Goodbye and Thank You

I have now been in my new job for two whole weeks and wanted to say a huge thank you for all your lovely gifts, cards and kind wishes.  I loved my time at St. James's and take away many happy memories with me.  I'm sure I'll see you all again at the school show.  I'm handing over the school blog now to Miss Murray so good luck and enjoy!   Mrs Nicholson

School Show

We put on a fabulous school show for our parents, families and members of the school community.  Primary 1 kicked of each of the two shows with their version of the nativity story.  Their photos can be seen on the P1 blog page.  The remaining classes then performed "Christmas Around the World".  Each class chose a country and learned a Christmas carol from that country.  Prior to singing it they shared their research with the audience about Christmas customs in their chosen country.  Many members of the audience commented on learning new things that day!  Our guitarists and recorder club also entertained us with their lovely music.  This is the first year we were able to perform on our new school stage.  Miss Hunter designed a beautiful backdrop for it and on the day we had it lit with Christmas lights.  The hall was very festive and added to the great atmosphere.  Well done to all who took part.

St. James's as True Global Citizens

This session the staff and pupils have played host to several groups of International visitors from India, China and America.  Engaging with people from other countries allows our children to have a better understanding of the world they will eventually be employed in.  They enjoyed sharing the fun ways of learning and innovation that go on at our school.  Take a look at the International Blog page for more details. (image courtesy of LTS)

Primary 1 Explore the World of Retail

The boys and girls of Primary 1 had a fascinating day out at Braehead Shopping Centre. They are working with children in 4 other European countries on their "Clothes Show Europe" project. They interviewed staff from several shops and had an "audience with" one of the ladies who works in the clothing department for Sainsbury's. She took them on a tour of the department and they had great fun exploring the equipment used and the department layout. The children used digital cameras and videos to record their information which will help them set up a clothes shop in the class for role play. The staff of Sainsbury's kindly donated several items for the children to take away to start setting up their clothes shop. They then toured Braehead snapping photos of all that inspired them. They also visited Shopmobility whilst at Braehead to see what help is available for people with disabilities who may find shopping harder. They agreed their class shop would have to have a wide entrance so the scooters would fit in. Have a look at the P1 class blog page for more photos and to keep up-to-date with our Primary 1 project.

Halloween Party 2009

Make a Smilebox slideshow

The pupils and staff had lots of spooky fun at the annual Halloween party.  A certain witch who looked a lot like Mrs Nicholson played DJ and official photographer.  Mrs Guthrie made a dramatic entrance in her best outfit yet and the staff turned out in full costume too.  The children danced away to many spooky songs as well as to the latest chart toppers.  Have a look at our Halloween slide show to see our amazing costumes.  You won't recognise a lot of us!  We were all exhausted by the end of the party.

Accord Hospice

Last week we were visited by a member of the Accord Hospice team.  At our recent House Meeting, each "House" in our school has chosen a charity to support and Accord Hospice is the chosen charity of Inverness.  Our visitor told us all about the work Accord Hospice does.  It needs over £2,400,000 to run each year and much of this money comes from donations.  We got to ask lots of interesting questions and as well as supporting them by our usual Sunflower Campaign, we also hope to plan an activity to raise funds for them in the near future.  Perhaps Inverness House can suggest, plan and run the activity?

Goodbye Mrs Adam

Staff and pupils said a fond farewell to Mrs Adam on Friday.  Due to circumstances outwith our control, she will now move to another primary school within Renfrewshire authority.  She will be sorely missed by all at St. James's.  She was presented with gifts, flowers, a memory book and memory DVD during our assembly on Friday.  The staff, pupils and parents wish her well as she takes up her new role at her new school.

FUNdraising Afternoon

Last week we had lots of fun when our House Captains helped organise and run a FUNdraising afternoon.  We had lots of offer.  A big thanks to all the parents who helped by sending in tasty homebaking as well as old toys and books.  This afternoon helped raise around £250 for our school funds.  This will go towards subsiding educational trips for our classes this year.  Thank you for your support.

