We have been celebrating Christmas through some lovely performances over the past couple of weeks.

Last week our Nursery performed their Christmas Story for their parents. Last Friday P1-3 held their Nativity celebration, and yesterday P4-7 held their Christmas celebration concert.

The Nativity and P4-7 celebration were both held at Broughton St.Mary’s Church, and we would like to thank them, and the minister Graham McGeoch, for allowing us to use their magnificent venue, and for all their help with the accommodation.

All the pupils and staff worked very hard to prepare for their performances, and both were very succesful, with great singing, readings, acting and dancing!

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We’re looking forward to our traditional Carols on the Stairs today, when the whole school get together to sing, and everyone starts to feel really Christmassy!

We’d like to wish all children, staff, parents and carers a very Merry Christmas, and a healthy, Happy New Year!

Have a great holiday everyone, we’ll see you all in January!

On Friday the PSA ran their annual Christmas Cafe after the P1-3 nativity.

There were lots of delicious treats to eat and drink, and a wide variety of stalls with Winter Crafts, tattoos, Lolly Lottery, Sparkle Jars and a very successful Raffle, to name a few. It was very busy!

The event raised just under £1100, an amazing amount, which the PSA will use to benefit everyone in school!

Thanks to everyone who attended and bought something there, and huge thanks also to the organisers and helpers of the PSA. We’re all very grateful!

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House Morning

We held a very successful house morning on Friday. All the classes were using sustainable or recycled materials to create a range of winter crafts. Here are some photos!

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Some of the winter crafts we created will be on sale at a Pupil Craft stall at the Christmas Cafe on Friday. Remember, the cafe is on from 11.45-1pm in our Gym Hall this Friday.

Eco- Group

Our Eco Group has been up and running for a while now, organised by Miss Wilson, our Nursery teacher.

The Eco group reps are as follows-

P1a Jude
P1b Riley
P1c Rebecca
P2a Zack
P2b Mariyah
P3a Laura
P3b Aava
P4a Abbey
P4b Hannah
P5a Jack
P5b Nathan
P6 Marc
P6/7 Heather
P7 Sumayah
LCW Chai

Here are photos of the group in action, making posters to encourage recycling in school.

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The Broughton Primary School PSA Christmas Café takes place on Friday 16th December in the school gym hall from 11.45-13.00. It gives pupils, staff, parents and carers a chance to come together and celebrate the end of term. It also raises valuable school funds, which will be used to continue with playground improvements and pay for school excursions.

The event can only be a success if as many parents/carers as possible make a small contribution to the event. Here are 5 ways you can help to support the event.

• Donate a raffle prize
For the children’s raffle, we welcome donations of new and unused toys, books, games, chocolates/sweets and art/craft materials. We have a fabulous Amazon Fire tablet to give away as first prize. Tickets for this raffle can be bought in school from Mon 12th December for £1 per ticket.
For the main raffle, we invite you to donate bottles of beer/wine/spirits, gift vouchers, toiletries and boxes of chocolates/biscuits/sweets. Tickets for the main raffle can be purchased at the event for £1 per ticket.
Donations of raffle prizes can be brought to school from Monday12th December.

• Make a Sparkle Jar
We have an amazing Crayola Inspiration Art Case to give away for the best Sparkle Jar. Kids love Sparkle Jars and they are easy to make. Take a clean jam jar, decorate with paint, glitter, stickers and ribbon. Fill the jar with sweets and treats – (think party bags), then seal the jar with a lid or cover. Please label the base of the jar with your child’s full name and class. Bring the jar to school from Monday 12th December. Sparkle jars will then be on sale at the Café.

• Make sandwiches/wraps/rolls and Home Baking
If you can make 4-5 sandwiches this would be a great help. These should be individually wrapped in a food bag or cling film. Please label each one with the type of filling, for example, “Cheese & Tomato”, “Ham” or “Tuna”. These are all popular fillings. Our home baking stall is always very popular. Put your aprons on and get making cakes and biscuits. Please label any tins/boxes you would like returned with your name on the box and the lid. Donations of fresh food should be brought to school on Friday 16th December only. The gym hall will be open from 08.30am.

• Volunteer
Thank you to everyone has so far volunteered to help at the event. We still need some more helpers at the following times on the 16th:
Table set up – 08.50-09.30 Event set up – 10.00-11.45
Running the event – 11.45-13.00 Tidy up – 13.00.14.00
We also need 1 volunteer to make a pot of soup before the event. Ingredients supplied.
If you are able to help, please email anne.lm.hay@gmail.com to be added to the rota.

• Come along on the day
We need your support to come along on the day and make it a success by buying raffle tickets, soup, sandwiches and our delicious home baking.

Here are some updates from our Parent Council and PSA, including details of upcoming events.

Firstly, follow the link below to see updated information about our Parent Council and PSA Committee members.

Parent Council and PSA Committee Information

Education Governance

The Scottish Government is currently conducting an Education Governance Review which is about how Education is run in Scotland. We are keen for as many Parents and Carers to know about it and get a chance to respond. See below for information about this.

A group of parents are meeting to respond to this as a Parent Council, and as all Parents and Carers are members of the school forum you are all welcome to join in (likely to be on Fri 9 December in the morning) – if you would like to take part in this please email the Parent Council chair, Sandra Rathjen -jonandsandra.rathjen@blueyonder.co.uk and she will let you know when and where the meeting will take place.

Education Governance Review

PSA Christmas Cafe

The PSA will once again be holding a Christmas Cafe from 11.45 to 1pm on Friday 16th December in our Gym Hall, after the P1-3 Nativity. Please see the flyer below for details.

