(Summer Garden) PARTY TIME!

It’s finally here! Tomorrow it’s our Summer Garden Party and after the success of last year’s event, we expect it to be very busy! Thank you so much to the Parent Council who have organised the whole thing which is a huge amount of work. We hope to see lots of you from 12 – 3pm in the playground! Hopefully the weather will be on our side and at least stay dry so we can have more luck than we did on Tuesday. We were very sad to postpone Sports Day and it was especially frustrating that the sun was out by the time the time we should have started rolled round but we had to make a decision at the time based on the information we had and the recommendations of the Ranger Service. However, Sports Day will go ahead next week come rain or shine (unless it’s REALLY rainy) so please get your suncream and your waterproofs and everything in between ready for Tuesday!

Something that wasn’t weather dependent this week was our visit from Catherine Gemmel from the Marine Conservation Society who spoke to us about leatherback turtles. Catherine told us lots of facts about the turtles and taught us how to spot one in the wild. Did you know that the change in climate can affect whether or not male or female turtles are produced? Warmer temperatures produce female turtles, while colder temperatures produce males.

Catherine told us about the dangers leatherback turtles face as a result of plastic pollution and we were shown some sad photographs of some turtles who had mistaken plastic bags for jellyfish. We’re proud that we already do a lot in our school to help reduce the amount of single use plastic reaching landfills and our oceans. The smallest change can make a big difference for our marine life.

P6 and P7 teams also attended the Interscholastics event at George Watson’s College on Monday and did a fantastic job of representing the school. We didn’t make it into any of the finals but everyone had a great time and plenty of fresh air so it was still classed as a successful morning! Thank you to Mr Martin and Mr Hamilton for taking the teams.

Check back next week to read about how the Summer Garden Party and the re-scheduled Sports Day went, as well as an update on P5s John Muir Award, the Pupil Council litter pick (foiled by heavy rain again yesterday, 3rd time lucky), a trip to Gorgie Farm for a lucky few and my first time out on Forest Adventures with Nursery!

Sally Ketchin, Head Teacher

 

When you only popped in for a loaf of bread…

…and end up with 1000 red noses (and forgot the bread). That’s what happened to Mr Hamilton last night when Sainsbury’s staff offered their left over noses to him free of charge and this morning P6 started excitedly ripping into them all, separating noses from boxes and packets. However, as had been hoped for, their mood changed when they realised just how much single use plastic had gone into the production of the noses. Their aim next week is to plan a piece of art, using as much of the plastic and as many noses as possible, to highlight the waste that would otherwise have gone to landfill. The whole activity strengthened P6’s resolve to find an alternative for the next RND campaign.

P6 have also been incredibly busy this week as they prepared for Stockbridge Market this weekend. Please go and support them if you are in the area on Sunday as they sell a range of products that they have made/enhanced/sourced themselves including hand-stitched cards, badges, tote bags and plants. All the funds raised will go towards their P7 camp in October.

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Despite the frantic hive of activity that has been the P6 classroom this week, they still found time to make homemade bread and soup in the Cooking Classroom! (Have any of them had time to go home this week?!)

On Tuesday, I met with Mrs Lansdown who came to visit as part of her new role with Education Scotland. She talked me through the work that she is doing with her team on gender balance in schools and is going to come to talk to the rest of the staff in May about how this can be achieved. Before starting at Abbeyhill, Mrs Lansdown had done a huge amount of work in this area in her previous school so it’s fantastic that through her work with Education Scotland she is now part of spreading the word nationally.

Pupil Council met today and we updated some of our display boards while talking about our plans for next term. As we have a dual school/environmental focus, we are planning to do a ‘2 minute street clean’ (inspired by the #2MinuteBeachClean movement) on Abbey Street as well as drumming up support for some new clubs that the Parent Council hope to start. Watch this space, as well as the Parent Council’s Twitter and Facebook pages for more details.

Next week is the last week of the Spring term and school finishes at the usual time on Friday 5th April before resuming for the summer term on Tuesday 23rd. Before we go though, there is just time for a re-scheduled Parent Council meeting on Wednesday 3rd, P7 have been lucky enough to secure tickets for the dress rehearsal of Matilda on Tuesday, I’m going to Broomhouse Primary on Tuesday as part of the Leading Learning Partnership that all Edinburgh Head Teacher’s work in AND it’s the annual swimming gala at the Commonwealth Pool on Wednesday.

In the meantime, have a lovely weekend and make sure that you visit P6 at Stockbridge Market on Sunday!

Sally Ketchin, Head Teacher

Red Nose fever!

By the end of last week we were red nose, deeley bopper and wristband crazy for Comic Relief. Well done to everyone who took part and helped us to raise a whopping £400 for all the charities who benefit. Thanks also to our local Sainsbury’s who supported us and provided official RND tops for the staff! However, it was interesting to note David Attenborough’s words of warning about the encouragement of single use plastics, especially considering that RND fell on the same day as the second Students for Climate Change protest and next year we will consider whether Abbeyhill will be displaying painted red noses, rather than plastic ones, and donating the full amount to Comic Relief rather than the 50% which is currently received after the production and marketing costs for red noses and other merchandise are removed.

In other Abbeyhill news, we had a staff training session on Monday which was jointly run by both Mr Hamiltons and focussed on the evolving way we need to approach teaching internet safety. Some great new resources are coming out that will help children and adults to see all the opportunities that the virtual world can offer us, as well as the dangers. Just like the real world, it’s important to be able to look around and appreciate the amazing things you might see but also use common sense and have guidance on what to do when things go wrong. We’ll have information displayed for families this week when they come to visit us for Parents’ Evening.

