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East CraigsPrimary School March, 2018
MESSAGE FROM THE HEAD TEACHER’S DESKWelcome to our March newsletter. As we approach our Easter holiday, we continue to have a very busy time in school. Please read on to find out more about school news and events.
Easter HolidayThe school will close for the holiday on Thursday 29th March, 2018 at the usual finishing times. Pupils return on Tuesday 17th
April, again at the usual times.
Countersigning PassportsI regret to inform you that ourselves, and our staff team, are unable to countersign passport applications for pupils and their
families. There is the issue of staff members having to disclose personal information, as part of the counter-signatory information, which is not appropriate. Also, given the very large numbers in our school, it is unlikely that we would be able to provide this service with equity. Thank you for your understanding in this matter.
Parents’ and Carers’ ConsultationsOur consultations were held in school on Tuesday 20th and Wednesday 21st March between 4-7pm. This was an excellent opportunity for ourselves and the staff team, to meet with many of you to discuss your child’s progress and answer any questions raised. If you were unable to make it along to your appointment, your child’s class teacher will contact you to arrange an alternative time.
Book Swap and Uniform ExchangeFollowing the success of our Book Swap during Book Week, we made this available to our families during Parents’ & Carers’ consultations. This was a huge success and will continue to run
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East CraigsPrimary School March, 2018
throughout the session, run by our P6/7 Young Leaders, supported by Miss Allan. Please encourage your child to visit and choose a book. They don’t need to have a book to donate in order to take one away. They can always make donations, at a later date, if they wish.
The uniform exchange works in the same way, with all families welcome to come in and take away an item of uniform they can make use of. Donations of outgrown uniform are also welcome.
Community Learning Teams The children have enjoyed another successful term of Community Learning Teams and we look forward to carrying out some self evaluation with the children about their Community learning Team experiences. On Wednesday 28th March, we enjoyed two performances from our School of Rock Team and our Dance Team who showcased their learning from this term. You will soon be able to view these performances on our website.
BasketballJane Livingston, our basketball coach, took 12 pupils to represent East Craigs at the local mini tournament at Craigmount High School. Our teams were a credit to the school, both in their sportsmanship and sporting display. One of our teams went through all their games unbeaten and the other team had one draw with the rest wins. Our pupils enjoyed being a part of the tournament and can’t wait for the next one. Many thanks to our families who attended to cheer our pupils on and to Jane who organised our participation.
NetballMs Mowat took 18 pupils on 16th
March to take part in a friendly
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East CraigsPrimary School March, 2018
netball tournament at Foxcovert Primary School. It was a great opportunity to play outdoors, develop confidence and to practise skills and strategies taught through the session. Our pupils demonstrated great sportsmanship and played with energy and commitment. Thank you to our families who transported us there and stayed to cheer us on.
Swimming GalaThree teams of P6 and P7 pupils, including Hanna Kelly, Michael Mochan, Patryk Bess, Abigail Kidd, Michael Kenny, Katie Gordon, Chris Wallace, Caitlin Walsh, Simone Isler-McCurdy, Michael Wallace, Mounika Pasupulate, Sriya Golkonda, Isobel West and Jamie Sneden swam in the Edinburgh Primary Schools Swim Relay at the Royal Commonwealth Pool on Wednesday 28th March. This was the first chance for our pupils to wear our new sports kit, which was sponsored by Kelly Joiners and TBC Edinburgh. The pupils said they felt ‘amazing’. We were delighted to reach the finals in both Backstroke and Freestyle. It was a hugely exciting event, in which, our pupils were delighted to be placed 10th out of the 36 schools in the city. A huge thank you to Mrs Wallace, Mrs Miller, Mrs Gordon and Mrs Kelly who provided transport and support and to all our families who came along to cheer us on.
Turnhouse Golf ClubWe are delighted to have Turnhouse Golf Club come back into school again this session to work with our Primary 5 year group. We are extremely fortunate to have Turnhouse as one of our Community partners and look forward to seeing the pupils engage in this learning focus.
NSPCC Internet Safety Parent/Carer Workshop
On Tuesday 20th March, we held a Parents and Carers workshop with Karin Walker from the NSPCC about Online Safety for children. This was a very thought provoking and informative event where we explored current issues our children face in navigating the online world safely and
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East CraigsPrimary School March, 2018
responsibly. We had very valuable discussion times with many parents and carers sharing their views and experiences around the impact of the online world in our children’s lives. Thanks to all who attended. During the session, Karen Walker shared some useful resources with us. Please see the information below from NSPCC.
SHARE AWAREA resource for parents aimed at keeping children safe on social networks – information here http://www.nspcc.org.uk/preventing-abuse/keeping-children-safe/share-aware/
UNDERWEAR RULEThe NSPCC Schools Service has recently visited all children in Primary 6 & 7 to provide them with key messages about keeping safe. It can be beneficial for these messages to be reinforced at home. The NSPCC has developed some guides for all parents of primary school aged children to speak to your child about keeping safe – called the Underwear rule.