Christmas Cafe Flyer

 

It’s been a very busy couple of weeks here at Broughton.

• Last week was Anti-Bullying week, where respect for others was the focus of our assembly and classroom activities across the school.

• This week was Road Safety week, and the children have been learning about a range of different ways to be safe on or near roads. Again, assemblies and some classroom activities have focussed on this topic this week.

• This week was also Scottish Book Week, and some classes have been learning some poetry to recite at next week’s assemblies. We look forward to hearing those!

• Last week was also Children in Need. Our Pupil Council organised a ‘Wear something spotty’ dress down day on Friday, which raised £209.63! They also sold guesses for a ‘Guess how many sweeties in the jar’ competition, which raised £102.72! A grand total of £312.35 donated to Children in Need.The lucky winner of the jar of sweets was Jacques Mercer from P4b, with his correct guess of 951 sweets!

Well done everyone!

• Last Friday we also held another of our popular parent drop-in sessions. Once again parents and carers were invited to visit classrooms to see and take part in a range of activities. We hope you enjoyed it!

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And finally….

This week we had some good news about our website!

A Senior Digital Officer from the council contacted us to let us know he was very impressed with the first impressions our website gives to users.

He is keen to use our website as an example of good practice in a Council websites report and also a school websites blog!

We are very proud! We will post links to these once we have more details!

 

 

You may remember that we set ourselves a target- reach 50,000 views of our website by our first anniversary in January. Well…

We reached 50,000 views over the weekend! Great news- we’re delighted that our website is being regularly used and viewed. If you have any suggestions for improvements, please contact us.

Playground Tidy

We held our playground tidy on Saturday 12th November. We are very grateful that parents, pupils and staff gave up their time to come and help spruce up our outdoor spaces. We had help litter picking and weeding planters in our playground space, and over in Botanical Broughton.

Many thanks to those who came to help! All pupils who attended earned 2 house points each!

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Remembrance

Broughton St. Mary’s church held a Remembrance service on Sunday 13th November. We were invited to send two pupils to represent our school, and 2 P7 pupils, Isla McPherson and Sid Burgoyne, attended.

They represented the school very well, and laid a wreath as part of the service. Thanks to them both for giving their time to take part in this important community event!

Children in Need and Parent Drop-in

Just a reminder that Children in Need is this Friday 18th November. Our school is taking part by wearing something spotty for the morning, for a donation of £1. Our Pupil Council has organised a ‘Guess the Sweets in the Jar’ competition, with guesses at 20p each. This competition will run all week until Friday.

This Friday is also a Parent Drop-in session, so parents are invited to join in the fun, wear something spotty and make a donation to our Children in Need collection too!

We look forward to seeing our parents this Friday!

At Broughton this year we have launched a new mental maths initiative from Nursery to Primary 7 called ‘Broughton Counts’. This is a mental agility programme that develops a range of numeracy skills.These skills have been organised into 7 colour coded rainbow blocks across the year. This block we are learning to recognise numbers.

Here are the displays that each class created for our first block – counting forwards and backwards.

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You can find out more about ‘Broughton Counts’ from our Parent Leaflet in the ‘Documents and Reports’ section of our website.

Our Pupil Council have been very busy since they formed earlier this term.

They were asked to think about what they liked about Broughton, and also about what improvement ideas they had for the school. Their ideas were collected together on the Graffiti Walls attached below.

Pupil Council Graffiti Wall- What We Like

Pupil Council Graffiti Wall- Improvement Ideas

Last week the Pupil Council presented these ideas at the School Open Day for new parents, and the feedback we received was that the parents very much enjoyed hearing the Pupil Council’s views! They were very confident in presenting!

Visual Support

The Pupil Council have also been involved with our school Visual Support planning. Visual support labels have been displayed in classrooms since the start of term in August, helping with the labelling of important classroom areas and resources.Mrs Rushforth asked the Pupil Council to help with labelling other areas of the school. She gave them a list of possible labels, and asked them to pick their ‘Top Ten’. She made up these labels, and the Pupil Council were responsible for placing them around the school. They had to think carefully about where they put the signs so they could be seen clearly by all ages. The Pupil Council have suggested other labels they think would benefit pupils around the school, for the next phase of our Visual Support plan.

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Children in Need 2016

This year’s Children in Need event is on Friday 18th November.

The Pupil Council have decided that Broughton should participate by wearing something spotty that day, and bring in a donation of £1 towards Children in Need.

That day also happens to be a Parent Drop-in session, so parents are encouraged to wear something spotty for the Drop-in session too!

Lastly, the Pupil Council would also like to organise a ‘Guess the Sweets in the Jar’ competition, running next week, again with proceeds donated to Children in Need. Further details will be given to classes before then about this.

Thanks to our Pupil Council for all their hard work so far this year! There’s lots more hard work to come, and we’ll keep you posted!

 

We had news of two successful achievements at Broughton this week!

Firstly, we received a certificate from the organisers of the Edinburgh Marathon Festival. Broughton was one of the top 5 schools with the most pupils entered into the Junior Races this year, and as a result has been recognised as a ‘Super Active School‘ in recognition of this! Huge congratulatons to all who entered this year, let’s see if we can surpass that in next year’s event!

We also received a certificate of thanks from the local food bank, who benefitted from our recent Harvest Festival collection. We donated an amazing 218.5kg of food, which can supply 11 families with healthy food packs! Huge thanks to all who donated towards this too!

We are very proud of these great achievements! Well done everyone!