Category Archives: Whole School

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.

 

 

 

Debbie Green (Acting HT)

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

 

Beatlie Scarecrow Festival 2023

Our first cafe in our new school and what a lovely morning we had joined by some strangers………..

Thank you to all who came and enjoyed the lovely baking the children prepared over the week.

Thank you to all the children and staff for decorating the hall and making fantastic scarecrows.

Everyone had the opportunity to vote for their favourite – although everyone is a winner, Peat was the peoples favourite on the day.

Enjoy watching the videos of us all preparing for the day and a second one showing us all enjoying the morning.

See you all again for our Children in Need cafe on 17th November.