A Day with the Fire Fighters

Our Primary 7 pupils recently spent the day with our local fire fighters.  They brought uniforms to the school and kitted everyone out in protective clothing.  The children then saw the work that the firemen did as they looked after, maintained and used the equipment.  They were trained up by them and worked well in teams to carry out our tasks.  All the other classes had a chance to look at the fire engine during too and many had a shot of hosing the playground.  It's now spotlessly clean!  Everyone had a fabulous day and the teachers seemed to enjoy having the firemen in the school that day too!  Bridget our cook even made some freshly-baked, hot apple pie for their tea break.  Our thanks go the fire fighters for coming out to visit us and for the great job they do keeping us safe.

CPR Training

The pupils of Primary 7 recently took part in CPR training with Mrs. Cleary. They also learned about updated procedures regarding health and safety & practised their CPR techniques on our first aid dummies.

Supporting FairTrade

Four of our pupils went along to Freeland Church in Bridge of Weir to share the good work which is being done in our school with regards to Fairtrade . Lots of stalls were at the coffee morning and we joined together to show that people in Bridge of Weir and Houston take FairTrade very seriously. We spoke to lots of villagers about our work and we were lucky enough to receive a visit from 2 Palestinian olive farmers who are helped by FairTrade (Um Shehadeh and Vivien Sansour).   Martin Rhodes, Director of the Scottish FairTrade Forum also spoke to us about Scotland becoming a FairTrade nation.  We will be back out in uniform next Saturday when Houston village hosts the next FairTrade coffee morning so come along and join us if you're out and about. Click "play" on our slideshow to find out more about what we did today.

Here are some of our FairTrade achievements to date:
- We raise awareness of Fairtrade in our school and in our families
- We formed an Enterprise group to promote FairTrade in our school
- We made a pitch to the "Dragon's Den" for money to set up our Fairtrade Cafe
- We were awarded the full amount we asked for and purchased a trolley & stock
- This Fairtrade trolley runs 2 or 3 times every week for pupils and staff
- We also run a full Fairtrade Coffee morning once each term which is open to our families, parishioners and members of our local community. Our next school coffee morning is on 30th March so come along and join us if you can
- We won Scottish Power's "Best Budding Business" in December 2010 for our Fairtrade Enterprise project. We were awarded £1000 for our school
- We have won Young Enterprise Awards for the last 2 years
- We were given an award by COSLA, in conjunction with Renfrewshire Council DTS
- We have won an Enterprising School Award in conjunction with the Enterprise Academy
- Many staff are now using FairTrade products in the staffroom
- Our dinner hall uses Fairtrade products wherever possible
- We have been nominated for the Scottish Executives Enterprise awards
- We work closely with LTS and DTS in delivering Enterprise education
- We link with outside agencies to support our Fairtrade work
- We are learning more and more about FairTrade as we continue with our work

Cross Country Running Tournament

Forty of our pupils from Primary 6 and Primary 7 took part in the recent Crosscountry tournament, organised by Renfrewshire Council. Pupils from secondary schools ran in the morning and the primary school section was in the afternoon. We went to Linwood Sports Centre and started the course from the stadium. All pupils who took part ran well and showed great determination and stamina. Have a look at our slideshow to see who represented us. Perhaps some of these are our future Scottish athletes?