A Chocolate Treat!

Primary 5/4 were over the moon to welcome in Mr Maule, chef and owner of the award-winning french restaurant Chardon D'Or which can be found at 176 West Regent Street, Glasgow.  Mr Maule is better known to our pupils as "Eilidh and Bryony's Dad" and P5/4 invited them into their class as part of their topic on "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". 

Pupils learned more about a variety of cooking skills, how to plate and serve food to restaurant standard and about the benefits of using certain utensils.  With regards to enterprise and the world of business they also learned how using the correct utensils can minimise waste which can have a knock-on effect on the finances of any business.  Pupils were extremely impressed to hear that Mr Maule worked at Le Gavroche with Michel Roux for 11 years and they were treated to a cookery demo and tasting session which they thoroughly enjoyed.  In line with their "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" topic, Mr Maule made them a fine chocolate mousse served with pistachio cream.  He also gave them an insight into how the same basic dish can be adapted to suit summer or winter menus.  As you can see from below the pupils declared the event a resounding success.  We pass on their thanks to Mr Maule for taking time out of his busy schedule to share his knowledge and experiences.

Carol Singing

Many of our children went to the "Piazza Shopping Centre" in Paisley to help raise funds for charity by carol singing for shoppers.  They went with Mrs Cleary and were commended on their singing by staff who were impressed by how much they raised in their 30 minute slot.  Well done to all who attended!

Working with Wales

The pupils of Primary 3 class made Christmas cards and decorations and sent them to their friends in Wales. They go to Ysgol Heulfan and we looked at where they go to school using Google Earth. On Friday we were really excited when a box arrived in the post for our class.  The pupils in Wales made us all a Christmas card each and a Rudolph decoration each so we took them home to hang them on our Christmas trees.  Thank you and Nadolig Llawen!

Loose Change for SCIAF

Our House Captains and Vice Captains have been leading the school in collecting all our small loose change during the season of Advent.  Our aim was to make the school badge from the loose change.  The House Captains were delighted by the overwhelming response and they received a whole basketful of loose change which is now being counted, before being sent to SCIAF.  Thanks to all for your support.

Christmas Show

Thursday saw the last performance of our Christmas Show, "The Real Meaning of Christmas".  The show was written and produced by Mrs Gavin during music and drama time.  For the second year running the pupils enjoyed taking part in a whole school production for their parents and members of the community.  The second performance was followed by our Community Fairtrade Cafe which was extremely busy.  Christmas hampers were given to members of the community and everyone enjoyed catching up as well as chatting about the school show.  After posting photos of our Primary 1 pupils a few days ago, we now have some more photos of many of the cast members who took part. Particular thanks go to the Pupil Council members who met and greeted all our visitors over the 3 days, issued programmes, sold raffle tickets and performed the lucky programme draw at the end.  Well done also to Jack Chambers who ran the music for the show single-handed and to all our back stage helpers.  We hope you enjoy our slideshow.

Primary 1 Nativity 2011

Our Primary 1 nativity was incorporated into a whole school show this year again. All pupils in the school took part however here are our newest members of the school, our Primary 1 class. They have now performed two shows with their third and final show tomorrow so they are now fully-fledged actors! Here they are straight after their second performance today. Well done to you all - you were fabulous!

Litter Pickers On Duty

Here are the first two members of our litter picking team. Litter in the playground will be monitored for the next 4 weeks and as it's Primary 3's class ECO action, they will monitor the results and feedback to the rest of the school in the hope our litter will improve further. Each pupil has chosen 2 slots in which to litter pick with a partner. Pupils have been trying out the new equipment and proudly wearing their new "litter monitor" badges. Our first 4 pairs of pupils have already fedback to the whole school at assembly last Friday. They are keeping a chart in class to check that the litter levels are reducing.

It's Showtime!

Pupils from Primary 1 to Primary 4 were entertained last week by the crew from M & M Productions. They thoroughly enjoyed a fabulous performance of "Jack & the Beanstalk" and the hall was filled with boos and cheers as the show progressed. This was a fitting end to Primary 1's "Jim & the Beanstalk" topic, a new slant to a traditional story.

