School Newsletter October 2013 End of term already! I can hardly believe we are now only a few days away from the October break – time flies and already we are thinking about leaves falling from the trees, planning for the Nativity and Christmas Fair, clocks turning back and the dreaded snow –yes I said it! Staffing Update We were all very sad to see Mrs Reid leave us this term for a well-deserved retirement. However, we were certainly delighted when she returned with some retirement cake for us all last Thursday! We hope she will continue to visit us often! As for our post of Dining Room Supervisor, there is now a preferred candidate for the position who will hopefully start with us shortly. In the meantime we are lucky to have help from the great team down in Haddington. It was great also this term to welcome Miss Harley to the Nursery for her Nursery placement as part of her teacher training and look forward to welcoming her back to spend time with P1/2 after October. We are also delighted to have Mrs Darrie back with us now full time although sad to say goodbye to Mrs Finnegan who has been a valued member of the team since she joined us – thank you for all of your help and recognising the important role everyone plays in a small school, we will miss you. Finally, this brings me on to the fact that this week is Mrs Andersons’ last week with us at Athelstaneford which seems to have come round very quickly, is it just me? Mrs Anderson has already started working with Ms Haines this week, who will be officially starting here on Monday 21 October, to ensure a smooth transition for her P5/6/7 class. We are all very sad to see Mrs
Issue 2 Anderson leaving us, yet very pleased for her that she will now have the time to start make some very exciting plans. She has certainly made an excellent start to this by booking a holiday for Monday 21 October. She can now think of us all receiving our training on risk assessments and what to consider when planning educational excursions while she checks-in at the airport off on her own excursion! After 18 years’ service to this school and community it will certainly be a very well earned break, before we attempt to entice her back on the odd supply teaching job! We all wish you all the very best Mrs Anderson and hope to hear regularly from you with tales of your adventures from North Berwick and beyond! School Uniform The children look great in their school uniforms and it is very much appreciated by the school that children continue to wear this. Please ensure that all items that come into school are clearly labelled with your child’s name. If you have any old school uniform that you would like to donate to the school we can always make use of this, particularly during the winter months when trousers can become a little muddy! Reminder of Homework Days We hope that everyone is now benefiting from the new approach to homework and the flexibility you now have as a family to choose whether homework is done during the week or at the weekend. The final day for handing in homework is a Monday although you can of course choose to do this earlier for some tasks if this suit s you best as a family. We are very keen that all children have their homework handed in so that class teachers then have enough time on Monday to correct this and plan for the next homework to go out the following day.
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Assembly and Awards Please continue to let us know of any achievements your child has out of school as this is an important part of achievement assemblies. There is a slip at the end of this newsletter if you have time to pop down a few words and send into school these can then be recognised at assembly. Roald Dahl Day Well……..where do I start really, what a fabulous morning! To quote the BFG himself -“The matter with
human beans, "is that they is absolutely refusing to believe in anything unless they is actually seeing it right in front of their own schnozzles.” Had I not been
here to see all of the wonderful costumes with my own schnozzles I would not have believed it! Thank you all for putting such effort into your costume ideas and please do remember to take a look at the display in the foyer when you are in for parental consultations to see what fun we had on the day. To top it all off we rasied £61.75 for Childrens’ Charity –thank you all. Race Night Our hard working Parent Council have been at it again – raising money! The fundraising group worked hard to organise the Race Night in the village hall on Saturday Night. The night raised a total of £445 – a huge big thank you to all involved for all of their efforts and to everyone who bought a horse or jockey or turned up on the night –it sounds like it was fun! Parents Running After School Clubs We will have a letter coming out first week back to encourage our children to sign up for some After School Clubs we would like to offer. One of them will be a hockey club taking place in the new hall at Dirleton –if you are interested please let me know. We would also like to hear form any parents or family members who may wish to run an after school club. It may also be that you are free during lunchtimes and could run a lunchtime club –we would love to hear from you and do our best to accommodate what you can offer.
