Primary 4 and 6 had a great sports day on Wednesday 19th and 26th May. Here are a few pictures.

The National Reading Champions Quiz is a quiz supported by the National Literacy Trust and ALCS. It is open to pupils aged 10-14 years of age. This year Ashley Road entered the competition for the first time. We had two teams of P7s that took part in the regional heat. The children enjoyed taking part but did find it was a very tricky quiz! Well done to them all for showing great team work skills and positivity throughout.

Children will be sharing stories, sign language activities and discussing Deaf Awareness themes . We have three staff who have taken sign language classes and our nursery team are very well trained in Makaton -a rich resource and talent for our children to learn from!

We hope to have a Sports Day for all children in May. The Sports Day has to be different this year and we think we will be able to have Sports Afternoons for two year groups at a time. Sadly parents will not be allowed to attend or watch the races in order that we ensure that we are following appropriately ACC and Public Health guidance. We will share lots of photos of the races with families instead this year. Our provisional dates are

Wed 19th May afternoon : P7 and P6

Wed 26th May afternoon : P5 and 4

Wednesday 2nd June afternoon: : P3 and 2

Nursery and P1 Sports may be in the school playground -dates yet undecided.

We have started chatting with staff and children about the events and this week the children have been seen practising their skills in the playground!

To ensure safe access to school for all our pupils, we ask that P4-7 pupils who are due to arrive for the second shift, not arrive or line up before 9am, or line up on the opposite side of the street, as families from P1-3 are finding the pavements are congested while lining up for the first shift. Please keep the line single file as much as possible, to allow others to pass on the pavement and remember to maintain 2m distancing from other households while in the line.

On Wed 24th March 7-7.30pm there will be an optional Parent Information session at the start of the Parent Council Meeting. I have sent a Google Meet Calendar invitation to all families and any parent is welcome to join us on the evening.

At the meeting I will talk you through the information included within the new ACC report format, as this is the report format we will be using in the summer term. Parents will also be able to ask any questions about the report format and these discussions will help guide the information we provide to families when we send out the reports in the summer term.

The Ashley Road Reporting Calendar and the Reporting Guide for Parents are here for your information.

In March, The Scottish Friendly Children's Book Tour is 'travelling across the continents' for a new series of digital events. The tour includes live events and videos with amazing talks, activities and interactive Q&As from unique and inspiring locations. There are six brilliant events planned for the 'Connected Continents series and we are very lucky to have been offered places on three of the events this year! Next week children across the school will be participating in the Live Author events as detailed below. (Click on the links to find out more)

P5 - 7 Migration - Migration with Issa Watanabe and Lawrence Schimel (South America)

P3 - The Little People Big Dreams series - Little People, BIG DREAMS! with Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara (Europe)

P1 and P2 - Astro Girl - Ken Wilson-Max and Friends (Africa)

What a great turnout today with all the Christmas jumpers and colours. Well done everyone.

The children also got to enjoy seeing some jokes on the screen while they were eating their lunch.

Can they remember any of them?

Fundraising on the day raised £325.40 for Save The Children.

Many thanks to all who were able to donate.

Friday the 13th will be a dress down day for all children and staff, in support of Children In Need. We will place a few buckets in playground alongside the 'yellow brick road', for parents to drop any donation, up to £1. Older children can drop their donation as they pass, or bring it to their class.

Enjoy your September holidays everyone!

See you back in school on Tuesday 29^th September.

School Holidays https://www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/services/education-and-childcare/view-school-term-and-holiday-dates

September holiday - 25th September and 28^th September

October holidays – 12^th October – 23^rd October

November Inservice day – 20^th November

Christmas holidays 21^st December 2020 -4^th January 2021.

As we are currently unable to send home physical copies of books, we have decided to invest in an online system called 'Rapid Reading'. Much like we would have done previously, we will continue to use Rigby Star/Oxford Treetops books and a range of other resources to teach reading skills in school, but now rather than send physical copies of books home for families to read together, teachers will be able to 'allocate' online versions of books to children each week for them to read at home with their parents. A simple login will enable access to your child's 'portal' which can be viewed on a range of different devices e.g. PC's/Tablets/Phones. We will initially be introducing Rapid readers with our P1 - 3 pupils, and may extend this further for individuals/groups in time.

We know that families reading frequently with their children, reinforcing the sounds/word recognition and comprehension skills taught in school is an invaluable part of learning to read, and we hope this system will enable parents to continue to support in this way. The consent form is available HERE

Many thanks to the PTA who have supported the funding of this project.

Letter to parents regarding the statement from the Depute First Minister on the 23rd of June regarding return to full-time schooling.

Primary 6 were tasked with delivering a Genius Hour presentation on a topic of their choice and the following were selected as the winning entries! Katherine delivered an excellent talk on the Bermuda Triangle, Sophie and Kai discussed the importance of key workers and the NHS, Megan W delivered a fantastic talk on jellyfish, Tilly discussed what it’s like to film wild animals while James shared a fact filled presentation on Washington DC. These Genius Hour presentations were then shared with the rest of the class who gave lots of great feedback.

In literacy, P1 have been learning how to write letters. Some, posted these out to our friends and family. We are hoping to get a reply through our letter boxes soon!