Dear Parents and Carers

We are aiming to send information to you as quickly as

possible. We shall do this by sending emails and posting all

the latest information, celebrations, news and updates on our

website. We shall also collate and share all this information in

Seasonal Newsletters in Spring Summer, Autumn and Winter. We hope this

ensures information is passed more quickly to you than the traditional

Monthly Newsletters.

Scots Week has shown we have great love for Scottish poems, songs, dances

and P6 enjoyed a traditional Burns Supper. Please see details of winners in

this Newsletter.

We have taken on board your feedback on Homework and subsequently

updated our Home Learning Policy. The new Policy is in draft form on our

website and I would like to share this with you. We shall continue to work on

choice elements for each year group and we shall update you when they are

complete. We are aiming for implementation of the new policy in Easter 2017.

Thank you for your comments, which helped guide our practice.

I hope the year has started well for all our children, however, if you have any

concerns, queries, worries or suggestions, please let me know and I shall be

happy to help.

Kind regards,

Carol Kyle

Montpelier, Edinburgh, EH10 4NA, 0131 229 1821 www.bruntsfieldprimaryschool.com

ParentPay Update The way you pay for your child’s lunches and school trips will be

changing over the next couple of months as we prepare to introduce

ParentPay. The school will be making necessary preparations in

accordance with Council Guidelines and we hope to bring you more

details soon about the ParentPay rollout before Easter Holidays.

We would also like to thank everyone for their support in keeping to our

new Office hours. The School Office will be open for parent and carer

queries from 8.30-9.15am and from 3.00-3.45pm. Many of the tasks

completed in the Office are of an important and confidential nature and

require a minimum level of interruption to complete them accurately. It

would be very helpful to the staff if parents and carers could continue to

avoid coming to the office with queries outwith these times where

possible.

Improvement Plan Update

As part of our School Improvement Plan,

we have updated our Relationships:

Positive Behaviour and Anti-Bullying

Policies taking account of your feedback,

guidance from Education Scotland City of Edinburgh

Council and Rights Respecting Schools. We have added them to

our website.

Thank you for your comments, which helped guide our practice.

The NHS guidelines specify that, if you catch the winter vomiting bug,

stay at home for at least 48 hours after your symptoms stop.

To find out more about the winter vomiting bug (norovirus) and NHS

advice, visit: www.nhsinform.co.uk/norovirus or call 0800 22 44 88.

P1 Nativity

In December, we had a beautiful P1 Nativity at

Barclay Viewforth Church, a live pantomime in school

and the children had lots of fun, games and Scottish

Country dancing at their end of term parties

Our P1 and P1/2 Nativity Performance at Viewforth

Barclay church made £325.27 in donations from the

parents and Viewforth Barclay Church congregation

donated an additional £132.05 to Edinburgh Sick Kids

hospital.

Very good Parent Consultation Meetings took place on

Tuesday 31 January and Thursday 02 February 2017.

An end of Session Review and report will be

shared in June.

Dates For Your Diary

Class photos this year will be on Thursday

02 March.

This means that World Book Day dress-up

day will be on Friday 03 March.

Congratulations Bruntsfield Primary Pupils.

Whit a braw Scots celebration. We wir aw richt prood o’ ll the

bairns. What fabulous recitations and singing this morning. Well done everyone.

Please see the News and Current Events page of our website for a full list of winners!

Year

Group

Finalists Year Group Winner

P(1)/2 Teddy Viguier

P1A Jennifer Small

P1B Lena Sudworth

P1C Madeline Meador Madeline Meador

P1/(2) Mark McVicar

P2A Marlene Shaeffler Marlene Shaeffler

P2B Lena Keller

P3A Lily-Rose Provan

P3B Maddie Adger-Lawrie Maddie Adger-Lawrie

P3C Eddie Mollineaux

P4A Lev-Jac Hu Lev-Jac Hu

P4B Pip McNicol

P4C Amity Fiddes

P5A Gene Donoghue

P5B Felix Lodge

P5C Alicia Porter Alicia Porter

P6A Innes Tomlinson Innes Tomlinson

P6B Matthew Osmani

P6C Gracie Scullion

P7A Laurel Smith

P7B Chloe Pollock Chloe Pollock

Overall Scots Recitation Winner is

Maddie Adgar-Lawrie P3B

Fencing

Our Fencers were commended in the Evening News in

December for winning Best School in the 18th

Plastic and Foil Fencing Competition again and also

won Best Club.

Here is the write-up from the Evening News: Youngsters from across Edinburgh fought children from across Scotland at Plastic and Foil Fencing’s 18th competition. Edinburgh Napier University hosted over 300 matches at Sighthill campus featuring a dozen primary schools and 11 fencing clubs from three local authorities. Reigning champions Bruntsfield Primary won Best School, and reigning champion club—Fencing is Fun!’s Bruntsfield Club– won Best Club. Zoe Wagstaff was awarded the prestigious Bracewell Trophy for Form and Technique.

Well Done TO OUR

BADMINTON TEAM!

Well done to our Badminton

Team who won the Forrestine

Tournament. We are delighted to

keep the cup for another year and

thank all the children and staff

who have worked so hard to earn

this.

