a torch, Bookmark, Pencil, Pen and reflectors for crossing the road So vehicles can see you.

We have a Notice board at the school main entrance. It will also contain Posters, completions and news. The winner of the completions will be displayed on the board.

(By Ben)

Hello we are here to say that we enjoyed ourselves at the JRSO(junior road safety officers) magic show and presentation.

We learnt the four special magic words which are STOP LOOK LISTEN and most special before you do anything THINK!

There was policemen all around some from Aberdeen,Broxburn and Linlithgow it was awesome!

Then the magic started a girl called Lois went up on the stage and there was a gray copy of stop look listen think and then she had to say the magic words then they turned colourful!

We will let you into a secret you only have to glue to big envelopes together and put a grey one in one and a colourful one in the other and secretly change the side.

Then Grace had to be a mind reader and choose one number out of 6 people and she got it right at the end all of them took there paper out of there envelope and the other 5 people had things that you should not do

and the one that I chose had the magic words on it!

At the end we got a goodie bag with all sorts of things in it and we also got a notebook as well .

(By Grace)

From , Ollie, Ben , Grace  and  Hana

 

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Epic Experience in Camp!

Here are some of our thoughts…

We had been looking forward to the leap of faith and we did really well! – Maria-Victoria

I enjoyed the team challenge – Jazib

The murder mystery was very funny – Oscar

I liked climbing the leap of faith – Artur

I was excited and surprised when they brought me the birthday cake – Blake

I hate heights and faced my fears with the leap of faith – Cole

I did my very best at everything – Olivia

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P1’S Macmillan Coffee Morning.

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It is with great pleasure that we can now announce the grand total for our ‘Macmillan Coffee Morning.  We raised a whopping £500 !!  Thank you so much for digging deep and helping us raise such a super amount for a great charity.  We enjoyed ourselves so much that we are thinking of planning another one.  Watch this space !

Best wishes from,

The boys and girls in Primary 1

Cross Country Capers With Primary 6

Both Primary 6 classes put in a HUGE effort today at their Cross Country Running Competition, run by the Active Schools Co-ordinators at Kirkhill Primary.  Despite the wet weather, there were no complaints from our competitors as they battled mud, hills, rain and slippery slopes to come in third in the competition!  Well done Primary 6 we are really proud of you! We have some photos of the event, but a technical difficulty means that we will need to upload them later.

P3 Champions

Primary 3A and B had a busy weekend receiving medals.

Well done to Isla, Rebecca, Lilya and Melanie for taking part in a gymnastics competition at the weekend.

Well done to Callum, Luke and Warren for taking part in a football tournament at the weekend.

Also, congratulations to Monde-Jnr for going to London on Friday and receiving sponsorship from the High Commissioner to continue with his passion in motor sports.

Well done to all children! We are very proud of you.

P7 Broxburn Transition Camp


Hi everyone!

St Nicholas boys and girls have been having a great time at camp.  We’ve been busy non-stop with abseiling, playing laser quest, problem solving, the 3G swing, building shelters, and sitting round the camp fire with hot chocolate at night.  Our rooms are warm and cosy and we’re getting to know lots of children who’ll be with us in Broxburn Academy next year.  Our last night is tonight and we’re having a disco and movie night tonight.  Mrs McGuire is really proud of all of us: we’ve worked hard; taken part in all activities; and been an absolute credit to our parents and St Nicholas.

Photos will be uploaded when we get out of the wilds and back to civilisation.

See you all soon.

P7 Broxburn Academy Campers

Medals everywhere!

Primary 3A have been busy during the holidays.

– Well done to Rebecca for receiving this medal and certificate for Highland dancing before the Easter holidays.

– Well done to Maisie for receiving this medal for coming first in a skiing race in Italy during the Easter holidays.

– Well done to Harris for receiving this medal for competing in a duathlon during the Easter holidays.

– Well done to Monde-Jnr for receiving this trophy for coming first in a go-karting time trial.

We are all very proud of our class mates.

TALENT SHOW 2016

WOW! We are so lucky to have a school full of amazing, kind, helpful and talented children in our school! Today some of them took to the stage to showcase their talents at the annual Saint Nicholas Has Got Talent event!

The staff and pupils were blown away by wonderful singing, dancing, gymnastics and taekwondo! Everyone was laughing at the wonderful jokes!

To end the show there was a special surprise as some of the teachers took to the stage to perform! We had been practicing all week after school!

Hope you all had a good time! Enjoy the holidays everyone!

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Wider Achievement Assembly in P1a and P1b.

