New Year Newsletter 2010[1]

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Auchinairn Primary School & Nursery! ! !

10 January 2010

New Year NewsletterSchool Inspection

In December we had a visit from the School Inspectors [HMIe]. As this was a mid term visit they looked at

specific areas of our school but during their feedback they did provide us with a general review of how they found the school – and the feedback was superb! Here are just some of they things that they highlighted as excellent practice in our school:

•! Health & Wellbeing was a strong feature of the school and was the basis of some excellent practices which helped the school drive forward many new initiatives.

•! Drama was used very effectively as a vehicle for learning other things, improving behaviour and building self esteem

•! The schools progressive work in addressing children’s Attachment and Resilience was sector leading.

•! Motor skills and other groups e.g. Emotional Resilience were very effectively managed and ensured individual pupil needs were being addressed

•The school was already very well on way to meeting the Building the Curriculum 4 [BtC4] criteria which had recently be published as

part of the new curriculum•! The school was very good at Involving a

wide range of partners to support children, families and the school more generally

•! The use of ICT throughout the school was developing very well

•! During their visit the inspectors received Excellent feedback from parents and partners

•! The school was having a profound impact on supporting families and individuals

• ! At all stages children displayed enthusiasm and confidence

•! Interdisciplinary Learning was becoming a strong feature of the school

•! The school was using a broad Range of different mediums to meet a variety of needs

•! Good questioning of children’s understanding was witnessed and was helping to improve the quality of teaching and learning

The feedback highlighted that the new policies and procedures we have been putting in place over the last 20 months were having a real IMPACT on the quality of learning and teaching throughout the school. Thank you to everyone who is helping us make such a success of our school!

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School Improvement Plan Update - in bold you will see extracts from the content of our improvement plan - followed by a brief update on our progress half way through the school year.

Support for learning:•Meeting the needs of More Able pupils – although there was limited feedback from parents we have devised a draft policy for review and have already put in place some new procedures such as the teaching of Latin•Philosophy – this has now been integrated into the curriculum after training delivered to staff by Mr Friel to colleagues•Creativity and the Arts – we have made a number of links recently, such as the Carl Rosa opera Company in London and Scottish Ballet. The new school choir and our violinists are making super progress and have made a number of public appearances.•In-service on current thinking about brain development – this has been delivered to support staff by the Headteacher and will be part of the teachers training programme in the months ahead•Autism awareness – The DHT has delivered staff training on this and on

supporting children with dyslexia. We hope to become a Dyslexia friendly school in the coming year •Building resilience in the classroom – training has been delivered to staff and we are to develop this further using the

Bounce back scheme we have purchased, as part of new programme in our new room for children and families •Development of a dedicated room to focus, in a nurturing way, on the specific needs of some of our children –

this has now been completed and will become a key feature of our school in the months and years ahead.

Development of the key areas of A Curriculum for Excellence – we continue to make changes to our curriculum to meet the requirements of the new curriculum.

Self Evaluation across the school - The headteacher has put in place a range of new evaluation procedures as part of our strategic management of the school, its functions, policy, procedures, best value and outcomes/impact.

PSHE/Citizenship programme – this has been devised and will soon be shared with staff.

Sexual health, relationship [SHaRE] and drug education programme – this has been devised and will soon be shared with staff.

Restorative Justice approach to behaviour management – our school arranged training for all of the schools in the area, delivered at a cluster in-service. We have now organised more in-depth training for staff in our cluster schools to drive forward this initiative for better behaviour and discipline.

Throughout the session we will continue to implement a range of effective learning and teaching strategies across the school to engage, motivate and involve pupils in the learning and teaching process e.g. :timetable of school based CPD events•Teaching children to become more independent•Develop children’s thinking skills•Co-operative/collaborative Learning developed – staff training started and to be extended•Further develop Questioning skills among staff and pupils

We will continue to provide a more extensive range of information leaflets and provide related workshops.Develop new school Website – the new format will soon be launched and will be populated with more information.Homework policy – questionnaires have been issued, information collated and a draft policy devised for consultation and review.

Glow- the school is now using this as a tool for managing and sharing information between staff and national groups. Teachers are using it as a tool to develop class forums and we have successfully used the Glow meet facility to work with people on-line – such as the renowned poet, Liz Lochead.

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Nursery Information - Care Commission feedback

**Environment and Staffing were not graded in the very good category because of authority practices, not school issues. The report noted that the Headteacher had already raised these concerns with the authority.

What the service does well

Extracts and feedback from our report:

- Very good progress in involving young children in planning for their own learning – responsive planning

- More access to the outdoor learning area and the purchase of more resources.

- Very good progress in introducing the new curriculum [CfE] e.g. Profile CfE Maths/ Language/Match the CfE Early stage outcomes to nursery themes.

- More effective nursery to primary transitions developed including a more productive P1 induction process to build-in teacher exchange, ASN identification and induction activities.

- More opportunities to develop emergent writing.Whole day placements now in place for some of our children.

Service Strengths

• ‘The nursery had very good methods in place to ensure that children and parents views influenced the provision and development of the care and support provided.’

• ‘We found that the service was very good at involving parents in identifying and addressing the needs of their children.’

• ‘The nursery had good methods in place to ensure that children and parents views influenced the development of the environment.’

• ‘The head teacher encouraged very good communication through staff meetings, an open door policy and having regular contact with staff, parents and children within the nursery.’

What we could do better

The report suggested written information completed by parents relating to children who may have an allergic reaction needs to contain more detail - now in placeThe Headteacher should continue to liaise with the authority to provide more midday cleaning; to ask for the nursery to be painted; to provide child height coat storage and review the position of the changing unit at the entrance of the children's toilets to ensure greater privacy.

The Headteacher would like to thank the staff in the Nursery for all of their hard work.

The full report can be seen in the Nursery or on line at: www.carecommission.com

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Some useful websites:

A curriculum for excellence - building the curriculum 3 a framework for learning and teaching:

http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/Images/building_the_curriculum_3_jms3_tcm4-489454.pdf

Learning and Teaching Scotland -

http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/index.asp

As always, if you have any issues or concerns, please get in touch:

Education Newsletter Sunday, 10 January 2010

Classroom Monitoring Last term the Headteacher and Depute Headteacher reviewed the quality of learning and teaching opportunities by visiting classes and watching lessons. We are delighted to inform you that there was clear evidence of excellent practice in the school.

Obviously there are still many areas we are all working hard to improve yet further. These include: Challenging our more able children; increasing the pace of learning in some lessons; developing more active and outdoor learning opportunities, improving children’s written language skills - to name but few!

Future In-service and Staff and Curricular Development nights will help us make the continuous improvements we want for our school.

Events in JanuaryOur new telephone number will be 955 2289 as of Wednesday 13th January, assuming there are no technical problems installing our new system.Our Health Week will start at the beginning of February - as last year children will be required to make a small contribution of £2 to help towards all of the activities we have planned.If your child receives additional support for their learning you should have had a letter inviting you to a progress meeting. This will be followed up with a phone call to confirm attendance. Thank you for your support with this.

PlaygroundIt is very important for children’s development that they have as much active time outdoors as possible - to learn and play - in all kinds of weathers. As soon as it is possible to do so our children will once again have

opportunities to be out of doors. As always please ensure they have suitable clothing and footwear.

!! Auchinairn Primary School

Beech Road Bishopbriggs

G64 1NE

Tel: 0141 772 3753 Fax: 0141 762 0294

[email protected]

Headteacher Mr Garry Graham Depute Headteacher Miss Kirsty Rawley Principal Teacher Mrs Joyce Barbour