School Newsletter January 2016
Issue 2
Happy New Year It was lovely to see all the children again after the holiday. The mornings may be dark and blustery, but the children have returned to school with renewed energy for the new term. Where do they get all that energy from? We are very much looking forward to the new term with new targets and a renewed focus for the term ahead. A plea from the start - Even if the weather is clear and dry in the morning we would like to encourage all children to make sure they have a jacket with a hood every day as we feel it is important that our children do go outside to play at school in most weathers – A true Scottish childhood!
If you would like to find out more why not take a look at the video clip on the following link:
Assemblies We have made a good start to our assemblies this term learning about having a growth mindset. As part of setting ourselves targets at the start of the year we have been finding out about how important it is that we believe we can improve. You may have heard as a result of these assemblies that I now have a Fitbit to keep track of the steps I do every day as part of my target. Children are helping me keep to my target by asking how well I am doing (or not!) We are trying to keep focussed on what our targets are and how we can achieve them, even when it seems difficult. Last week at assembly we found out that ‘Good Learners Go into the Learning Pit’ Why not ask your child about the power of the word ‘YET’ as in - we no longer say “I can’t do that”, instead we say “I can’t do that yet!”
Wild About Scotland We are very excited to be welcoming the Wild About Scotland bus on 28 January. The Royal Zoological Society of Scotland has teamed up with Clydesdale bank to offer a unique teaching experience for children across Scotland. The project is called ‘Wild about Scotland’ and involves a specially designed double decker bus, which travels around schools and we are lucky enough to be one of the schools chosen for the bus to visit. P4-7 will visit the bus on Thursday afternoon to learn about Wildlife including Wildcats and Beavers.
https://visiblenqts.wordpress.com/ Yesterday morning we held our annual Burns Assembly. Children have been busy learning poems for homework and having performed in front of their classes the shortlisted few then performed their recitals at assembly yesterday. Well done to all children who were able to challenge themselves to learn their poems and congratulations to Maisie Calder and Aniyah Khan our winners from P1-3 and to Jonathan Mostyn and Joel Begg our winners from P4-7. We were also very grateful to the nursery and to Sam, Jonathan and Findlay who spent the morning making some delicious Haggis, Neeps and Tatties for us to enjoy as part of our celebrations..
Homework Homework will continue to come home on Tuesday’s to be returned the following Monday in order that it can be marked and new homework issued. Homework should be seen as an important part of your child’s development and your cooperation in ensuring this is completed on time is greatly appreciated. Look out for our Maths Home Learning Games coming home once again –a great opportunity for some family home learning together!
Keeping Active This term we have already had football tasters with the P1-3 class which will conclude with a Football Festival on 2 March. P4-7 are looking forward to golf taster and rugby taster sessions all of which will take place outside so please ensure your child has an outdoor PE kit with them as we all know the weather is more than likely going to be rather driech. Cross Country Club The cross country morning running club, run by Mrs Robertson, has been enormously successful. This was open to pupils in the upper class and as we have had such good interest from parents offering to help out we are looking for more children to join. Currently this remains only open to P4-7 pupils but watch this space for opportunities for younger children in the coming months. Reading – Oxford Owl For those that are looking for great opportunities to learn together as a family then Oxford Owl is a super resource with access to lots of EBooks for you to share together as well as videos to explain how things are taught in school. There is a link on the right had side of our school blog under learning. Quality Improvement Visit Mr David Scott, our Quality Improvement Officer will be visiting school on Wednesday 2 March. This is part of our annual Council Quality Assurance when he meets with children and adults to talk about their experiences at Athelstaneford. We present our picture of self-evaluation, how we see our school, what our strengths and areas for improvement are. Looking at all available evidence Mr Scott will then validate this self-evaluation. If you are free on Wednesday morning and would like the opportunity to speak with Mr Scott please so let me know. Moderation Some of our children recently met with a teacher from another cluster school as part of our cluster moderation. The team of teachers visit all schools in North Berwick over the year to talk to randomly selected children about their experiences of different curricular areas. This year the focus is on Social
studies (topic work) and Food and Health. These discussions with children help to ensure that we are maintaining the same level of standards across all of our cluster schools and that a child in our school has the same level of experience and depth of learning as a child from any of the other schools in the North Berwick cluster. Thank you to the children who took part as this is an important part of our self – evaluation. School Improvement Plan We have made very good progress with our current school improvement plan. Recent sessions as a staff have focussed on developing our understanding of key documents published by Education Scotland. These include How Good Is our School 4th Edition, Raised Expectations from Education Scotland with regard to self-evaluation activities and the curriculum and using significant Aspects of Learning to develop our own progression frameworks for Maths and Numeracy. This enables us to track progress from early through to second level and ensures we are able to accurately report on your child’s progress. Sessions in the next few weeks focus on our teaching of French and also our use of the school blog to share achievements. We are also pleased to be working with Aberlady and a local Archaeology Group to plan some exciting opportunities for learning at a forthcoming dig in Aberlady. Finally, we have already started to think about our plans for next session and know that we need to improve our focus on food and Health as part of our curriculum. With this in mind we shall be working with the Parent Council to look at producing and cooking recipes. If you have ideas about how we could extend this project please do get in touch as we would love to plan jointly with our parents. Latest and Best Wall Thank you to those children and families that have been sending in notes, photos or certificates of achievements from outwith School. We are able to record achievements in school and celebrate them with inclusion of photos etc. on our Latest and Best Wall in the school hall; however we would love to continue to hear of those achievements our children have outside of school in order to fully build upon them as learning experiences.
