We have had a smooth start to the year and the children are all settled back into class and working hard. Primary 6 are well into planning their Scots’ Night and the children in the rest of the school are busy learning their Scots verse in preparation.

Opportunities to share your child’s learning

The latest information on reporting to parents and sharing the learning journey with your child is all on the website. We are hoping as many parents as possible can come along to the house coffee mornings on Wednesdays for the next four weeks.

Raising Children with Confidence

We have organised another course on Raising Children with Confidence. Parents who attended the previous two courses gave us very positive feedback. This course is being offered on a Wednesday pm in school, initially to nursery and primary one parents, but if there is room we are happy to welcome parents from any stage. If you are interested please ask the school office for the course details and form.

Head Lice !

We have unfortunately had a number of cases of head lice already this term. It would be much appreciated if all parents could check heads regularly to prevent this becoming a bigger problem. Advice is available from pharmacies but the most effective method is to comb hair through with a nit comb a couple of times a week and treat if any live lice are found.

Spare clothing

We are very short of small boys’ trousers, small skirts or pinafores, tights and socks for our youngest children when we need to do a quick change. Any donation of clothes grown out of would be much appreciated.

Parentmail

Thank you to parents who have signed back up to Parentmail. We now have over 80% of parents on the system. If you have not yet done so, or are experiencing difficulties with the system, please let Mrs Reid know and she will try her best to help out.

Be prepared

It would greatly help us and the office staff, if parents could check their child has all the things they require for the day with them ; PE kits, lunch, reading books and instruments etc. We do appreciate that on occasions things do get forgotten but it will save us a lot of time re-uniting children with their possessions if they are organised first thing.

January 2016

Dear Parents and Carers

Reporting to Parents and Carers

As a school we are improving the way we share your child’s learning journey with you. After extensive discussions with the staff team and with the Parent Council the programme for the rest of the session is as outlined below.

There will be three planned opportunities in the year to talk to your child’s teacher ; parents’ consultation in October (held already), one in February and another in June. Prior to both of these latter occasions you will be invited to comment on your child’s learning. This will allow for more dialogue with the teacher and for primary four and above, an opportunity to talk with your child and their teacher together.

From previous feedback from parents, we would like to provide some time for the next steps in learning given in reports to be addressed. We will therefore provide a one page report in April which will focus on your child, their strengths, progress and next steps for learning. It will not contain the information on curriculum areas covered as this is provided in the learning overviews sent out at the start of each term. An example of two new reports are here and here

The third parents’ consultation in June will be an opportunity for parents and carers to discuss the report and the progress made since April in addressing the next steps.

In June you will be issued with your child’s levels – where your child is currently working within the Curriculum for Excellence – and their attendance for the year. An example of this sheet is on the school website here

There will be an additional opportunity for those parents/carers who might be able to attend to come into school and share the learning journal and profile jotter with their child. The dates are available here. This is organised in houses so that you can see all your children together. We realise that this is short notice however are keen to pilot this idea this session.

We will seek feedback on these changes at the end of the year and we will take comments into consideration when planning for the following year.

Kindest Regards

Lesley Nock

Head Teacher

It has again been drawn to the school’s attention that parents are parking in an inconsiderate way outside the school causing a hazard to both children and adults on foot. Parking on the zig zags, on yellow lines or over entrances to property is very dangerous and could lead to a serious accident. I have again contacted the police about this issue and would urge all parents to be considerate and thoughtful both to the safety of all our children and to our neighbours. Please help keep all our children safe and leave sufficient time to park safely away from the school entrance or better still, walk or scoot to school.

The weather has turned very wintery recently. We have noticed a number of children coming to school with no jackets or only sleeveless body warmers or fleeces. Please remember to send your child to school in a warm waterproof coat or jacket, preferably with a good hood. We do like to get the children outside for fresh air and exercise if at all possible at breaktimes.  There is a possibility of some snow forecast this week. The school will open unless conditions are extremely bad. Information will be on the local radio stations if there are any risk of school closures.

The children had a super time on Friday making a variety of craft items to sell at the Christmas Fair this week. Primary six learnt to sew! Look out for fantastic lanterns, glittering baubles, willow stars and much more on Friday 4^th in the afternoon.

The choir sang on Friday evening at the switching on of the lights in Davidson’s Mains and sang beautifully and luckily with no rain.

Letters will be coming home shortly about the Primary one and two Nativity tickets and parties.

£270.86 was collected for this years Poppy Appeal.

Martin Pearce – Local Collections Coordinator wrote and said…

‘I am hoping that my thank you card got to you in time yesterday to be read out to the school assemblies for the wonderful donation we had from the staff and pupils for this year’s poppy appeal.

You donated £270.80 – a record for the school by over £100!

Many thanks indeed for supporting the poppy appeal and allowing me to speak at the school assemblies, which was a real privilege and joy.

As you know I am always impressed by the answers from the children and their willingness to respect a time of silence’.

View or download the November Newsletter here

On our dress down/up Friday we raised a total £671. 51 for Children in Need.

We are continuing to have issues with getting the new version of Parentmail up and running.  If you have not yet answered the email  asking you to re-register, we would be grateful if you could do so as soon as possible.  We currently have around 60% registered.

This term because of the issues with parentmail we will be sending out the Learning Overview Sheets next week by snail mail.  Please look out for them.   Thank you for your help at this time.

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