Happy New Year!!! I hope that you all had a fabulous Christmas and New Year – Thank you all so much for your kind words, cards and gifts, you all know me so well!
Apologies for the long post! I cannot believe in just 6 months we will be finished and P7 will have ended their time at Loanhead Primary. In the mean time we have a LOT of hard work to do to prepare for High School. I have been busy building up learning profiles for the children to send to High School with them and transition meetings will be starting where I meet with guidance teachers.
My expectations for 2018 are that pupils will come to school organised – WITH PENCILS, RUBBERS, GLUE, SHARPENERS, HIGHLIGHTERS, RULER, PROTRACTOR and a MEMORY PEN ( we use so much ICT this makes printing it easier). Pupils will be expected to know their homework and make a note of it so, as usual, they should bring a homework diary every day. At High School pupils homework is given orally and they write it down – they take responsibility for their own learning. These things are more important that spinners, toys and slime!
Unfinished Work – Pupils will be given enough time to complete a task, if they are not using time wisely (and 2/3+ of the class have finished) they will be expected to take it home, complete fully and have it signed for the next day. I appreciate your understanding.
P.E. (after advice from High Schools) PE will be on Tuesday and Thursdays and pupils are expected to have a FULL change of clothes – top and shorts (no tights) as well as indoor shoes. No aerosols but roll ons are allowed. Only about 60% of the class went to PE fully equipped every week last term. If pupils are unable to do PE they will complete written work on PE.
I have worked out a simpler, and less time consuming, learning record so will begin to use this again – sending it home on Fridays to be signed. We will continue with shoeless learning because, I believe that it works and we are going to be doing a lot of mindfulness and relaxation which ties in with it.
If you did not see me at Parents Night and require a catch up please get in tough k.hinton@mgfl.net
Homework will usually be given out Mon or Tues but reading will be at least twice a week as well as unfinished work. Pupils will have maths targets that they will set and are required to work on these in their own time. Mrs Caldwell is redoing the Maths test on fractions, decimals and percentages (pupils were asked to memorise the table below before Christmas – many never and therefore some of the results were not good).
Please talk to your child about the importance of being organised, on task and respectful. This is their time to grow, learn and have fun but because it is fast paced with high expectations, there is a plan in place with management to support this. Social Media had a massive impact on learning last year, please talk with your child about this and the importance of reporting to the police, not sharing images of others or doctoring them to share (both illegal), setting up fake accounts for the purpose of online bullying is not acceptable and the police told them all about the consequences.
I look forward to all of the exciting things we have planned this year and working, with yourselves, to prepare each and every pupil for High School.
Mrs H