Category Archives: Working with others

Welcome to Williamston 2018 – 2019

To all of our pupils, Nursery-P7, staff and families, a huge WELCOME BACK to Williamston!

We want to extend a special welcome to our new children in the nursery and P1 and new families joining our school community too, we feel very lucky to have each and every single one of you.

All classes have been super busy these first few weeks, community building, establishing class rules and charters, recapping literacy and numeracy learning and sharing our knowledge and understanding of each other.

More information to come from classes… but for now… KEEP CHECKING TWITTER TOO for updates.

 

Support for Learning 2017-2018

Thank you to all the parents and carers who made it to Meet the Teacher, it was great to speak to lots of you and introduce myself and some of our team around Support for Learning.

If you couldn’t make it not worry, above you will see our key messages around Support for Learning this year.

 

Our S f L vision: Support for all learners, in all classrooms, by all staff. 

Where possible, the majority of support for our learners will take place in their own classrooms, with support from the class teacher, myself, pupil support workers, specialist staff and/or other agencies where relevant.

A huge focus for us this year at Williamston is both Numeracy and Literacy and these are our key areas of targeted support for Nursery to P7 children. Additionally we are hoping to start a nurture group, based around health and well-being needs and developing life skills…

Smalls for All – Pants Day

We have been learning more about the work of the charity Smalls for All and how it helps people in some African countries by providing new underwear and funding the education of some children. The Smalls for All group had the opportunity to interview Maria MacNamara MBE, the charity’s founder, recently and they were inspired to hear how her actions have made a difference to the lives of so many others. Classes have also been discussing whether clean pants are a “need” or a “want”, as well as finding out more about the lives of some of the children helped by the charity. This learning has been related to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and The Global Goals for Sustainable Development.

The Smalls for All group would like to thank everyone for making the “Pants Fun Day” such a success. We collected hundreds of pairs of pants – they filled 8 big bags! We have given them all to the charity and they will send them to children in Africa. They hope to give each child 3 pairs of pants for Christmas.

Thank you for all your competition entries in the “Design a Pair of Pants” competition. There were so many wonderful designs and it was really hard to judge the competition. Pam from the charity helped us to pick the winners and runners-up: P1-3 Runner-Up – Ethan Lawson P3/2, P1-3 Winner – Calum Platt P3a, P4-7 Runner-Up – Emily Poskitt P5b, P4-7 Winner – Holly Bisset P6a. Well done to all!

Thank you to all the people that entered the “Guess the Monkey’s Birthday” competition. We asked Maria and Pam from Smalls for All to pick a date. The date they picked was the 10th of August as this was the day that the charity started. Unfortunately no-one picked this actual date but the nearest date to this that was picked was the 8th of August and it was picked by Alannah Charlesworth P3b. Congratulations! We raised £66.75 from the monkey competition and donations. This money will go to the charity to help fund education for children in other countries.

We would like to say a big thank you to all who supported our “Pants Fun Day”. You were PANTASTIC!

Toilet Twinning Success!

Thank you to everyone that supported our Toilet Twinning challenge. There were lots of bright colours worn on the day and lots of change was placed on our “Rainbow Toilet”! Our Target was to raise £60 so that we could twin with one toilet in another country and we are pleased to announce we raised a total of £206.94!!! This will be enough to twin with at least 3 toilets! Many thanks for helping us support this charity that helps to provide toilets, clean water and health education to people in other countries. This  has supported us in working towards some of the Global Goals: Water and Sanitation, Good Health and Well-being and Quality Education.

P6 visit Hopetoun House

On Wednesday 30 November primary 6 went to Hopetoun house we all had lots of fun. When we got there we were welcomed by two ladies who were wearing Victorian maid dresses. When we went into the classroom we had our snacks then p6a became servants,for the first half of the day and p6b played Victorian street games and explored the history of Hopetoun House. Some street games we played were skipping rope, skittles,jack in the box, tiddly winks. We were then shown around the house, which was so amazing! Back in the classroom we tried quill writing where we wrote our names using the pheasant feather and ink. The ladies told us that Victorian children would be punished for smudging the ink or if they were left handed they would be forced to write with their right hand. Then after lunch we swapped round and p6b became servants and p6a. It was great fun dressing up and getting into the roles of servants. The best role was butler as he was the boss of all the servants. The worst job to have was the scullery maid who were never allowed to leave the kitchen, they even had to sleep under the kitchen table! It must have been hard work during the Victorian era!
By Alix and Eilidh

JYHS – ‘German Adventure’

Both the P7 classes really enjoyed themselves this morning at JYHS. They engaged in a modern languages event called ‘The German Adventure’. There, they were able to work with S1 pupils and P7 pupils from another school.

 

Please enjoy looking at our photographs on Twitter!

 

P7 classes 🙂

A fun week of learning in P3b

We have had a busy time in P3b this week! We started the week with a dance session with dance teacher Amy, where we enjoyed some contemporary dancing with a ‘Scottish twist’! We are looking forward to learning the next part of the dance routine on Monday 26th!

Ronald Dahl has been a big focus this week as it was his 100th birthday on Tuesday. We LOVE Roald Dahl in P3b and have had many laughs reading ‘The Twits’! This week, we have been creating Mr Twit’s beard and even finding out our names if we were a Roald Dahl character! Come and ask us more about it! We have also been talking about adjectives and coming up with some amazing examples to describe The Twits and other characters we have created this week!

On Wednesday at PE, we worked in teams and played the ‘raft game’- come and ask more about it and why we had to work together to be successful!

I maths we have been looking at ‘tens and ones’ and partitioning numbers. We are experts now at splitting numbers like 65 into tens and ones. We know that there are 6 sets of ten in 65 and 5 ‘ones’ left over! We have also been developing our mental arithmetic skills everyday, too!

We hope everyone has a lovely holiday weekend!

P4 Show

Rehearsals for the P4 show are in full swing! Parents and carers – please help us to learn our lines at home as we will soon be rehearsing without our scripts. We are busy singing, dancing, acting, learning to work the sound system and computer and designing and painting scenery. More information about hte show, including costumes, will come out by letter soon. Thanks!100_8642

#DigiLearnScot Week

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Do you follow us on twitter, if not, please do! Here you will find daily updates on children’s learning and ‘What’s On’ across the school.

We are… @williamstonps

This week it’s National Digital Learning Week. We continue to explore the benefits digital learning and teaching can bring to every level of the learner journey across the school. In addition to this we are keen to share these through our BLOG and Twitter and would love to hear your thoughts on these too.

P4 Trout Project

In P4 we were sad to wave goodbye to our fishy friends! But happy that they grew so well and were ready to swim off into the Murieston Water. We did this project with Forth Fisheries and took great care of the trout as they changed from alevins to fry. It was fun seeing them swim off to their new home, although some weren’t too keen on leaving! While we were at the river, we also took part in some river-dipping activities, where we looked in some of the river water for some of the living things that the trout might like to eat. We were able to identify these insects and river creatures using magnifying glasses and charts. Thank you to Forth Fisheries and parents who supported this project.