February 2026

House Points - Who's In The Lead

Keep track of how many points each house has earned. Points are awarded based on the schools values ' Curious, aspiring, resilient minds and kind, respectful, inclusive hearts'.

Running Total

In The Lead

Nursery Events

Last week saw two events in the ELC. The first event was the Valentines Card making session with parents invited to come and join to make a card or craft with thier child. We had around 35 adults attending this year. Lots of fun was had by all.

We also had a parent who came in to share about Ramadan and Eid Around the World. The children found out why it is special for Muslim people around the world and how they celebrate it. The children then got the chance to make some lanterns linked to Ramadan.

Thank you to the parents for making both of these events successful.

Family Learning Sessions

The are also two cohorts of Supporting Anxious Children, which is a three week course.

One starts on the 9th of March, 09:45-1145 am. To book a place -

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1978116568907?aff=oddtdtcreator

The other is an evening session starting the 4th of March, 18:30-20:30 pm. To book a place -

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1979861170056?aff=oddtdtcreator

Family Learning's ADHD Parenting - From Thursday March 5th 18:30-20:30

A 4-week course in which parents are introduced to the work of The ADHD Dude. Each week presenters and parents will watch, and discuss, videos themed around how to respond to challenging behaviours, and building organisational skills – both of which can be challenging for ADHD kids.

This course is aimed at parents of kids aged P3 and up.

To register interest - Family Learning's ADHD Parenting(0503) Tickets, Thu 5 Mar 2026 at 18:30 | Eventbrite

Supporting Children in the Digital World Younger Years, on Wed 11th March at 0945-1145. It will run online via Teams.

This session is aimed at parents of children aged nursery to P3.

This session aims to ensure parents feel informed and in-control of their children’s use of screens, games, tech and apps.

Places can be booked at our Eventbrite: Family Learning's Supporting Children in the Digital World (1103) Tickets, Wed 11 Mar 2026 at 09:45 | Eventbrite

Extreme Earth In P6

P6 are exploring Extreme Earth. Today both classes had a presentation from Mr and Mrs Osato (Richie’s family) about earthquakes in Japan. We discussed their personal experiences. P6 discussed how governments and individuals can support populations to keep them safe during an earthquake. We focused on the Tohoku earthquake of 2011. The session supported our understanding of the human impact of both earthquakes and tsunamis.

Chinese New Year Lion Dance

This week we were lucky to get the Aberdeen Confucius Institute Lion Dance Team in to the school playground to demonstrate their Chinese New Year Lion Dance. The children loved seeing the costume and how the team was able to make the Lion dance. Lion dances are a 1,500-year-old tradition in Chinese culture that usher in fortune and good luck for the new year.

As you can see from the photos and video it was great to be able to make this a whole school event in the playground.

The children in the ELC also took part in a craft session linked to Chinese New Year too supported by the Manadrin teacher who comes in weekly to share with the children.

Junior Parkrun Affiliated School

Ashley Road School has now become a Junior Parkrun affiliated school. At Clan time this week we spoke to the children about the opportunity of the Junior Parkrun that takes place every Sunday morning at 9.30am at the Duthie Park. We already have a number of children who regularly take part in the run every Sunday morning. We are hoping we will be able to get this number higher over the next month.

In the Summer term we will look to arrange a specific Sunday to encourage as many families and children from Ashley to take part in the park run on that day.

You can register for parkrun for free here - www.parkrun.org.uk/register/

If you can't attend this week, junior parkrun happens every Sunday so you can come any Sunday your are available.

Travelling Book Fair During Parent Evenings

We once again had the travelling book fair in during the parent evening appointments. We have this open during the two parent evenings on the Tuesday and Thursday. Depending on how many books are sold depends on how much the school gets back to purchase new titles for our library.

This year we raised £312 towards new books for the library. These will be added in the coming weeks. Thank you to all the families who purchased a book during the evenings.

Thank you to all our P7 and parent helpers who ran the fair during the two evenings.

Author Visit to P7 Room 11

On Thursday P7 Room 11 had a visit from Nadine Aisha Jassat to deliver a workshop around her book 'Estie Noor and the House at the Edge of the World.' This visit links in to the Granite Noir 2026 festival and Ashley Road was lucky enough to be able to get a visit from an author.

Nadine read an extract of her book, told the children about her background and inspiration and spoke about how she always wants to inlcude characters in her book that were not represented in books when she was young. The children enjoyed the event.

Writing Core Skills

Steps To Success

Based on our ongoing School Improvement Plan, a great deal of work has been underway this session in an effort to produce a resource to provide learners and families with clear guidance and support materials regarding what is required at each level for core writing skills. Core writing skills are the key components of writing, without which text often doesn't make sense, e.g. grammar, spelling, punctuation and sentence construction.

