18 Apr 2008 - APRIL NEWS LETTER

City of Edinburgh

Dalmeny School

 

Summer Term 2008 Newsletter

April 17^th

                                 

Staffing.

Mrs Carolyn Caldwell presently working for the next three weeks as Teacher in P1. Mrs Murray will be undergoing Hospital treatment for this period before returning to work in Mid May. Mrs Caldwell comes to us with high recommendations and we hope you will make her feel welcome. Miss Gill continues to teach P2 until end of term at least. Mrs Scott will be returning in August for three days a week as class teacher. Miss Catlow and Miss Stewart complete their so far very successful probationary teacher training at the end of this term.

 

Forth River Estuary - Charity Raft Race.

For ELEVEN consecutive years Dalmeny School has entered a team! For four years in a row we have won!  Mr Berry and parents take part! This year there will be both a ladies team and gent’s team. The raft race will be on Sunday June 1^st 1 pm, held at the pier outside Hawes Inn car park.

On that Sunday Afternoon Art Prizes will be awarded to local schools. Dalmeny has won lots of prizes in the past and we have entered children’s work again this year so do go along and see the display of local children’s art for yourselves.

Mr Meachem’s task is to raise the entry fee £100 for the raft races by having wet sponges thrown at him at the May Fair. He is looking forward to experiencing your support!!!

 

May Fair. This look to be a great affair once again with a host of activities planned. Bouncy Castle, Beat the Goalie, Bacon Rolls, Stalls, Baking, Bottle Raffle, Photographs, Games, Plants and Donation Raffle!  A note will be coming out from the Parent Forum Committee – we will be looking for donations of bottles (any bottles! Wine, Sauce, Shampoo etc for the giant - bottle tombola.

 

Pupil Reports.

These will be sent out on Thursday 5^th June. Please make use of the feedback form to make comments! There should be no surprises on these sheets. Instead the reports celebrate your children’s successes and indicate where they need to develop.

 

 

School Uniform.

Mrs Dalland (P1 and P3) will be starting a second hand uniform shop for the school during this term. Using the website she will list what sizes and types of good quality 2^nd hand uniform she has in stock and will sell it at around 1/3 price with money going to school funds. Old unwanted items of uniform (cleaned) can now be sent into the school for Mrs Dalland.

 

 

Fund raising:

There have traditionally been two fundraising events in the school each year, Christmas Fair and Summer Fair. We intend to shift to one fundraising event at Christmas and after this year, make the summer fair a social fun event which combines with the open evening. This could be the last Fund Raising Summer Fair!

We need your support to continue the very high level of activity in the school:

e.g:       Large and continuing purchases of library study books.

Technology stock (An enormous amount … equivalent to ½ our school budget invested last year)

            Playground Toys – lots of these, no bored children at playtimes.

Display – We have just invested in unique portraits of Famous Modern (and fairly modern) Scots.

Storage: All our equipment is stored so that it can be used easily.

IT – each smartboard bulb costs £100s and lasts only a few thousand hours.

Trips: We get our children out into Edinburgh as often as possible and we often subsidize these trips.

Project Equipment: Always looking to increase our stock of useful material to support each stage.

Health: First Aid bag supplies, intercom, portable cold packs…

Forest School – all the supplies needed to make this a success.

Nursery equipment – not only lots of this, but always upgraded and new materials tried out.

Musical instruments for every child chosen to receive tuition.

Printing inks for many mini publications, Reading Records to Health Targets.

Materials for all our special needs.

 

Our council and government give us money sufficient for all activities, but your fundraising money goes to enhance, improve and extend this curriculum.

We will be writing to each family with a suggestion that our parents consider making a small voluntary monthly donation to the school by means of a standing order. Our intention is to replace one of the two major fundraising events by a social event.

When you receive an invitation to make such a donation it cannot be stressed enough that this will be voluntary and confidential.

This suggestion has been discussed by the Parent Forum Committee who will be happy to discuss it further.

 

Classes for next session:

P1/2      P2/3      P3/4       P5/6      &   P6/7 

each class around 22 pupils.

Maximum class size allowed is 25 pupils.  This puts the school at about 90% occupancy. We are in the 1/3 of Edinburgh Primary Schools growing in size.

 

School Budget: From local media you may already know that each Edinburgh school is required this financial year to make a saving of 1.5% of its overall budget to help the council meet its financial target. This school will manage that saving, which is equivalent to more than our entire pupil equipment budget for a year of £7000, by taking money from unusual savings made last year when we were given a probationary teacher. There will be no reduction to spending on pupils’ equipment this session.

 

 

Open Evening:

This marks a new departure for the school. In June we intend to hold an open evening to celebrate all sorts of things that happen here, that you as parents may hear about but never get to see!

Art will be on display from every class! There will be a continual science workshop run by pupils for parents. There will be scribes ready who will write letters to your dictation (handwritten). A ‘Knex’ engineering competition for Senior Pupils will take place. (We will be inviting local engineers to decide on the challenge which will be kept secret until the day.) We hope to have more events demonstrating the range of activities in the school.  All this will take place with the backing of a display from the Kids Rock Group who run the Wednesday after school club.

Date to be announced.

 

Events & Diary

Monday 21^st  April Edinburgh Primary Schools Closed

Tuesday 22^nd  Susanne Maier (Teacher from Switzerland) begins her three week visit.

Monday 5^th May Edinburgh Primary Schools Closed

Saturday 10^th May   School Summer Fair. 10 to 12

 

Monday 19^th May Edinburgh Primary Schools Closed

Tuesday 20^th  May is an Edinburgh Schools’ In Service Day - School Closed for pupils

Monday 26^th May   New Intake for August… Nursery to P1 Induction begins.