Pupil Parliament Update We had our first Whole School Pupil Parliament a few weeks back. We spent time all together in assembly discussing the importance of everyone feeling fully involved in the decision making process. We also discussed the need to change the process slightly from last year given that not everyone was involved. We then split into 2 Pendrachan Groups and 2 Peffer Groups each with a class teacher. While in our groups we were asking ourselves the question – How Good Are We Now? And How Good Can We Be? These are the same questions we use as staff when doing any kind of self-evaluation work in school. The discussions focussed on 4 main areas:
Learners’ Experiences Working With Our Community Our Curriculum Use of Resources and Space For Learning
Again – these are the very same areas we evaluate annually as staff and feedback to the authority and our Quality Improvement Officer as part of his visits to us. The results were fascinating. Each group then returned to the hall and fed back to the larger group what their main priorities for improvement had been and they were remarkably similar from all four groups –they certainly do know their school well! We will meet again the Wednesday we return to finalise what the Pupil Priority for our school Improvement Plan is to be and plan how to take this forwards. School Website We are very keen to continue to make best use of our wonderful school blog as a means of sharing what is happening in school. It really is very easy to leave a comment and the children really appreciate comments that their parents may have left for them and their class. We would be delighted to hear from yo u or perhaps even a member of your family who does not live locally –what a great way to share what your child is up to. http://edubuzz.org/blogs/athelstaneford If you visit the site you can subscribe by filling in your e-mail address to make sure you never miss a post! S:\Admin\Newsletters\1314\Newsletter 2.doc
Athelstaneford Skatepark Project For the project to progress it was necessary to have some infrastructure, bank accounts and such, kindly the Parent Council have agreed to take the project on. We are now in the process of readying plans to sub it to the Planning Department at East Lothian Council for permission, our main concern at the moment is ensuring we have the right design. Once the plans are submitted we plan to have a community event in the Village Hall to show everyone the plans and gather support for the final push. We have spoken with funders and we're very optimistic that we will receive funding for the Skatepark. It's not quite scooters at the ready but we're definitely making progress. Commonwealth Plans For those of you who have not yet fully digested our very full Improvement Plan for this year it will comes as no surprised to hear that we will be doing a great deal of work on The Commonwealth Games this session as we gear up towards Glasgow 2014 – what a wonderful stimulus for learning on the back of the Olympic work we planned a couple of years ago. We have already started making plans and our first task is to produce a school baton for the North Berwick Cluster Relay. We found out about the Queens Baton relay which leaves Buckingham Palace tomorrow for a journey across the Commonwealth. Our school Baton will travel to New Zealand or Australia with messages about our school and our community and we shall receive one in return. We will be sending our Baton off towards the middle of November and so if any of our community know of a contact in a school in any other Commonwealth Country that would be happy to receive a Baton from Athelstaneford, Home of the Saltire Flag please let us know! Our next plan will then be to create our own Mascots and Torches before starting our Artwork which we will be entering into a competition to be displayed on the walls of the Athletes Village. From February next year we will once again be undertaking a whole school Interdisciplinary Project on The Commonwealth Games and so if you have any ideas as to how you could help or skills you could offer we would love to hear from you and plan together.
Playground We had our first meeting of the Playground Planning Group to establish what priorities were for making improvements to the lower playground and to make use of expert knowledge when considering the options. We were delighted to welcome Charles Lowe onto the Group who has a great deal of expert knowledge and has already been able to offer us log seating and his expert opinion on landscaping and planting – thank you! We are at the very early stages of planning and thinking about applications for funding to support this project and so if you would like to get involved or have ideas please see myself, Mrs Little in the Nursery, Nicola Semple or Susan Begg. Initial ideas include looking at repairing and refreshing the pond, creating more space for dens and muddy play, re-painting the flat roofed extension where my office is, creating additional seating space, planting at different heights and of course a shelter for everyone to make use of. Once we have more firm plans drawn up these will be on display in school for consultation. Hand washing As we approach the winter months it is important that in classes we all revisit the importance of hand washing, making use of soap and warm water. We shall be revisiting this in class and would ask that you reinforce this at home. Something that seems to stick in the minds of our youngsters is the reminder that the time you should wash your hands for each time is the same as the time taken to sing Happy Birthday twice over. So please don’t worry if you hear your son or daughter signing Happy Birthday while in the bathroom –it does not mean you have forgotten a birthday party and need to rush out for a present! An issue related to this is sickness absence from school. Based upon NHS guidelines from last year when there was w the outbreak of Norovirus it was advised that all children are kept off school for a period of 48 hours from their last bout of sickness or diarrhoea to prevent infection spreading. We would kindly ask that we all follow these guidelines to avoid unnecessary absence for both children and staff over the winter months and thank you for your support in this. S:\Admin\Newsletters\1314\Newsletter 2.doc
. Happy Holidays………………… On behalf of the staff team and myself we hope that all of our children and families have a restful and relaxing October break and look forward to welcoming everyone back to school on Tuesday 22 October. Dates for your Diary October 22nd 25th
6 Pupils Return to School Junior Road Safety Officer Launch
th
19th
November
P7 Transition and Camp Information Evening at Gullane – 6.30pm P5 Basketball Festival
As ever if you have any concerns or queries please do not hesitate to contact me and should I not be in school and am at Dirleton, I will get back to you as soon as possible. I will be around during Parental Consultations on Thursday and for most of Wednesday and hope to see many of you then.
Catriona McKinnon Head Teacher
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______________________________________ of Class _________ has successfully participated in ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ Signed:
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Date:
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