Pupils Present Art Gallery

Recently our pupils presented their work to their parents and members of the local community. Every pupil in the school worked on a piece of art which was sent off and framed. A full display of the work was then shown in our school gallery and the pictures sold to fundraise for events in the school.

Second Level Curriculum Evening

We concluded our series of Curriculum Evenings last week when we held our evening for parents of pupils working at second level within Curriculum for Excellence. An update on Curriculum for Excellence was given by Mrs Maher, followed by Mrs Nicholson's presentation and activity on "Big Writing" which is now used across the whole school. Our parents devised a very creative story with many connectives, not to mention several splashes of humour!
Mrs Cleary, Mrs McKay and Mr Keenan then walked parents through active learning tasks in maths to show them the skills progression expected within the same outcome at second level. The evening was rounded off by a presentation by Mr Johnston and Dr Phelps from St Benedict's High School, linking into third level and beyond. Thanks to all those who attended & we hope you found the evening informative.

Gryffe Camera Club Visit School

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Primary 3 Cake and Candy

P3 are currently working on their Roald Dahl topic. To celebrate Roald Dahl Day today they planned and ran their very own Cake and Candy sale. Each pair of pupils ran their own "Cake Shop" and were responsible for presenting their cakes, pricing them and selling to the rest of the school. As their current maths topic is "money", they got the chance to try out their learning with a real life task. They were ably supported by our new Pupil Council reps. Primary 3 wore their special hats representing characters from the novel they are reading together, "James and the Giant Peach". They chose this book as it's 50 years old this year. Thanks to all who made donations of cakes and who came along to buy from them today. £133.50 was raised and P3 will be sending half away to charity and they will be using the other half to buy some additional language resources for their class.

Technology Club

This is a new afterschool club we have started this session and the number of pupils signing up for this is encouraging as it is now full. Each week we will be exploring different areas of technology and the pupils can return to their favourites or explore some areas of technology not yet covered in class. This week there was a competitive streak in the air as some of our members reviewed the wii game "Super Mario at the Olympics". They were asked to think how younger classes may use this software within their maths but as you can see from the picture the urge to win took over and the competition heated up. On the other side of the room some pupils were exploring all the components of our Purple Mash software whilst others were "morphing" their faces with photo editing software, after a demonstration by Matthew. Next on the cards is how to blog so keep an eye out for our Techno Team on the Pupil blog shortly.

Parent Council A.G.M.

The Parent Council held their annual A.G.M on Friday evening and received an excellent turn out. A full update was given on the work of the Parent Council this year and new members were sought to replace outgoing members. Each class gave a presentation on their work last year and the Travel Plan group, Pupil Council and Eco Committee also contributed. The Parent Council heavily invested in new computers for the school last session and the children are currently enjoying the benefits of this, across all areas of the curriculum. Well done to all our presenters and thank you to all parents who have helped support St. Fillan's over the last 12 months.

House Captains Elected

Each of our four "houses" (Ogilvie, Ninian, Columba and Queen Margaret) met with Mrs Maher and carried out their elections for their House Captain (from P7) and Vice Captain (from P6). The voting was very close for some houses and the results were announced at our last assembly. Here are our new House Captains in the back row, with their Vice Captains at the front. They will meet regularly with Mrs Maher and will begin their duties shortly. Well done on being elected!

Horticultural Flower Show

Many of our pupils had entries in the recent Bridge Of Weir Horticultural Society Annual Flower Show. Here are the prizewinners from the Craft section. Overall winner for the older children's classes was Romy Morris. Sue Whittaker, the current Chairperson called at the school to present Romy with a beautiful silver cup which dates back to 1959. Well done to all who entered.

New Pupil Council Voted In

Our new Pupil Council has now been elected for the coming year. As usual we have 2 members from each of the 4 mid/upper school classes. They will also represent the infants. Well done to all who were elected as there was an increased number of pupils standing for election this year and competition was stiff. Some classes had to run a second vote due to the close results of the initial round of voting. The Pupil Council glow group is open to all pupils and staff so feel free to leave any ideas and comments there for the Pupil Council to pick up.

