Two New Wider Achievers and a Frequent Flyer…Dancer!

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This young lady is proudly showing her participation certificate from Glentanar Community Football Club. She attends the girls’ coaching sessions one evening during the week and participates in matches at the weekend. Her Glentanar team play against teams from other clubs in the area.

“I enjoy playing football and work hard for my coach, Paul. I enjoy the coaching sessions and have made some new friends. I really enjoy playing against other teams.

Well done! It’s clear that you enjoy your football. Keep working hard at it!

Our second wider achiever, is a young man who came to show us the certificate which he was awarded at Scouts. He attended a course on safety and passed. He told us that he had to spot hazards and try to make things safe. He very quickly spotted several trip hazards in my office! Our young safety instructor told us we needed to get things sorted quickly…..just to be on the safe side.

This responsible young citizen told us, “I really enjoyed the course and I can look for safety problems and put things right.”

Well done, young man! I think we need to get you to help us with the risk assessments we have to do in school. What a very responsible course to go on!

This young lady is a ‘weel kent face’ on our Wider Achiever Boards.

She continues to be extremely successful in her dancing competitions and gained a first place at the most recent competition, We, clearly, have quite a talented young dancer and we hope she continues to make excellent progress in her out of school activity and we’ll be delighted to hear of her further successes!

UNCRC / RRSA

Article 29 – Education must develop every child’s personality, talents and abilities to the full…..

Article 31 – Every child has the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of cultural and artistic activities.

 

M&M Productions Present Aladdin at Riverbank

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M&M Productions entertained the P1-7 classes at Riverbank with a spectacular version of the ever popular pantomime, Aladdin.

As always the pantomime included a great story, song and dance and the favourite…audience participation.

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Everyone enjoyed the cheering, booing and singalongs. Miss Watson, one of our EYPs, Mr Flanagan and one of our Primary 1 pupils joined Aladdin’s genie for some great dancing which I have loaded as a video.

Fun at Aladdin

You can view some of the audience participation by clicking on the link above.

UNCRC / RRSA

Article 31 – Every child has the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of cultural and artistic activities.

Riverbank Open Morning & Afternoon

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Today, Friday 15 November 2019, was Riverbank’s first open morning and afternoon of the session.

The theme for the day was Visible Learning and, in particular, the characters of disposition were being introduced and drawn as well as the children understanding what these characters were all about.

I saw many Resilient Rachels, Curious Claires, Creative Callums, Independent Igors, Ambitious Ahmeds and Cooperative Carlys. The characters are all linked to the Learning Pit and about the dispositions we need to get through life.

I have created a slideshow with some photographs taken during the open morning and afternoon sessions.

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It was very pleasing to see so many parents in school at both the morning and afternoon sessions finding out about Visible Learning.

 

UNCRC / RRSA

Article 28 – Every child has the right to an education…..

 

Not A Good Week For Lates!

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I reported, earlier this week, about our concern over the rising number of lates we have been having each week. There had been quite a rise in the number of lates since we returned to school following the October holidays.

Being late can have a hugely negative effect on our pupils. Many don’t like coming in late, but we would rather they were in school than not in school, even if they are late and, as I reported in the previous post, a few minutes here and there soon adds up to what may be a lot of missed learning time.

Sadly, I have to report that our lates have risen again, this week. With 101 lates and 31 of those being on Thursday morning, I am wondering what happened on Wednesday evening that so many of our young people were late for school on Thursday morning.

We appreciate that the mornings are dark and the weather has been miserable but it is very important that children get to school on time. We would ask all parents and carers to do everything within their power to ensure that our pupils arrive in school on time!

UNCRC / RRSA

Article 3 – The best interests of the child must be a top priority in all things that affect children.

Article 28 – Every child has the right to an education…..

Bulb Planting

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Despite being cancelled on a couple of occasions due to the awful weather we’ve had recently, Mrs Smith’s class managed to grab a dry bit of a day to do some bulb planting.

The bulbs were donated by Aberdeen City Council and Eileen Grassick from the Tillydrone Community Council visited the school to help with the planting.

There were, literally, thousands of bulbs and Ms Grassick has left the surplus with us so that the Outdoor Learning, Playground & Gardening Group can do further planting in the school grounds.

A big thank you to the suppliers of the bulbs and a special thank you to the planters.

UNCRC / RRSA

Article 24 – Governments must work to provide…..a clean environment….

Article 31 – Every child has the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of cultural and artistic activities.

 

Barnardo’s Calendar Winners

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Emily explains about the Barnardo’s Calendar competition.

Our two Barnardo’s workers, Emily and Roxanne, were able to help some of our pupils with entries into the Barnardo’s 2020 calendar.

