We just want to give a huge thanks to the West Lothian Council Community Payback Team. They donated us a beautiful Christmas garden that they made themselves from scratch. We are so grateful and appreciative of the amount of work that went into this.
This has made our lovely outdoor grounds even more special this Christmas!
I can’t believe that we are approaching the last term in our brand new Beatlie building. This year has been a whirlwind!
I want to thank our amazing staff who have embraced all sorts of new training and different ways of working in order to ensure we are maximising the use of all the new resources and learning environments we have available to us.
In terms of using all the technology we have, there has been a great deal of work and collaboration with trying to get this all up and running. What we have achieved so far:
We also had a visit this week from an inspector as we were selected to be part of the national thematic inspection by Education Scotland looking at provision of mathematics. This went well and the lead inspector cited very positive relationships between staff and pupils that is leading to high quality, motivating learning opportunities for all pupils across the setting from ELC to senior phase.
I would like to wish you all a very happy Easter and look forward to the summer term when we can really make use of our fabulous outdoor spaces.
Debbie Green(Head Teacher)
I just want to take this chance to give another little update on all the great work that has been happening to develop our school.
Since my last update in October, we have continued to work together to develop different aspects of the school. All of our Advanced Pupil Support Workers are part of working groups looking at different activities and sharing ideas and resources to promote high levels of engagement for all pupils. These include PE, effective use of the promethean panel, cooking, singing and messy play groups.
We are continuing to develop hydrotherapy and are starting to widen out the use of rebound therapy to more pupils across the ELC and school.
We have also been continuing to develop activities and resources to promote children’s rights and are planning to apply to sustain our Gold Award status later next year. Some pupils attend a regular Learning for Sustainability group where they have fun and look after the environment at the same time! We have had lots of donations for the West Lothian food bank and toy appeal this year so thank you to everyone who donated. We have also celebrated a number of national days including World Food Day, Children in Need, World Children’s Day and International Day of People with Disabilities (see blog posts for more info).
We had our first curriculum evening in November. Although we didn’t have lots of parents who managed to make it along this time, those who did gave great feedback and really enjoyed the opportunity to speak to staff about different areas of our curriculum. We plan to continue developing our life-skills framework next term focussing on strategies to develop functional communication and cognitive (including earl numeracy) skills for our pupils.
Our Christmas show was very well attended and I think those who made it along will agree that the pupils and staff were fantastic! Everyone had a great time. The feedback so far seems to be that people liked the new lay out and format although possibly cakes and drinks at the start next time!!
Next term we plan to develop further opportunities for PE, and are planning to introduce an activity afternoon where pupils will split into different cross class groups focussing on developing physical skills. We are also continuing to develop consistent use of all the facilities and technology that we have in our new building.
I would like to wish you all a fantastic Christmas and happy New Year and look forward to seeing you at our parents’ evening in January 2024 (Wednesday 17th Jan 3-6 and Thursday 18th Jan 6-8).
Debbie
Progress so far!
As you will be able to tell we are delighted with our new school and the amazing resources that we have access to. As part of our school, improvement plan this year we are working to maximise the use of these different areas and resources ensuring all pupils are safe, included and achieving. The outdoor space is fantastic and we have been making great use of all areas to learn through play and exploration. Staff have been trained in the use of our new Drive Deck which allows our wheelchair pupils to independently travel round the garden using a switch. We plan to explore how to make use of this within the school next. The multi-sensory room is being used to great effect, with pupils being immersed in different exciting stories and able to explore the images and lights with their bodies and through switch use. Pupils are also enjoying regular rebound sessions supported by trained staff and attending regular art, cooking and messy play sessions in our new art and cooking space. Staff are working hard to develop new and innovative ways to use the life skills technology to allow our children to control their environment.
After the October week’s break, we will be starting up with our swimming and horse riding sessions. We will also be starting to use our hydrotherapy pool which is very exciting. We are working alongside one of our physiotherapists to ensure the benefits of this therapy can be maximised for each individual.
We have started working on the communication section of our new life skills framework. We asked our teachers to describe their thoughts (in three words) on this new curricular framework:
I will keep you informed of further progress throughout the rest of this year. It was lovely to see those of you who were able to make it along to the café this morning and look forward to seeing you at events across the year.
Have a lovely October week.
Debbie Green
Acting HT
It was lovely to see parents, grandparents and carers back in Beatlie for our cafe this morning. Thanks for your donations, we raised £100 for Live Music Now.
Live Music Now (https://livemusicnow.scot/ ) visited our school last year and worked with some of the senior classes. It was very successful and we hope to have them back again in the future.
Our children showed us how much they enjoyed listening to the live music this morning with lots of dancing, smiling and playing along with musical instruments.
We braved the rain to wrap the school in green ribbon for World Mental Health Day, giving ourselves a big green hug!!!
This year, the UNICEF outright campaign focused on Mental Health. All children have the right to a healthy mind!
One of the tasks we completed was to think of something for another class that would make them feel happy! Here is what everyone came up with:
Lammermuir – received some lovely toys from Ochiltree that the pupils enjoyed exploring.
Hopetoun – Organised the Children In Need and made everyone very happy!!
Lomond – Received a list of favourite songs and lots of lovely instruments from Duntarvie. These went down very well!
Pentland – They had fun playing games in the gym hall using resources lent to them by Glendevon, Duck, Duck Goose was a favourite.
Glendevon – enjoyed making some very yummy Pudsey Bear biscuits with ingredients given to them from Pentland.
Ochiltree – received some lovely messy play resources to explore including bubbles and slime from Lammermuir.
Duntarvie – felt very pampered with a ‘spa in the classroom’ box from Lomond.
Lots of pupils and staff dressed in yellow for World Smile Day on Friday and we raised £90 for Carers of West Lothian. Thanks to all parents and staff who contributed.
Classess all celebrated in different ways – some looking for smile emojis during a local walk, others making some smile themed art and one class having a relaxing footspa all at the same time since this is an activty that makes them all smile!
There was lots of fun, excitement and competitive spirit in the air last week during our Health and Sports Week.
We kicked of the week with each class designing their team name, strip and mascot and each class prepared a delicious Euro themed healthy snack which was judged by Carol and Debbie, they definitely had a tricky job choosing their favourite!
In preparation for the big day we spent our week taking part in lots of healthy exercise and practising our ball skills and there was plenty of boogie practice too! Thankfully we had some lovely sunny weather when it came to getting out and completing our challenge which each class kicked off by singing their class chants, we don’t think there could have been a single person in Craigshill who couldn’t hear us!
We had so much fun and as well as completing our own class challenge we also enjoyed cheering on all our friends in true Beatlie spirit.
Duntarvie Dynamos were crowned very worthy winners!!
Please have a look at the following SWAY presentation for a glimpse of numeracy day across the early years and school. Remember you can click on photos or videos to make them bigger.