On Thursday I took P4 for the day while Mrs Flowers and Miss Macdonald got stuck into the unenviable task of auditing our Maths resources. Mrs Flowers got very excited about all the things she found that had been hidden at the backs of the cupboards and by the end of the day they had planned an exciting Maths based family event for May so watch out for that when next term’s ‘Save the Date’ sheet comes out!

On Friday, we had a bumper awards assembly with certificates for everyone who took part in the fantastic Talent Show on 7th March as well as the introduction of the ‘Over and Above’ Award. A maximum of two children per class were nominated for this and had to have gone over and above in one or all of our school rules; Ready, Respectful, Responsible. With the grand prize of being allowed to sit on the chairs rather than the mats, it was all to play for and I think a lot of people will be upping their game this week! Well done to our first OAO winners. The Pupil Council also told everyone about how they had worked with Graham Construction to build a Bug Hotel in the wildlife garden. They explained how this had come about, told us about the building process and gave their top tips for keeping it (and all the bugs who come to stay) safe.

This week, as well as Parents’ Evening, we have trips to the Collective Gallery, ongoing engagement with professional artists in school as part of our Artists-In-Residence programme in preparation for the Colony of Artists in September, filiming will start for the ‘Power of Yet’ video, it’s World Poetry Day on Thursday, a familiar face will be popping in to advise me on how can begin to address gender balance at Abbeyhill (Mrs Lansdown!) and we have a special guest from Changeworks who is going to talk to us about our ongoing drive to reduce plastics. Phew! Check our next blog post to see how it all went!

Sally Ketchin, Head Teacher

STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mummies!

It’s Science, Technology, Engineering and MATHS really but P4 had such a great time at the Ancient Egyptians exhibit at the National Museum of Scotland yesterday that it had to be included in the title of the blog! They’ve been waiting for a long time for it and it brought learning to life following their detailed project earlier in the session. They were full of excitement when they got back from the museum with quite a few children saying that they wanted to go back to the museum this weekend for a second look!

Primary 6 and 7 became STEM detectives (hence our blog title!) on Thursday in a day of activities involving code breaking, rocket building and car designing.  Each activity involved group work, creativity and excellent communication skills. It was great to see the Primary 6s and 7s working so well together throughout the day. Highlights included launching rockets in the playground and using eggs as crash test dummies. This was a thoroughly enjoyable day with the children representing our school very well. Watch this space for a STEM themed event for P4 and P5 very soon!

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If you follow the Pupil Council on Twitter @AbbeyhillPupilC then you may have spotted our post about Abbeyhill Decides, inspired by Leith Decides. Simon from Parent Council came along to help Pupil Council decide how to spend the money that the PC had raised at last month’s Burns Supper. They decided to split the money into 3 and give £120 to the Early, 1st and 2nd levels. Our P6 and P7 reps decided to spend the money on art and technology materials while our P2 and P3 reps are going to order some learning board games and puzzles to enhance their problem solving skills. P6 and P7 are going to help their Early Level buddies decide what to spend their money on so keep an eye on the blog for more information!

Fianlly, don’t forget to keep up to date with our Artists-in-Residence programme and read all about about our two new artists-in-residence. Zu has just started her comic book residency with P5 and Joanna is our environmental artist in residence in P1. Joanna will be working with our plastic straws in a new underwater project re: the plastic pollution in our oceans.

We also hope to bring Joanna’s highly celebrated plastic cups constellation light and sound installation to Abbeyhill; perhaps you recognise it if you saw her recent exhibition of this installation at Summerhall?

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Tickets are now on sale for the Parent Council Talent Show and it looks as though it’s going to be a brilliant event so make sure you get your.

Next week, Pupil Council reps are building a bug hotel with Graham Construction and P6 are going to Drummond CHS for breakfast and a treasure hunt so check back next week to see how everyone got on!

Sally Ketchin, Head Teacher

Drowning in plastic!

(Yes, we did have lots of fun creating this photo!)

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know that we were inspired as a school to start challenging the amount of plastic straws that we were getting through on a daily basis following our ‘Make a Difference’ assembly topic back in September. You may remember that it all started when P4 brought a small pot of straws to our sharing assembly and told everyone that the way that they had decided to make a difference  was for the 6 children who took milk each day to pour it out into a cup, rather than use the cartons and straws. They then collected the straws in the pot (below). Those 6 straws per day added up surprisingly quickly and we were all shocked by how many they had collected in such a small space of time, from so few children.

This is what 6 straws per day over just a few weeks looks like

We did some calculations and worked out that we could save arund 1,600 straws by the end of October (5 weeks) if we all followed P4’s example. So, each child who took milk was provided with a cup, cup washeruppers* were duly appointed in each class and we all began the challenge enthusiasically. By the end of the 5 weeks, we had in fact collected 2,312 straws (as we had forgotten to factor lunchtime milk into the original calculation) and we vowed not to go back to our old ways. It took a few weeks after that but I am delighted to announce that Abbeyhill is MAKING A DIFFERENCE to the environment as we have now got an agreement with the dairy who supply our milk (Muller) that they will give us large 6 pint jugs of milk, exactly as you would buy at the supermarket, instead of the little cartons. In the time it took to make that arrangement, the straws kept piling up and we had over 4,000 which helped us create our ‘Drowning in Plastic’ photo at the top of the page. Don’t worry, they are certainly not going to landfill as one of our artists-in-residence has grand plans for them. Come and see them as part of the Colony of Artists festival in September 2019!

We only have 70 children across the school who take milk every day and look how much plastic we’re stopping getting to landfill.  If you’re an Edinburgh school being supplied by Muller, why don’t you take up the Abbeyhill challenge and see if you can make a difference too?

Sally Ketchin, Head Teacher

*Mrs Ketchin’s made up word of the day