Beautiful Henna Hands!

Some of the families in our school community celebrated the end of Ramadan last week.  Here is a photo of one of our pupil's hands.  She had them adorned with intricate Henna designs.  This is an ancient art using an orange-red dye that comes from the leaves of the Henna plant.  The Henna is mixed to a paste and mixed with other ingredients which are safe to apply to the skin.  Once the Henna design is dry, it is scraped off the skin and leaves a beautiful stain behind which lasts for a few weeks. 
Women have their hands painted with henna to celebrate important events.  Click on the link to find out more about the Muslim festival of Ramadan. 

Scottish Learning Festival 2009

For the second year running, St. James's Primary were asked to showcase the work they have been doing in school at the Scottish Learning Festival.  This national two day event is held at the SECC in Glasgow and is usually attended by 7,000 people.  Mrs Nicholson presented on the first day with Lynne Lewis (East Lothian Council) on a National Literacy Project which they had jointly set up.  On day two, four of our Primary 2 pupils went to the SECC to show teachers round Scotland the variety of ways in which they had used GLOW within their classroom last year.  Go to the P2/3 class blog to see photos of their visit.

Good Luck Sister Margaret!

Today we said a sad goodbye to Sister Margaret from our local church by holding a special service for her. The pupils and staff have enjoyed working with her over the past four years and we wish her well as she begins a new chapter of her life in London.

Impromptu outdoor ceilidh...

We enjoy getting together with pupils and staff from other classes during our golden time. We often go outdoors to do lots of different activities. Here we are having an outdoor ceilidh. We brought the music out with us and the sun even shone for us!

Meet our new Primary 1 pupils!

Our new P1 pupils have just completed their first week and they have coped really well. Miss Hunter and Mrs Nicholson are their teachers and their buddies are doing a great job of helping them settle in too. I'm sure they'll enjoy their time at our school.

Animation Team

Here is our "Animation Team". They met with expert animator Oscar Stringer via GLOW meet (video conferencing) along with a few other schools in Scotland. They learned the basics of animation and did really well by producing a short animation sequence using our new software "I Can Animate".

This group were chosen for their patience and perseverence and will be responsible for training the rest of the school (pupils and staff) in the new school session. They will be joining Oscar in June, again by video conferencing, for a more advanced lesson in animation. We will be using this across many subjects however we are excited about how it could be used in our topic work and our Spanish.

Mary's Meals

After John from Mary's Meals came into speak to us about the backpack project, we decided to help Mary's Meals by filling backpacks for children in Malawi and Liberia. The children who attend school will be given these when they attend their local school. They are also given a meal in the middle of the day and for many this is the only meal they will receive. They are served a type of porridge made by the village women. In the backpacks we will be putting stationery for school, toiletries, small balls for playing with and light clothes.

We have managed to collect 4 sacks of items which we will need to sort before sending to Mary's Meals. One of our Enterprise Committee called Mary's Meals from our school office to arrange an uplift within the next 2 weeks. The Enterprise team (P1 to P7) will be sorting the materials out and sharing them among the backpacks and schoolbags we have collected. We have done really well and look forward to seeing the backpacks being sent off to Africa. Next session we hope to link with a school in Africa to further develop our International Education.

May Fun Day

We had a great fun day recently to raise funds for the school.  We had pitch and put, hook a duck, basket shoots and many more activities.  We all went home tired out.  We have spent some of the money on animation software we liked.  We are going to be learning how to make our own animations.

Mary's Meals

We received a visit from John from Mary's Meals today. He told us all about life for children in Malawi and other countries and how Mary's Meals are helping them. We watched a video where we tracked one rucksack of educational goodies from here in Scotland to a school in Malawi. We hope to support this charity by looking out last year's rucksacks and any pencils, notebooks, rubbers, sharpeners etc that we may have. If you have any of these things, please bring them into school and you can help store and sort the items for sending. More information can be obtained by going to their website.

