All posts by Scott Lavery

News, Ross High, Secondary

HMIe Visit

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It has been a very exciting day here at Ross High with a visit from Brian Stewart of HMIe.  Brian was in school to look at Enterprise approaches across the school.  He was involved in observing in classes, meeting with pupils and meeting with members of staff.

 

Brian was very impressed with what he saw at Ross High today and highlighted a number of things that I wanted to share with you all.  He was very impressed with the progress we were making with embedding enterprise within the curriculum and mentioned that we were a lot further down this road than many other schools.  Brian thought the good practice lunch was brilliant and is keen to share this activity with his colleagues.  He said the students were very positive about learning and teaching and that it was clear that enterprising approaches were taking place across the curriculum.  Pupils were also positive about the projects they had undertaken, especially the LEAPs Art project and Determined to Broadcast.  Brian was very interested in the S5/6 PSE programme, so much so that he wants to visit again!

 

Brian was also very impressed with the lessons that he observed and described them using the following words: really good, absolutely super, state of the art, slick, quality lesson.

 

We are all now really pleased with the feedback from this visit and will continue our efforts to embed enterprise through our learning and teaching approaches.

Rhona Shuttleworth Acting DHT Ross High School

Nursery/Primary, Yester Primary

Yester Pole is Totem-ally Fantastic

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On Tuesday 30th January the whole school came out to watch the unveiling of our new full size totem pole.  Last year’s P5 pupils designed planned and designed this as part of a project on John Muir.  All of the class entered a competition to create the faces on the pole and the four winning entries were then marked out on a good quality tree trunk.  The whole class helped to chisel out the timber with professional help from local sculptor, Robin Wood.  We made contact with Robin through one of our business partners, the Chippendale School of Furniture.

 The pole was set in the ground by one of our parents who is an professional fencer (enclosing fields, not using swords!).  Ms Pinkerton, the NQT who led the project with P5 last year, officially unveiled the totem pole in front of children, staff and local press.

Nursery/Primary, Yester Primary

A Business Breakfast for Yester pupils

This term we took a group of children to a business breakfast.  This was organised by East Lothian Council and was an opportunity for business leaders to learn about the benefits of business partnerships.  We have five business partners and were delighted to be able to help.  Two pupils from P4 spoke about the jewellery they had made and sold as a result of the school’s partnership with the Bead Shop in Haddington.  One of our P7 girls talked about the website she helped build with help from the Council’s Museum Service and another P7 pupil told everyone about the placement one of our staff was having at the Chippendale School of Furniture.  The children spoke very confidently and enjoyed the reward of some bacon rolls.

Events

Musselburgh Cluster Enterprise Event – Musselburgh Grammar School

All the P7 pupils in the Musselburgh Primary schools gathered at Musselburgh Grammar School on Thursday 22 February to take part in the first transition event of the year, to help them prepare for the move to secondary education in August.

The event was planned and organised by the schools’ Enterprise Co-ordinators and a group of P7 pupils, who represented all the schools. On the day the pupils, who were arranged in mixed school groups, were supported with their tasks by a very enthusiastic and helpful group of S3 and S4 pupils from the Grammar school. Working with the older pupils was a very good experience for the primary pupils.

The pupils engaged in three activities – a thinking skills task, an art activity and a problem solving task. While the activities were much enjoyed by the children, the emphasis was more on getting to know new people, working together in teams and building confidence about the move. Initially the children were all quite quiet and reserved but this did not last long and soon there was a happy, noisy buzz in the hall as everyone became more relaxed with each other.

Invited guests and some secondary school staff came along to support the event, in addition to the primary teachers and support staff who had accompanied the children, making it a good opportunity for the adults to get to know each other too.

At the end, everyone agreed that the event was a great success and much enjoyed by the pupils. As a transition event, it served its main purpose of going some way to helping prepare the children for this big change in their lives.

Nursery/Primary, Tranent Primary

Day of Change at Tranent Primary School

Primary 5c were involved in UNICEF’s Day for Change on 2nd February to help support education in Kenya. 

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The pupils raised money by doing a sponsored ‘helping hands’ and they organised a coin collection in the school.  They tried to fill a map of Kenya with the coins.  The pupils in 5c also organised an assembly.  They reflected on their skills and applied for jobs on various teams to help with the preparations.  There was a team of script-writers, an I.T team typing up the scripts, an advertising team, a team involved in decorating the hall and making flags and a finance team who collected the money.  All ideas for the assembly were discussed in daily meetings.  The pupils really enjoyed presenting their work to the school at assembly. 

L Martin

Events

North Berwick Cluster get Enterprising

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Last Thursday saw the annual enterprise transition event held at North Berwick High School.  This is the first of a number of events aimed at easing the transition process.  The main focus of the day is on enterprise and getting the children to work collaboratively in mixed teams from across the cluster.

The task was to design and make a set of picture frames which contained some original art work.  These were to be sellable and therefore marketed by each of the groups.  Attached to each group was a fourth year student who acted as a facilitator and was able to ofer support and advice to the children.  The support from these students was phenomenal and they really got involved in the task.

The children spent the first part of the morning designing their frames and allocating the various roles within the group.  They then got involved in making their frames and buying the products they needed using their vouchers from the shop.  A great deal of bargaining was done at this time.  Whilst they were making their products, the groups also had to be thinking about their presentations to the judges this afternoon.

The jugdes looked at the following criteria and were impressed with the standard of the groups.

  • Best Product
  • Best Stand
  • Best Presentation

The day itself was a huge success and the children themselves were able to establish a number of friendships at the same time as developing their enterprising skills.

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Loretto RC Primary School, Nursery/Primary

Loretto’s Enterprise Update

So far this session we have had many exciting enterprising activities going on across the whole school. Primary 4 and 6 have been working very closely together on promoting recycling in Loretto. They have worked with ‘Changeworks’, presented an assembly and organise the weekly collection and disposal of any recyclable materials. Primary 3 worked very hard over the Christmas term and organised an Art Exhibition, which was set up in our gym hall. Family and friends were then able to come along and purchase the pictures and all proceeds went towards the charities identified by the local churches of Musselburgh. Primary 6/7 and 7 were also very busy over the Christmas term making and selling Christmas cards and organising the shoe box appeal for the New Hope Trust.At present Primary 4 and 5 are preparing for our annual Burns Celebration. They will be dancing, singing and reciting poetry for members of our parish church – it’s always a very popular event. 

Forthcoming Events/Activities

Whole school fundraising campaign during Lent

P5 Making paired reading books for Primary 1 

P5 taking part in the John Muir Award 

Nursery/Primary, Tranent Primary

Burns Afternoon – Tranent Primary

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The P7’s had a very successful Burns Afternoon at Tranent Primary School.  They prepared and arranged a Burns celebration by researching how a traditional Burns Supper is organised. They found out about the life and works of Rabbie Burns and many Scottish traditions and they produced booklets to present this knowledge.

 

Official invitations were given to invited guests and one child arranged for a piper to attend the ceremony.

The children wrote their own toasts to the lassies and replies to the ladies and their own Scots poetry to recite. In addition the classes chose both traditional and modern Scots songs to learn and perform on the day. Other youngsters recited the Selkirk Grace and the Address to the Haggis.  An entertaining Master of Ceremonies led the proceedings.

 

A group of children from the year stage organised the running order of the event.

Servers were nominated to dish up the ‘haggis, neeps and tatties’ to the guests.

In addition to these events the children organised a small ceilidh and chose the dances they wished to perform.  Some pupils prepared ‘party pieces’ in groups or pairs as entertainment, such as, highland dancing, singing and playing their instruments.