Children were invited to prepare a piece of art work linked to the seasons of the year. From all of the entries Riverbank came up with two winners.

Emily photographed with our two winners and a copy of the Barnardo’s Calendar for 2020.

One of the the girls has had her design chosen for the month of July, having chosen to work on the season of summer. The second young lady had designed a four seasons entry which, although not assigned to a month of the year, is shown inside the calendar in the introduction.

The winners each received a copy of the calendar, nice and early for 2020, along with an Amazon voucher each. There were several runners-up and they will, soon, be receiving a small gift as a thank you for their participation.

We are very proud of our artists and would like to thank Emily and Roxanne for their support with the calendar project.

 

UNCRC / RRSA

Article 29 – Education must develop every child’s personality, talents and abilities to the full…..

A Sad Number of Lates!

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Getting into school on time is something we work hard on at Riverbank.

It’s really important that children get into school but it is equally important that they arrive in school on time.

The ‘all arriving together’ and the process of meeting up with friends, chatting, having the register taken and the general socialisation that goes on at the start of the school day, is important in children settling in for their school day.

If they are so late that they miss out on teaching time, that can be quite detrimental to the learning of the child.

Ten minutes late each day is fifty minutes a week….nearly an hour of lost time. It soon adds up to, maybe, a missed morning or, even, a missed day.

Over the last term and the beginning of this one, we have been keeping a careful note of the number of lates each day. The Authority record lates and it is part of the attendance procedure which may involve our Home School Liaison Officer, Mrs Thomson.

At the bottom of this post, I have placed the graphs for the lates. What is very worrying is the huge increase in lates since we have returned after the October holidays. The dark mornings don’t help but we would ask everyone to make an extra special effort to make it in on time!

Should any parent look for advice in ensuring their child makes it into school on time, please, do not hesitate to contact us.

As you can see the first week back we had 89 lates and 90 in the second week. Disappointing statistics.

These are the stats for last term. With the odd exception, there is a rising trend. Again, disappointing.

 

UNCRC / RRSA

Article 3 – The best interests of the child must be a top priority in all things that affect children.

Article 28 – Every child has the right to an education…..

 

Scottish Kids Show

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We have received 2 Golden Tickets for the Scottish Kids Show which is taking place at P&J Live on Saturday 30 November and Sunday 1 December.

There are lots of activities for the children and adults to participate in. Tickets, however, are quite expensive at £12.50 each with children under 2 going free. A family ticket – 2 adults and 2 children – costs £40. Car park charges will, also, be in place.

Now the good news! We have 2 Golden Tickets to give away as prizes in the Kids Show colouring competition. All entries should be in by Wednesday 20 November.

Winners will be notified soon after and the winning families will be met and greeted on arrival at the event.

UNCRC / RRSA

Article 31 – Every child has the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of cultural and artistic activities.

P2F Set Out on a BIG Build Competition Journey!

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Mr Flanagan has sent me the following report on work that P2F are carrying out supported by Robertson’s Construction. This sounds like a really exciting project!

P2F are lucky to be taking part in the Big Build Competition 2019, which is running throughout the country, to gather materials, plan our design and complete the construction of a local or imaginary building chosen by the pupils of P2F, using recycled materials.

Before the October holidays, a class discussion was undertaken and it was decided that we would base our building off of a castle, of which there are many in the local area (and a very famous one in Harry Potter too!).

Malcolm, Kelly and Dave the Bear from Robertson’s Construction came in to help us start our task, which was to decide what to base our castle on. We discussed 4 different castles which were:

  • Cragievar Castle (A pink castle)
  • Hogwarts
  • Dunnotar Castle
  • Castle Fraser

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With pupil voice and ownership over the project being extremely important (UNCRC article 12 I have the right to be listened to, and taken seriously.) we held a class vote on which castle we would base our design on with the winner being Hogwarts winning with 9 votes and Cragievar following with 8 votes.

We then started to sketch and design our castles with lots of deep thought and ideas coming from the class. They really enjoyed being engaged and designing their own castle!

Finally, Malcolm and Kelly took the designs to be inspected by industry professionals at Robertson’s worksites who are going to vote on for their favourite three, with the final vote coming from the class on which drawing to base our construction on!

UNCRC / RRSA

Article 28 – Every child has the right to an education…..

Article 29 – Education must develop every child’s personality, talents and abilities to the full…..

Article 12 – Every child has the right to have a say in all matters affecting them, and to have their views to be taken seriously.

Article 13 – Every child must be free to say what they think and to seek and receive all kinds of information, as long as it is within the law.