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Today, we celebrated all of our successes of the last few weeks, both academically and wider.  We were all awarded four different certificates: one for learning our sounds, one for learning all about numbers, one for super learning about dinosaurs and one for settling in well to school.  We also brought in certificates from home.  Some of us have moved up a level for swimming ! Some of us brought in certificates as we had raised money for charity, well done.  We also saw a trophy for good ball skills, and certiciates for moving up a level in tae-kwon do.  Well done everyone ! You have all worked very hard and we are all proud of you.

Happy holidays !

Mrs Macdonald and Mrs Baty.

 

 

Primary 1a’s ‘Star Pupil of the Week’.

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Well done to Raqab for being P1a’s ‘Star Pupil of the Week’.  I really did have to think for a while this week as all of the boys and girls are working hard, remembering their magic manners and trying really hard to listen to instructions. However , Raqab receives this week’s award for being a super team player. He is always helpful around the class and caught my eye this week as he helped a friend to tidy up. Well done Raqab !

Fantastic Kyle !

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Here is Kyle proudly showing off his certificate and number from ‘Pedal Scotland’.  Kyle , along with his mummy, daddy and big sister cycled all the way from Kirkliston to Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh yesterday !   What a super achievement !

Kyle did this for charity.  We are all very impressed and proud of you for doing this.  You have inspired Mrs Macdonald and your friends in P1a to also do something nice for charity.  Watch this space.

Hip Hip Hooray for the Gala Day! St Nicholas take 1st Prize!!!

After months of hard work and planning we are delighted to let you know that Saint Nicholas Primary School won FIRST PRIZE at Broxburn Gala Day for our wonderful float and costumes!

It was amazing to see so many children and parents turn up in wonderful costumes to support our school and join in with our parade! Everyone looked FANTASTIC! It was a wonderful day!

The school was supported by many local businesses and community members to pull it all together and we would like to thank everyone that helped us along the way!

The theme for our float was chosen by children across the school, designs were submitted and children from the after school gala day club prepared costumes and props!

Make sure you take a look in our trophy cabinet next time you visit Saint Nicholas and have a look at our certificate and huge trophy! We hope you enjoy looking through our photographs!

Medals and more

Well done to Cole for receiving these medals from Broxburn Athletic Colts for taking part in a recent tournament and also taking part in a Soccer 7s competition. Well done Cole!

Well done to Rebecca for receiving her first 3 Brownie badges yesterday. She got one of them for taking part in the three bridges challenge, the other is for girl guiding in Scotland and the last one was for taking part in tht Brownies. Well done Rebecca.

Well done Maisie!

Maisie in P2/1 was awarded with a super certificate for performing with the Helen O’Grady Drama Academy last weekend. She was one of the children in the famous story ‘The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe’

Maisie had lots of fun acting when she had to be cheeky to the old woman and the housekeeper.

Well done Maisie, we are all very proud of you! IMG_3408

Glasgow Science Centre

On Monday 1st June, P4, P5/4 and P5 went to the Science Centre in Glasgow.   When we arrived some of us went to the first floor, some of us went to the second floor and the rest of us went to the top floor.  It was a great trip and we all enjoyed the activities, experiments and science theatre show!  We got the chance to have a browse in the shop and buy souvenirs and had our lunch in the large atrium.

Isobel – I enjoyed the large scale hamster wheel on the third floor and it wasn’t as easy as it looked!

Nicole – I enjoyed when we got the chance  to pump the blood to the heart and it increased the heart beat.

Niamh – I liked watching Francesco and Isla trying to eat the cream crackers quickly.

Ehlana – I learned that the body needs to let gas release or you could explode!

Adrian – I liked the challenge where I had to use the air gun to manouver the beach ball through the hoop.

Alea – When watching the show I learned that the amount of blood your heart beats every day can fill 125 bath tubs!

Alex – I liked looking at the real life tornado that re-formed itself.

Madison – I enjoyed holding onto the high bar and timed how long I could do this for.

Ben – The sprint challenge was great!  I got a best time of 1:63.

Lukas – I liked when I had to spin the wheel, whilst standing on the platform and turn the wheel at the same time.  Astronaut use this in space to control the shuttle.

We would defintiely recommend the trip to another class.  It was a great day out, we learned lots and had fun!  A special thanks to our wonderful parent helpers for keeping us safe.

 

 

 

 

Teachers Learn Too

It’s not just the children that have to learn at school – the teachers do too.  Along with 23 other teachers from around Scotland, I spent the weekend with the Field Studies Council on the Island of Cumbrae, off the west coast of Scotland, finding out how to take more learning outside.   The weather was extremely inter-changeable, but that didn’t stop us – even the seals came out to say hello. It was a very busy, but informative and fun few days where I have carried out activities relating to, amongst other things, changing landscapes, plankton, mammal trapping, worm hunting and Geo-squishing!!!!

I can’t wait to try some of these new ideas out 😉

Mrs Buchanan-Coutts