Good Work Netballers!

Bruntsfield Primary won the Edinburgh Fast 5's Netball Tournament on Friday 2 December 2016. They played all the local schools in November in which both our teams won every match (beating South Morningside, St Peter’s, Gillespie’s and Sciennes). They qualified for the finals held at Forester High School and again both our teams won every match! They made the Grande final against each other and so, we were guaranteed victory. We fielded a lot of young players and still managed to be undefeated in every single match ( 17 in all to get to the final). The trophy is in our Display Cabinet and the girls’ certificates were presented at Assembly.

Book Sale & Coffee Morning Success

On Thursday 1 December, Ms Dobie and P6C hosted a ‘Ditch and

Switch’ a book in the dining hall.

Children excitedly ditched, switched and bought books. P6C were great

sales assistants, recommending books to younger children and offering

special deals. They raised a total of £120.80. Well done everyone.

On Friday 2 December, a group of parents organised by Anja Kirchhof

(parent of P4 pupil) organised a Coffee Morning and Book Sale for

parents and carers. There was an amazing range of books available and

some very tempting home baking. There was also an opportunity to

donate or contribute to, a German or French story book for classes. The

event raised £166.05. Thank you everyone for your support.

The children in P6C will select story books from the Modern Language

Website for each class. The attached power point has a display of book

titles for them to choose from.

We look forward to reading the French and German

stories with

volunteer language assistants and parent volunteers in

our classes.

Welcome to our new pupils

1C Megan

5B Moses

5A Pedro

5C Sal

P7 Transition Update

To link with our School Improvement Plan we are planning a cluster Modern Languages transition event for Primary 7 pupils. Details will follow when plans are finalised.

Pupil Work Showcase

P2A

Zari showed us her Maths skills at the P2A Dice

Game!

Pupil Work Showcase

P5A

Max made a bar graph of the frequency of birth-

days in the class and Bailey drew a fantastic

Leopard for art!

Pupil Work Showcase

P6C

Amar wrote a fascinating report about the

Jacobite reunion!

Raising Children With Confidence

Information and Materials for Unit 1: Keep Connected as well as sign up information for the February Raising Children With Confidence course are now available in the Building Resilience section of our school website.

Safer Internet Day Tuesday 07 February 2017 Dear Parents and Carers February 7th 2017 is Safer Internet Day. Safer Internet Day is coordinated by the Insafe network and is celebrated every year across Europe, and in other countries worldwide. In the UK, Safer Internet Day is organised by the UK Safer Internet Centre (www.saferinternetday.org.uk), and this year’s theme is “Be the change: Unite for a better internet.” Online communication is now an integral part of everyday life for many people. It is a world of fun, communication, information, and knowledge. The online world can be one with which many parents and carers are not confident. We hope the top tips below are helpful to support how to help your children stay safe online and just as in real life; there are basic things you can help them understand. Online safety is now being taught as part of the curriculum and there is help for parents and carers too. https://www.saferinternet.org.uk/safer-internet-day/2017 Top tips include:

Teach your children never to give out any personal and private information to people that they do not know online

Ask your children to show you the programs they use online such as Facebook, Twitter or MSN

Never let anyone use your password and never use anyone else's password to access a PC or the Internet

Keep up to date with Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) on Facebook and YouTube for the latest information, videos and chat about how to stay safe online. ThinkUKnow https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/parents/ is a great place to learn more about how to help you, and your family stay safer online. The team at ThinkUKnow offer great advice and resources for young people as well. Safety advice sites & family safety software: http://www.cyberangels.org/docs/cybersafetyguide.pdf http://www.incentiveplus.co.uk/keeping-myself-e-safe-primary-schools http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/topics/stay-safe

Please note that dates are provisional and may occasionally be subject

to change.

ICE ALERT -PENTLAND HILLS REGIONAL PARK Please be aware that during cold spells many of the ponds, lakes and reservoirs around our Natural Heritage sites and the Pentland Hills are frozen or partially frozen and people must avoid venturing out onto the ice.

February

Wednesday, February 1

P2 Starlab

Thursday, February 2

P6s (2 classes) to Glasgow Science

Centre

Monday, February 6

P7 WWII Workshop

Tuesday, February 7

P4 Foodlab

Wednesday, February 8

P6 (one class) to Glasgow Science

Centre

Thursday, February 9

P5s FoodLab

Friday, February 10

School Closes for Half-Term

(normal Friday closure)

Monday 13 - Friday 17 February

Half-Term Holiday

Monday, February 20

All Return

P5C Museum on the Mound

Thursday, February 23

P6 Foodlab

Monday, February 27

P7 Foodlab

Tuesday, February 28

P5B Museum On the Mound

March

Wednesday, March 1

P5A Museum on the Mound

Thursday, March 2

Class Photographs

Friday, March 3

World Book Dress-Up Day

Monday, March 6

P6/7 Cross Country (Meadows)

Wednesday, March 15

P7A Risk Factory

Thursday, March 16

P7B Risk Factory

Monday, March 20

P6/7 Cross Country (Duddingston)

Wednesday, March 29

Swimming Gala

Friday, March 31

End of Spring Term