You can find guides to the Underwear Rule to help you have simple conversations about keeping safe from abuse at www.nspcc.org.uk/underwear You can speak to an advisor for further advice or request a hard-copy guide for parents and carers by phoning the NSPCC Helpline on 0808 800 5000. You can also visit www.nspcc.org.uk/parents for
other advice on keeping your child safe.
Annual Open MorningWe are delighted to confirm the date for our annual Open Morning as Monday 28th May from 9-10am. This will provide an opportunity for parents and carers to come in to school and, with their child, look through samples of learning from their child’s Achievement Folio ahead of the end of year reports, issued in June. We have chosen this date specifically as for many it is a Bank Holiday and this will hopefully help families to reduce the need to request time off work. As we have done previously, families who are unable to attend this event will receive their child’s folio home and can return this to school on Friday 1st June. More detailed information will follow in the new term.
As this is also the date for our Interscholastics Team competition, there will be an opportunity at the end of the day for those families to view their child’s folio. We will issue further information separately to these families about the arrangements for this.
P7 Maths ChallengeThis is an annual national maths competition, which our P7s pupils can choose to take part in. The competition involves the pupils answering some very tricky questions across 3 rounds of
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East CraigsPrimary School March, 2018
challenges and we were delighted that many of our P7 pupils took up this challenge. Huge congratulations goes to the following pupils who have won the Bronze Award in this competition:
Fraser Petrie Rachel Sherry Mounika Pasupulate Madeline MitchellConroy ZhangSyria Golkonda
Church Service Working Group
Following the recent pupil and parent/carer consultation regarding the structure of our Summer and Christmas Church Services, our working group, consisting of 7 parents, Rev MacPherson and Mrs Graham, met to discuss the data captured and plan suggested ways forward. We will issue a communication about this in the new term. We would like to thank all the members of this group for their time and interest in this matter. Please note once again, attendance for the P7 Leavers Service in June will be prioritised for P7 parents. More information on this will follow.
P5-7 School Choir Many thanks to all the pupils who have been part of our school choir this session. We are looking forward to continuing our singing and performing together next term. Again, due to a number of
training events and meetings, there will be some dates that Choir will not be running. More information on these dates will follow and will include a date for our end of year “Summer Song” performance for parents of choir pupils and volunteers in our school. Choir will start on Wednesday 2nd May 3.15pm
SPORTS AND HEALTH WEEK Once again, the staff have been planning this year’s Sports and Health Week Learning focus. The week will commence on Monday 4th June. More information will follow in the new term but we would like to share with you that Sports Day is planned for Thursday 7th June. If the weather is inclement on this date, we will hold Sports day on Thursday 14th
June. More information about this week will be shared at a later date.
East Craigs Parent Council
Many thanks to Mrs Susi Isler and Mrs Christina Rigby for the following article:-
We held our latest Parent Council Meeting on 14th March and we were really pleased that the meeting was well attended – thanks to everyone who came along!We held our March Parent Council meeting recently and would like to thank everyone who came
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East CraigsPrimary School March, 2018
along. We discussed a variety of agenda items including approach to Language provision and Junior Award Scotland Scheme (P6&P7 pupils participate in) and Swimming Lessons (P4 and P5 pupils). We also shared some of the positive stories and feedback with the school staff team – please do keep these coming in as it’s a wonderful opportunity to take a moment to celebrate all that goes on in our busy school! We will share full Minutes via the school website in due course.
We have our next meeting scheduled for 15th May @ 18.45
This will be the last meeting we will chair and we are still looking for a new chair to take over from us – if you are interested please do get in touch! There is an induction session for parent council chairs scheduled for 23 April at Flora Stevenson Primary School that plans to outline all the essentials of the role and would be a great way to network with other parent council chairs.
Contact: [email protected] or @ecpcinfo or via the school office
East Craigs PTA P7 HoodiesAll of the orders are now away and we are looking forward to getting the P7 hoodies out to you after the Easter holiday. School Uniform Orders
If you have missed the school uniform order deadline (end March) don’t worry you can place an order at anytime at the school office. See below.PTA meetingOur next scheduled meeting is on May 1st 6.45pm in the staff room. New members welcome.NEW MEMBERS REQUIREDWe are always looking for new members. If you would like to be part of our PTA and help raise essential funds for our school or if you would like more information of what this entails please get in touch at: [email protected] We understand that life is busy and that you may not feel you have time to commit to being a member of the PTA. If you can help just once at any of our events throughout the year please let us know. All help is very much appreciated. Please email your name and contact number to the above email and we can then keep you on our files to contact prior to any event. EASYFUNDRAISINGThis is a great way to earn funds for our school when you order any goods or services over the internet. Go to www.easyfundraising.org.uk and search for our cause: East Craigs Primary PTA. Register with them and then every time you order online go to the easyfundraising site. You then go to the website you are ordering from eg Argos via the easyfundraising site and
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East CraigsPrimary School March, 2018
they will donate money to our school. You can earn the school up to 4% of your sales from various retailers.P5/6 Disco – 25th April.Due to the snow, the P3/4 disco took the place of the P5/6 disco on 28th March so it has now been rearranged for Wednesday 25th
April.Happy Easter from all of the PTA.