Going Bananas

The entire school and many of our parents joined us to munch our way through our Fairtrade bananas. We heard that there were over 350,000 other people eating FT bananas that day. Our P6/7 class worked extremely hard to organise the day and we had amazing fun. All photos have now been uploaded to the FT glow group. Well done Miss McNamara and P6/7 and all the pupils, parents and staff who supported the event.

Fairtrade Preparation

Our P6/7 pupils are busy making preparations for Fri 6th March when we will all go bananas for Fairtrade. They have been going round the classes advising the younger pupils of all the activities they have organised. Any pupil who has an item of yellow clothing has been invited to wear it that day. We will be receiving educational talks from our P6/7's in our assembly and by using the video clips that have been uploaded to their Fairtrade glow group. Not long to go!

Ash Wednesday

We held a lovely service today in school for Ash Wednesday. Our boys and girls from Primaries 2 and 3 did the readings with Primary 4 joining in with bidding prayers. You were all great readers and helped make the service really enjoyable. Well done.

Fair Trade

We are just about to launch our Fair Trade campaign in St. James's Primary School. Primary 6/7 are working closely with Miss McNamara to choose products and plan our launch. Alvin the bear went to the Fair Trade warehouse to meet the workers and find out more for us. You can see what he got up to in our Fair Trade glow group.

(Image credited to www.fairtrade.org and used for non-commercial purposes)

Recycling

We handed all our old Christmas cards into Primary 4/5 and collected them from our families too. The boxes of cards were very heavy. We then took the cards to a recycling unit. Maybe they'll make it back to our school one day, recycled into jotters? Well done Primary 4/5 for chasing us all up.

Violin Lessons

We were entertained at assembly this week by Miss Clark. She played her violin for us. It's a very old violin and it cost a lot of money so we're careful not to bump it. Miss Clark played some scottish songs and music for us. We sang along to the ones we know. She was brilliant!

New Primary 1 Enrolment

This week our school has had lots of visitors. Many of our local nursery children came to visit us with their families. Some of them have big brothers and sisters in the school already.

They filled in all their forms and will be joining us after the summer holidays. Our older pupils will be buddies to them and will get to meet them 2 or 3 times before they finally start school in August. We hope they liked seeing round our school and we're looking forward to having them join us after the summer holidays.

(Learning and Teaching Scotland is credited as the source of the original image).

Healthy Bodies and Healthy Teeth.

Gladigator came to visit us and he brought his huge slide with him. We tired ourselves out sliding down it. It went right up to the roof. Afterwards, he reminded us of how often we should brush our teeth, in which direction and what foods to avoid. Afterwards he posed with some of the classes and showed off his shiny teeth. Have a look at some of our pictures and if you want to hear some lively music, click on the grey speaker at the bottom left of the pictures.

Christmas "Jingles" Enterprise

A variety of pupils from the upper school ran our Christmas "jingles" fundraising initiative. The rest of the school had a chance every Friday to browse and buy family Christmas presents which were then wrapped free of charge. Our team of Christmas elves worked with Mrs Connell and Miss Murray and raised over £271 for the school fund. Well done to you all! (Click on the grey speaker icon at the bottom left of the picture to hear our festive music as you watch our slide show).

Halloween 2008

Have a look at our Halloween photos? What do you think? Did you enjoy the party? Click on the grey speaker icon at the bottom left of the photo to hear our party music (in at the back,to the left of the cross).

Spanish in 2009

What would you like to do in Spanish in 2009? Any ideas of anything different you'd like to try? Mrs G is still looking at the Linguascope resource we were trialling. She's due to speak to other schools about it in the New Year and will let us know how she gets on. Click on the link to try all the games in "La Ciudad" unit.

Parents Joining GLOW

We currently have 3 parents live on GLOW with 4 more to follow in the New Year. What do you think about parents being able to access GLOW? What type of things do you think we should have on the parent pages? We are part of a trial group and will be giving feedback to Renfrewshire Council and LTS.

New Year

What are you looking forward to in 2009? Is it a special family event or something your class will be doing? Have you made a New Year's resolution? Want to share it with others?