Category Archives: Whole School

Earth Day 2024

Earth Day 2024 Happy Earth Day 2024! Every year on April 22, we celebrate Earth Day. This annual event is a time to focus on the environmental issues we have across the planet and highlight the efforts being made so we can continue to protect it.

Earth Day is a reminder of the importance of environmental conservation and sustainability, encouraging us to come together and take action for a healthier planet and brighter future.

 

Spring into Music at Beatlie

This term the children have enjoyed experiencing seasonal and Scottish music through songs and games.

In our Scottish topic, we focused on the Three Craws, with body percussion and sensory input for the calls of the birds. When the opportunity arose, we transferred the body percussion to hand held instruments to accompany the song. We used the giant scrunchie to help us move to ceilidh music and had great fun using the Circassian Circle as inspiration for our movement, passing it around and moving it in and out, up and down to the beat and where the music changed.

Across the school, Primary classes continued to build on choosing Nursery Rhymes to sing together, always a favourite activity, with the rhymes changing regularly to expand the choices.

In January, everyone sang All the Snow is Falling Down, using story massage techniques to reinforce the structure of the song and meaning in the words, in a relaxing and calming way.

As we moved into Spring, we played drums, and learned to hold beaters and keep time to When the Band Comes Marching In. The soft beaters provided a safe way to feel the beat by tapping on the arms, feet and tables.

Duntarvie and Ochiltree worked towards creating music to accompany the story of Tam Lin, choosing different instruments to play along to the Border Ballad. It’s all beginning to take shape and there will be more news on it next term.

Update on School Developments

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:

  • Drive deck – pupils are enjoying using this outside in all weathers. We have now started trialling this indoors and if all goes well, intend to have a path inside the school for pupils to use after Easter.
  • Immersive multi-sensory room – this is being utilised by all classes for a number of purposes including storytelling, mindfulness, drama. Training is ongoing and most staff now have a good understanding of how to make use of the technology within the room.
  • Life skills area in the secondary department – pupils have the opportunity to control coloured lights and blinds and Hazel has grand plans to create an xbox league for switch users!
  • Promethean panels – we are making great use of these in all classrooms to make learning fun and motivating for all pupils either through interacting with the touch screen or through switch access.

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)

Unique Fundraising Café

Thank you again for the wonderful support you all gave our S6 pupil in fundraising for the charity Unique and helping him to progress on his Bronze Duke of Edinburgh journey.

These are just some of the photos from the event and thank you again to all the children, staff, parents, carers, family members, friends of Beatlie and community groups who attended or donated for such a great cause.

Craig (Chief Operating Officer) at Unique also thanked Luca ‘Goodness me Luca, that’s absolutely amazing! £900 is incredible and we are so grateful to you all for your wonderful support. Unique is a small charity and we can only exist because of fundraising like yours… it means we can be there to help and support families when they need us most.’ 

St Andrews Day Celebration Ceilidh

Today we had our first Ceilidh in the new school and it gets a thumbs up for a great place to get your kilts on and dance your socks off!

Have a look at our video of some of the children enjoying the music, the company and the dancing!

Unicef World Children’s Day 2023

 

Today marks World Children’s Day on the calendar and to celebrate the rights of the child we participated in all things blue.

Lots of pupils and staff wore blue in support and all pupils used blue materials to make a giant blue collage.

Take a look at how it came together.