P1 Induction The date will be Tuesday 19th June from 9-10.15. As in previous years we will issue letters of confirmation to our new P1 families with details of our full transition programme.
P7 Transition to High School P7 have already started their transition programme to High School and have enjoyed a number of events at Craigmount in the lead up to their move to S1 in August. There are lots of events and dates to be shared with parents and carers linked to our transition events and end of year arrangements. We will issue a communication covering all of these aspects in the new term and look forward to seeing the children participate further in the transition programme. Bags to SchoolThank you to friends and families who supported this fund raising
event. All bags were collected and we will report on monies raised in our next newsletter.
Nursery News
Spring has finally arrived and the Nursery children have been thoroughly enjoying learning all about this new season. The children really enjoyed our visits to Primary 1 to see the Living Eggs and learnt so much about the life cycle of a hen from this experience. Thank you to Eilidh and her family who kindly let all of the nursery children visit her hens, which was a wonderful experience for the children. We will continue to learn more about the changes that happen in Spring both in the nursery and on our weekly Forest Walks. Our learning has be displayed in our Chick Book so please do take time to have a look at this book as you come into nursery.Nursery will open after the Easter holidays on Tuesday, 17th April and we wish you all a very happy Easter holiday break.
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East CraigsPrimary School March, 2018
Pupils’ AchievementsIn P3B Dillon Scoular has moved up to 5th Kai in Judo. Gracie Molloy, also in P3B, completed a round of backflips in gymnastics whilst Hannah Kelly, P3B moved up to bronze level in swimming lessons at Drumbrae. Hannah also landed her first backflip at gymnastics. Abi Black, P3B took part in the Annual Gymnastics Competition at Drumbrae Leisure Centre in March.In P2A Tess Kelly and Anya Paterson performed in a show called ‘Simon says Dance’. They did 4 dances and at the end confetti poured out because that was the name of the show. They will also receive a film of this.
In P3A, Zoe Linn was awarded a certificate for 2nd place at a gymnastics competition. She also was Player of the Week for good passing at Alan’s Football Club and won a trophy. Zoe was also Player of the Week for Spartans under 9s for good movement and scoring.In P2/3, Anna Bendall won first place and a gold medal in a gymnastics competition. Natalie Jamieson, also in P2/3, took part in 2 performances of her dance school showcase at the EICC in March where she performed a ballet routine with her dance class in front of a large audience.In P1A, Chloe Black was presented with a certificate for her participation in the Gymnastics Competition at Drumbrae Leisure Centre. In P5B, Emma Bradley performed 4 dances in a dance show at the EICC. She had previously won ‘Star of the Term’ so was invited to perform an extra ‘Jazz Dance’. In P5B, Jamie Punton has achieved his yellow tag at Taekwondo and is now working towards his yellow belt.Also in P5B, Katie Thomson performed 2 dances and had to do them twice at a dance show in EICC.In P5A, Sam Menzies took part in the Edinburgh Primary Badminton Championships at the WHEC in March. Sam competed in the singles making it through to the knockout round and the double matches. He played alongside Mitchell Speirs of P7A. Although
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East CraigsPrimary School March, 2018
they did not win, they had a great time competing.In P6b, Rhanna Cunningham achieved Grade Four in ice Skating at Murrayfield Ice Rink. She had to complete lots of challenges, including a “2 foot turn” which was very tricky! Well done Rhanna. In P7B, Hanna Kelly, Alice Fey and Abigail Kidd all took part in the
Gymnastics Competition at Drumbrae Leisure Centre, Hanna won a silver medal and Alice the bronze.
Kirsten Johnston & Shelley GrahamActing Head Teachers
Dates For Your Diary 0131 339 7115
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East CraigsPrimary School March, 2018
Tuesday 17th April All staff and pupils return to school
Wednesday 18th
April P5B Holyrood Palace Trip
Thursday 19th April P5A Holyrood Palace TripW/C Monday 30th April World of Work Focus Week
Wednesday 2nd May P7 STEM transition event at Craigmount High
School
Monday 7th May May Day holiday - School closed Tuesday 8th May Staff In-service Training - School closed to
pupilsTuesday 15th May ECPC Meeting in staffroom 6.45pmMonday 21st May Victoria Day – School closed
Monday 28th May Annual Open Morning for Parents and Carers - 9.00am – 10am
Monday 28th May Interscholastics Event at George Watsons College Grounds, Myreside Raod.
Wednesday 30th May P4 trip to Stirling Castle
Friday 1st June P5 Human Body Assembly to Parents and Carers
Monday 4th – Friday 8th June Health and Sports WeekThursday 7th June SPORTS DAYThursday 14th June BACK UP SPORTS DAYTuesday 19th June P1 Induction DayTuesday 19th June P7 Transition Day to CHS (1)Wednesday 20th June P7 Transition Day to CHS (2)Thursday 21st June P7 Transition Day to CHS (3)
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