HT Weekly Update: Week-ending Friday 30th August 2024

Friday 30th August 2024

This concise weekly HT Update is generally published every Friday afternoon.   It’s a simple opportunity for you to also feedback/ask questions via the link at the bottom of each Update.  Feedback received, where appropriate, will be responded to and published on Monday on the school website.  

Key messages from this week  

Calendar:  Significant events next week;  Our Battlefields Trip staff and students are away all next week, on Monday and Tuesday Tree of Knowledge will work with our S2 Students;  on Thursday we have our first Parent Council Meeting of the session, see below.

Staffing:   We are aiming to interview for our Home School Practitioner, shared post with Burnbrae PS,  next Friday.  

Parent Council 1:   Our first Parent Council meeting of the session will be held on Thursday 5th September beginning at 7.00pm.  Please see our website post for details, click here.

School Uniform:  Our Senior Leadership Team and Student Support have been ‘picking up’ students not complying with our dress code expectations at the front door each morning.  We are down to a core 40-50 students who are persistently not uniform compliant.  This is approximately 3% of our school roll.  The support and challenge of these students is ongoing. The next stage, beginning next week, of our dress code interventions will be visiting classes. This allows us to keep the profile of our expectations high and gives us good information when working with families.  Please rest assured that all our actions in this area are consistent with our school values; creativity, effort, kindness and respect.  Our aim is to work positively with our students and their parents/carers to secure our dress code expectations. 

Google Guardian: In the coming weeks we will be enabling a new feature of Google Classroom. This feature, ‘Google Guardian’, will provide parents and carers with a weekly automated report of their child’s due assignments and class notices. To begin with, we will trial this new feature with our S4 year group only. This testing should allow us to fix any issues and support staff with any training requirements. We expect to begin this in September/October with S4 and, all going well, move to include other year groups after Christmas.

NHS Flu Vaccination – Whole School: Students have this week been issued with their Flu Vaccination Consent forms.  All students were reminded today to collect their form before they left if they had not received it in class.  Consent forms should be completed and returned to Student Reception by Monday 2nd September.  Our Flu Vaccinations are scheduled to take place early December, however the nursing team requires the forms in advance to allow them to triage these.

Breakfast Club:  Lasswade High School has a Breakfast Club that runs every morning from 8.00am in Room 205.  Students are welcome and can pop in and grab something to eat/drink before they start their day.  Our Breakfast Club is open to everyone within the school and there is no cost for students.  Any questions or dietary requirements please speak to Ross MacPherson in Creative Learning.

Glasgow Motivation and Wellbeing Profile Survey: Next week all students will be asked to complete the Glasgow Motivation and Wellbeing Profile in PSEd. This is a 20 item questionnaire that explores motivation and sense of wellbeing in the learning context. It encourages young people to reflect on views of themselves and their emotions and gives them an opportunity to reflect on their feelings and current experiences. It also encourages them to consider how they can increase their own determination, motivation and sense of wellbeing. 

If any students are absent next week, they will be expected to complete the ‘Lasswade Wellbeing Survey September 2024’ assignment on their PSE google classroom by Friday 13th September.  This allows as many students as possible to have their opportunity to share their experiences.  As a result it improves our ability to respond and/or adapt our practices as required.  

Seesaw:  We are pleased to announce that this school session we will continue to use Seesaw as a digital learning tool within our Complex Needs Provision/Pod. Seesaw allows our students to complete activities, share learning and receive feedback from teachers. It also provides a platform for parents and carers to stay connected with their child’s progress and see updates from the classroom.   We are encouraging our ‘Pod Families’ to be involved by looking at some useful links:

• Getting Started with Seesaw for Families
• Navigating Seesaw
• Engaging with your child’s learning
• Adding multiple children to a family account

Miss Lotockyj is our lead and is looking forward to working with students and families to make Seesaw a valuable part of the learning experience for 2024 – 2025. If you do not already have Seesaw set up, please contact Miss Lotockyj.  

S2 Tree of Knowledge Workshops:  On Monday 2nd and Tuesday 3rd September our S2 students will complete a 2 period session in the Assembly Hall. For your information Tree of Knowledge has a great website. Please visit it regarding the content of the workshop. Our S2 will follow the Planet of the Chimps course, click here.

  

If you have any feedback/questions relating to this update please submit them via the link below

Feedback here

Take Care

Campbell Hornell,  Head Teacher

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