Dear colleagues,

Welcome back!  I hope that you all have had a lovely break. 

Thanks to Michelle, Claire and Lynne for their input at the inservice days and to everyone for their collaboration and participation.  The Inclusive Classroom and Adaptive Teaching Strategies slides from the presentations are below.  Evaluating the days is an important part of our quality assurance, so if you haven't had a chance, please take a minute (it is short) to complete the February Inservice Evaluation. 

Thanks to the Clair and the Languages Team for planning Languages Week. This will start on Monday morning with a tannoy to acknowledge the start of languages week, followed by some activities in Form Class.  Each morning, with the exception of Tuesday, will follow the same pattern of a tannoy in a foreign language, followed by the English explanation, and then an activity for form classes.

Here is a link to the activities for you to complete during FC. You can project this on the board, get pupils to complete the tasks and then go over the answers which are at the end of the pdf. There are six activities, so please spread these out over the 4 mornings. 🙂

As part of the week, we have a Spanish immersion day for our senior and S3 pupils on Friday 19th February.  Our Higher and National 5 Spanish pupils will be involved P1-4 and S3s, P5-6.  These are the pupils involved. 

To get everyone in the mood, here is a short quiz on languages for staff.  Please do give it a go for fun - how good is your knowledge on languages?

Attainment Matters

Thanks for your hard work in marking prelims and completing tracking reports and to Phil for the coordination and QA aspect of the process.  Reports have now been shared with parents and carers.  If you haven't already, please make sure that you have learning conversations with young people about their results, progress and next steps. 

Please give particular focus to our four target groups:

1. TSP1 (Equity and Poverty related): Learners who are Senior Phase and FSM/FME and/or in SIMD Vigintile 1-6

2. TSP2 (Low Attainers): Learners who are likely to have low attainment in the current year or already has a pattern of low attainment from prior years.

3. TSP3 (Drive for Five): Learners in S4 who are at risk of not achieving 5 SQA qualifications at Level 3 or 4 or 5.

4. TSP4 (Leave with Five): Learners in S6 who have not yet achieved 5 Highers, but have achieved 3 or 4 and it is possible to achieve the five by the end of S6.

Mobile Phone Policy Review

As planned, it is time to review the relative success of the mobile phone policy update.  The policy was designed to:

• reduce distractions caused by mobile phone use

• reduce associated disruption (eg pupils leaving class to meet in toilets)

• reduce negative impact on performance

• contribute to phone free time in the day

Sine the last survey, we have added the ability to highlight the names of pupils with exceptions on SEEMiS so that it appears on registers. Other suggestions for improvement are welcome.

Here is a link to the staff survey. It is very short, please do take a moment to share your experience and views. FCLs, please ask pupils to complete the pupil version which has been posted on the yeargroup Google Classrooms.

Home - School Communication Review

Here are the results of the recent survey for parents on the effectiveness of communication between home and school. Key issues for us to consider and address:

• more information on progress would be welcomed

• keep website up to date

• preference for a single platform (possibility of a school app)

• clarification of key contact and sharing of email addresses (FCL)

• length of time between S1 transition and parents night too long for some

And finally...

Congratulations to Amanda Quinn and the Flexible Learning Team who have been successful in a £1000 grant application for our Breakfast Club.

Thanks again for your professionalism and hard work. It makes a massive difference. #buildingfuturestogether

Elaine