Olympic Torch Arrives in Houston!

In preparation for the Olympic Games coming to the UK in 2012, we launched our Olympics Topic in June 2011.  It began immediately after our annual Sport's Day and also coincided with National School Sport's Week in Scotland. 

We are working together on this topic as a whole school with each class following a different line of study, relevant to our age and interests.  When we share our learning we learn lots about the Olympics.  We have been discussing the Olympic values (Respect & Excellence) and also the Paralympic values (Courage, Determination, Inspiration & Equality).  We have also been researching various countries who will compete, as well as the different sporting events which take place.

We are going to continue to study the Olympics as part of our ongoing work in Health & Wellbeing.  The whole school will be working on learning more about the Olympics and Paralympics and also exercising more during every term this year, in the run up to the main event.  Have a look at our Opening Ceremony below.

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Community Artists

Our P7 pupils worked with an artist (Meredith) to design artwork for the local underpass area.  They did this along with P7 pupils in Houston P.S.  They chose several themes and spent weeks researching, drawing & painting their ideas until they were happy with their final designs.  They then spent time down at the underpasses painting their designs onto the walls.  As you can see from the slideshow, they had fun whilst helping to brighten up the local community.  The pupils identified these areas as putting children off walking to school and the project was funded by the Scottish Government through the Sustran's "Tackling the School Run" grant.  We hope you like it and it stays graffiti-free!

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Keeping Houston Tidy!

In term 4 Mrs Cleary and the boys and girls from Primary 3 headed down to the local shops in Houston to clear the litter which had been dropped.  They decided to go to the underpass area as they thought this had most litter.  As you can see they managed to find plenty and worked well together as a team.  Many thanks to the Mums who came along to help supervise and collect litter with us.  Thankfully the sun shone which made it easier!

BBC Junior Bake-Off Competition

We have just been notified that the above competition is now accepting entries.  If you're aged between 9 and 12 years and wish to find out more, please click here to go to the website for more details.

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Travel Planning School of the Year 2011

Each year Renfrewshire Council launches the Travel Plan Awards.  We are very proud to announce that for the second year running we are Renfrewshire Council's Travel Planning School of the Year 2011.  We returned the silver cup to Renfrewshire Council not so long ago to allow it to be polished up and ready to be presented to this year's winners.  Little did we think we'd be putting it back on our trophy shelf again the following week! 

In addition to winning the above title we also took first prize in a further category this year.  The school won the Best Walking Initiative category too & brought home another silver cup to the school as a result.  Our congratulations go to the pupils and parents of the Travel Plan Committee who are able guided by our Principal Teacher, Mrs Kaney.  They have led the school this year in many exciting initiatives which have made us think more about how we travel to school each day.  Well done to every school pupil who made a change to their school travel this year - no matter how big or small that may have been.  If any pupil, staff member, parent or member of the community has any ideas on how we can improve further, we'd love to hear from you . 

Health & Wellbeing

P1/2 are currently looking at health & wellbeing. We will be exploring different types of food and what food keeps us healthy. Today we were speaking about our favourite fruit and vegatables (and the many different ways we can eat them). We know that they are grown for us to eat and we are exploring what plants need to grow. We went out to the school garden and planted lettuces. They should be ready to harvest in about 4 or 5 weeks.

Here we are recording our learning in our big floorbook.

P7 Trip

Our P7 pupils left today on their 3 day residential trip to Lockerbie Manor in the borders. They have a wide range of activities planned and the staff left armed with cameras and flipcams, as well as the usual sick bags for the bus journey!  P7 were VERY excited this morning when they all arrived in school with their suitcases and sleeping bags. 

Our Primary 1 pupils and some of Primary 2 pupils headed outdoors to wave off their "Big Buddies" as their bus left. We look forward to seeing all their photos when they return. We have heard they arrived safely in Lockerbie.

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.