As a result of this work, we are now ready to launch Ashley Road's new 'Steps To Success' booklet.

Linked directly to curriculum requirements and assessment standards used by the teachers in school, the booklet contains clear reference to the standards required at each level, and prompts that will help children reach these targets.

The resource will be introduced in school over the coming weeks in all P3-7 classes, as a consistent tool which children will use and revisit frequently. The ultimate goal is to help the children have understanding and ownership in how they identify and work towards their next steps in these core writing targets.

As ever, we would encourage families to use these tools at home, to help us create a sense of shared understanding across our community. Therefore, a digital version of the booklet is available to all families for free and can be downloaded or accessed via the Home Learning Library. If families would like to purchase a hard copy to use at home, please complete THIS FORM, to allow us to get a sense of the number of books we may need to order.

SLT will be available at the upcoming parent meetings to show hard copies of the resource and to talk through how it can be best used to support learners.

Parent Meeting Feedback Slips

Please see attached an example of the maths assessment slip which will be shared with each family from P2-7 at parent meetings next week. Please have a look over the example to reduce time lost explaining its format during the meetings. This year we will also be able to provide a similar slip for all P1-7 pupils based on writing assessments.

'Traffic Light' colour banding has been used to help families identify 'at a glance' the areas in which children have achieved highly and those areas where they might benefit from additional support. Teachers will explain how to interpret the information in these slips at parent meetings, and direct families towards appropriate levels of resources in the Home Learning Library where support materials can be accessed.

Parent Meeting Feedback Slip Info

Parent Meeting Booking

The second parents evening meetings of this session will take place on Tuesday the 17th and Thursday the 19th of February and will continue to be in person, in school.

Booking will be online via the same system used previously. You can book an appointment by going to the address below and logging in. The information you use to login must match exactly what we hold on our school system, so if you are struggling to login, please call the school office who will support. Please choose the option to enter your email address, rather than sign in with Google or Microsoft.

https://parents-booking.co.uk/login.jsp https://parents-booking.co.uk/ashleyroad

The booking window will open on Friday the 6th of February at 4:00pm and will close on Friday the 13th of February at 12noon .

Please help us to make best use of teachers time which is set aside to meet with parents. If for any reason you are unable to attend an appointment, please cancel with as much notice as possible by calling the school office or cancelling via the online system.

Road Safety Magic Show

This week we had a visit from the Road Safety Magic Show.

All the P1-7s took part in the interactive shows that reinforced how to be safe around roads. All the children should be able to recite the key message of: Stop, Look. Listen and Think, complete with actions. There was lots of fun and magic and the children enjoyed the show.

P7s Pitch Their Plans To The PSAs

We were recently approached by a group of P7s from the HTL and Super Squad groups, who expressed their desire to make some changes to the way lunches are run, including the system for collecting lunch boxes and the arrangements regarding eating outdoors.

As the PSA team would be most impacted by any changes, the pupils were invited along to our PSA meeting this week to put forward their proposition - and they bravely accepted!

The PSA team was extremely impressed by how professional (and balanced!) the boys' arguments were. They spoke very convincingly and had a purposeful discussion with both the PSAs and SLT as to what might work and how.

The adults will now consider the logistics of the ideas before meeting with the group again to formulate a plan.

True pupil voice in action !

Vocab Master Challenge

Coming up at the end of term will be our 'Vocab Masters' challenge. Based on our 'Words Of The Week' from this year, we will be looking for challengers who believe their vocabulary is at 'Grand Master' level. Reps will be identified for each house in a battle of words, with a stash of house points up for grabs. If any children want to ensure that they have the best chance of being selected and ultimately winning the battle, we have added a link to the words of the week for this whole school year (LINKED HERE). The challenge will happen towards the end of this term, so there will be plenty of time to revise!

Tune in below to hear 'Skills Song'

Skill Song.MP4

Skills Star Hunt

In celebration of the things which make Ashley Road unique, we have created three bespoke songs. The first of which has been shared with the children this term. Titled 'Skills Song' the lyrics reflect the strong focus we have in school on skills development, brought to life through our four mascots, Creative Curl, Physical Fuzz, Coping Corah and Connecting Cathy.

We are looking for four young performers who are keen to star in a 'music video' for the song, each taking on the role of a mascot. If you are interested in taking part, you must:

Not be shy around cameras
Have permission from your parents to have your image on the school website.
Be ready to dance, sing and perform.

Still interested? Complete THIS FORM

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