Pupil Voice Our Pupil Council met recently to make arrangements for Sport Relief on 18th March and so we should all be ready with our trainers for what they are planning! Amongst other things that were discussed as part of this meeting were the continuing concerns over the brightness of the sun in P4-7 and also the possibility of opportunities for after school clubs. The sunlight is something we can hopefully find a solution for by purchasing blackout blinds for this classroom. As far as the after school clubs are concerned then we would like to hear from any parents that think they could offer some time to support us with this. If you think you could spare some time after school for a few weeks and are interested in offering something please do get in touch and we can make some plans together. You would not be expected to take full responsibility for children in school and we would aim to fully support any offers of help that you may have. It is also worth noting that if any parents felt they would like to offer a longer term club then Active Schools do provide training. Please ask and we can help arrange this. Thank you to those parents who are already helping out with our before school cross country club –the children love this and really benefit from this exercise and physical activity before starting their morning learning. House Captains and Vice Captains Following a decision made by the House System Group of our Pupil Parliament the House Captains are keen to establish more opportunities for inter house competitions. These would be varied with sporting opportunities as well as more creative competitions such as photography competitions and chess matches! We hope to have a planning meeting in the next week to make arrangements for our first competitions.
Dates for your Diary January 28th Wild About Scotland Bus February 1st P1-3 Football Taster P4-7 Golf Taster 3rd P4-7 to Dynamic Earth th 8 P4-7 Golf Taster 15th Holiday all week rd 23 Back to School P4-7 Rugby Taster th 24 P7 at Enterprise Event (NBHS) 29th P4-7 Rotary Club Quiz (Aberlady PS) March 1st P1 and P7 Dental Inspections P4-7 Rugby Taster nd 2 QIO Visit 3rd World Book Day P4-7 Songwriting Workshop 7th Golf Session with Golf Development Officer th 8 Nursery Spring Walk P4-7 Rugby Taster th 10 P4-7 Songwriting Workshop 15th Parental Consultations th 16 P6 Tag Rugby Festival (NBHS) Parental Consultations th 18 Sport Relief 24th P4-7 Songwriting Workshop th 28 Easter Holidays
Please remember to keep an eye on the school blog http://edubuzz.org/blogs/athelstaneford/ for the most up to date information. If you have any concerns or queries please do not hesitate to contact me. Catriona McKinnon Head Teacher
Weekend Wordsearch m p y b z m s j r h u z n j l j g q a r
g c q e w s l z a f f o k s o j w b e j
v d z s i t e m y c r i l d r s l a h x
t d q b p h e m u m b i y e h w d e d g
f r z t e n p d g y j v e z k i i p a q
t o t j i z o m k u r r q n n p t x w s
k g o c x k v m c g a w e g d x u n a n
q n y t g c e r y v j l b a k s p p n y
c i e t b e r m s w i m m i n g g f j e
v t q d v a n w j q t u s g m r k o q o
ballet cinema football friends fun gymnastics popcorn
c a l d u a l r t q x b n w h u d a i x
f k d r s p n l n n r i p j l n b t x j
k s w t s x m d m r x d r n h n u x r n
reading relaxing running skating sleepover swimming walking
b o i u k d w l n a o o x a t i f h r b
h c s n w u s s l m u c l d x n n t q d
s q u u m u a e s j q n p s r g h z a n
b a l l e t r a r h f u y o n n z f m q
a y v g n i k l a w b f c h p q g p v z
d n h s p h u w d w t v g x u z v f r r
l r q v f e b b i p l e s k y t l n r m