Wednesday 28^th May  M & M Productions visit Dalmeny ‘ Treasure Island’

Thursday 29^th  May Kinetic Theatre Visit Dalmeny.

Thursday 5^th June  Teddy Bears’ Picnic for next session’s P1s and present P1s and P2s.

Thursday 5^th June  Pupil Reports out today

Wednesday 11^th June   Olympic Sports Afternoon for P1s to P7s ends 3.15

Friday 13^th June  Nursery Sports day.

Tuesday 24^th June  All classes meet their new teachers.

Wednesday 25^th June last pm Nursery Group

Thursday 26^th June  Sports Prizes and P1 and P2 prizes am. All P1, P2 and sports winners parents invited.

Thursday 26^th June  ‘Rose Day’  Prize giving in Dalmeny Church 1.30 pm Parents of Leavers & Prize winners invited.

Friday 27^th June   School closes 12 noon.

Monday 18^th August In-Service Day for Teachers

Tuesday 19^th August  In-Service Day for Teachers

Wednesday 20^th August School Opens for Pupils

 

Nursery additional dates:

Wed 30^th April   am group to St John’s Hospital

Monday 8^th May  Art starts for am group with our art specialist Mrs Smith.

Tuesday 27^th May  Nursery am group Visit Childrens’ Festival Theatre show.

Thursday 29^th May  Nursery pm group Visit Childrens’ Festival Theatre show.

Wednesday 25^th June  Last day for pm group.

Thursday 26^th June last day for am group + swimming.

Thursday 21^st August  Nursery re-opens for am group and home visits commence for pm group.

 

 

 

 

                                                                             

 

Earthship News

 

We are planning to try to build Scotland’s Largest Earthship (A building made entirely from Recycled or sustainable natural materials) within the school grounds.

Our next step is to canvas your opinion as parents and that of the local community.

Following that, we will approach council for various permissions and then seek funding.

We hope that you will support this endeavour by thinking of uses the wider school community can make of a building around 50m by 20m.

 

School Development

Over the next few weeks staff in the school will be asked to look carefully at every aspect of life here and see how we can continue to develop. It has been an exciting year with Modern Languages now taught at every stage from P1 to P7. Our Forest School project has begun. We are taking Health into every part of our school life. Our National Assessments will be reaching remarkable levels. We have developed Support for Learning a long way towards the ideal set for us just a couple of years ago. We have begun to develop ourselves as an‘engineering’ school. We are beginning to teach Public Speaking.

Where now? What do you the parents hope for? Questionnaires devised by P5/6/7 will be sent out this term

 

Website improvement

Two of our parents, Mrs Penpraze and Mrs Hobbs are taking on a hugely exciting development of the school website. Within a few weeks this should have changed and be much more useful to all parents and prospective parents. At present Miss Catlow is also helping out with her class P3/4 who are responsible for many of the new pictures.

 

HELP

The office phone is forever ringing and our administrator is snowed under. Please try to ring before 10 am or after 2 pm. In an emergency ring the school’s emergency numbers:              07796 607405   mornings

07833 555709 afternoons.

 

 

 

Gambia connection

Sam Ramsay our Nursery Nurse in P3/4 has made two successful trips to Gambia making a link with Bajana Yiriwa Nursery school there. At the June Open Evening there will be a DVD Powerpoint set of slides shown of her trip.

We hope to keep this connection! At some point each year we will be looking to hold a sponsored event similar to this year’s sponsored skip. We are also looking for a connection – a business perhaps or a charity which would consider helping sponsor a member of staff to travel out to Gambia to carry materials and funds. Does anyone have any ideas?

 

 

 

Nursery Page

It’s time to up-date you on what is happening in Nursery in the next few weeks. At the moment we are discussing “Hospitals” with a Hospital area in Nursery, reference books, stories and role play.  In connection with this we have arranged an Outing with the older children in the A.M. Group to

St. John’s Hospital in Livingston to see round the Children’s Ward, Plaster Room and the X-ray Department.  This will take place on Wednesday

30^th April leaving at 8.55 a.m. so please be at Nursery by 8.45 a.m. and we will return at a later time of 11.45 a.m. approximately.   This will depend on how busy the various areas of the Hospital are and how long we have to wait for an area to be available. We need some Parent Helpers so do sign on the Notice in the Cloakroom if you would like to come.  We will travel by hired bus with the Nursery Fund paying half of the cost so each child will be asked to pay £3.50.

 

Mrs Bowers continues to work in Nursery on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings and Mr Harper from Monday to Thursday in the morning. 

Mrs McKeever works Monday to Thursday in the afternoons.  The afternoon Group are enjoying Gym with Mrs Gowans on a Wednesday afternoon and the morning Group will soon be having 5 weekly lessons with Mrs Smith

the school Art Teacher.  We also have Mrs Hobbs (a School Volunteer) to work for an hour in Nursery on a Wednesday morning – at the moment some of the children are enjoying the challenge of more advanced sewing!!!

 

 

 

Swimming for the morning group will continue up to and including the last day of Nursery.  What wonderful progress the children have made!!!

 

Both Groups will have the opportunity to attend the Edinburgh Children’s Festival to see a performance named “Parachutists – On the Art of Falling”.

The morning group will go on Tuesday, 27^th May, and the afternoon group

on Thursday 29^th May.  More details about that later.

 

 

Mrs Binnington   Julie Hoskins