Click on the link above for all the details for the next few busy weeks!
Christmas Countdown!
Pupil Focus group – our playground
Our first Pupil Focus group used the Think, Puzzle, Explore thinking routine to make some plans for our playground – some fantastic ideas!
School Improvement Plan 2019-2020
Please click on the link to see our school improvement plan and Standards and Quality report for this session. If you can help/be involved in any way please do get in touch.
Staff Teamwork!
Working together as a team – discussing techniques to assess progress – what , how, when, how much and why? Excellent professional dialogue at our staff session yesterday evening.
Parent Council EGM notice
Dear Parents and Carers,
I hope that you all enjoyed the long weekend! In wonderful Scottish fashion we’ve had bright sunshine, rain and hail – four seasons in one weekend (or one day).
Your Parent Council has been busy over the past few months, starting the year with the Quiz Night in January which raised nearly £1000. Many thanks to all participants and sponsors for your support, and to the events and fundraising group for their amazing efforts! The events and fundraising group also ran the Easter Disco for the kids last month. If you’d like to get involved or have any ideas for future events, help is always welcome, and you don’t need to be a member of the Parent Council in order to get involved. It’s a great way to get to know each other, and contribute to your kids’ experience at the school too.
Improving the outdoor space at the school is a priority, and has been for the past few years, however progress has been limited due to uncertainties around the upcoming school expansion and renovation, which is scheduled to be completed by August 2021. In the meantime, small improvements have been made in the garden – we’ve had a generous donation of soil from Caledonian Soil, and the planters at the back have now been re-planted with donated herbs and vegetables, thanks to the hardworking playground group. There are also donated planters at the front, which need to be filled with soil and planted. If you’re able to help the playground group either with labour (adults and kids welcome to help!) or by donating surplus seedlings or plants that have been split, that would be wonderful! Plans are also underway to replace the broken basketball hoop and relocate it to the rear of the school where there’s more space.
The next meeting of the Parent Council will be an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM), where the adoption of the proposed updated Constitution and Equality and Fairness Policy will be voted on. The EGM is being held at 7pm on Tuesday, 14th May, at The Crown, East Linton.
Thank you to all parents who responded to the consultation on the draft Constitution and Equality and Fairness policy. Your input has been taken into account, and the updated documents, along with the notice of meeting and agenda can be downloaded by clicking on the link below or visiting the Parent Council page on Edubuzz.
https://www.edubuzz.org/eastlinton/files/2019/05/Notice-of-EGM-with-agenda-and-documents.pdf
As always, any parents and carers of children at the school are welcome to attend. Please RSVP either via the event page on facebook, or by emailing elpsparentcouncil@gmail.com. Please also feel free to get in touch via the parent council’s email address at any time with feedback, suggestions, concerns or questions. Please note that all Parent Council members are unpaid volunteers with other commitments, so while we will do our absolute best to respond quickly, we may not always be able to do so. Your patience is very much appreciated!
It may be that we can help, or alternatively we may be able to put you in touch with someone who can. We’d love to hear what your priorities are for the school, and how we can all best support the kids to have a positive learning experience.
Many thanks,
Trace Ward
Chair, East Linton Primary Parent Council
P1 Eco Warriors Fayre tomorrow – all welcome!
School News
Great excitement in school today for Red Nose Day – thank you for your support ! We all learned at assembly about where our donations go, as well as having a bit of fun! If you would like to recycle your red noses you can bring them back to school or take them to the customer service desk at any branch of Sainsburys.
At assembly we again celebrated those who have gone “over and above” and those who have shown the Learning Power of Respect. Leaflets about our Learning Heroes have gone home in school bags this week.
It has been another busy week. P1, P4 and nursery are all very focused on being Eco warriors just now, with some amazing learning and collaboration happening.So far we have saved over 100 plastic bottles from use from Friday packed lunches – well done P1-3 families! We are about to install a compost bin in the playground for all those apple cores and left over bits of snack at playtimes.
P1s and P5s have been out and about in our village exploring sustainability issues.
P7 complete their level 1 Bikeability training today , with P6 starting on Monday – we are very grateful to our parent volunteers and to Philppa Barber from ELC Outdoor Education team for helping to make this happen. Our friends from Belhaven Bikes are coming in again on Monday to safety check P6s bikes.
On Tuesday I had the great pleasure of watching our P4s at their swimming lesson – so wonderful to see skills and confidence growing with each and every one of them.
Mrs Gibson has been to a conference looking at the use of technology to help our learners and we are experimenting with a trial of a new writing support app over the next week or so. Miss McKay and I attended a briefing on the ELC policy for assessing and supporting children with additional needs.
Our nursery staff received another very positive visit from our ELC support officer. We are looking forward to welcoming back Mrs Purves on Tuesday morning.
Next week Miss Stewart will be taking full responsibility every day in P2 – we thank Mrs Gibson for teaching P2 on a Wednesday.
As a staff we carried out a moderation of progress in number session, looking at evidence gathered of children’s progress and how this enables us to make sound professional judgements https://twitter.com/EastLintonPS/status/1106476998778589184
Weekly update!
We have some special days coming up – details for your calendar
Thursday 7th March – World Book day – bring something to read to carry all day. We haven’t asked the children to dress up this year but if your child is desperate to do so then that’s not a problem!
Friday 8th March – our friends from Dunbar Rotary are visiting for their annual Purple Pinkie appeal assembly, collection and pinkie print taking. This is a fantastic charity trying to finally eradicate polio from the world – find out more at http://www.purplepinkie.com/ Please can you send a donation with your child. Thank you for your support.
Friday 15th March is Red Nose Day – red noses go on sale next Wednesday 6th March priced £1.25 ( please send exact money, one nose per pupil to begin with). Noses can be bought from the office and our Charity Reps Heidi, Oliver, Abbi, Ella and Fearne will be selling them at morning break for pupils and at the start of each nursery session.
We encourage everyone to wear as much red as possible on the day and to bring a donation.
This week in school all of our classes have been learning about the importance of Fairtrade – we will be renewing our school Fairtrade status soon.
P5 enjoyed a John Muir themed dance session on Monday. P4 have been down to Dunbar to visit the recycling centre and next week they will be sharing this learning with P1a and P1b.
This week I attended a briefing on Managing Distressed and Challenging behaviour – this training is going to be rolled out to all school staff next session.
Miss McKay and I also started work assessing the numeracy skills of samples of pupils – this is going to feed into our whole staff session on Numeracy Moderation in 2 weeks. Our teachers are working in trios to develop maths and numeracy teaching and are carrying out classroom observations of each other focusing on teaching strategies and pupil progress.
At assembly on a Friday we recognise those who have gone “over and above” and I would like to share with you all the fantastic person that is Skye in P3 who had lots of hair cut off this week to donate to charity and also raised £348 – we are all so proud of her!
Today at assembly we launched our Learning Heroes – linking our recognition of “over and above ” in the classroom and school to the values in our School Charter which all of our pupils,staff and yourselves have fed into – more information coming home in school bags!
Good luck to our instrumentalists who are playing at a concert tomorrow in the Town House Haddington!
Mrs Gardner
Education Local Improvement Plan 2018/19
ELC Education Service Plan 2018-19 SUMMARY final
This link will take you to a summary of East Lothian Council’s Education Local Improvement Plan
Plastic Bottle Support!
41 plastic bottles of water saved for another occasion on Friday thanks to our P1-3 families. We are encouraging families to leave their packed lunch plastic bottle if they don’t need it.
Well done everyone what a great start!