As we enter the final week before the half term break away from screens, devices and Teams we continue to be impressed with the engagement and quality being shown by our pupils / families during the ‘stay at home’ lockdown.
Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister will provide an update on the Public Health position and in turn the position on Schools being able to return safely, this is planned for early next week.
Key points for today;
Mental Health Week for Children (relevant to us all)
We delivered an assembly to all pupils today (Friday) during period 4 which is recorded here….
Children’s Mental Health Week Assembly
……it is focussed on providing support and strategies on how we can help each other. There will be updates on twitter through the week. As ever we are here to talk things over if this helps.
Home learning Guides for Parents
The information and opinions on media streams and online pages can be overwhelming. We take our professional guidance from the City of Edinburgh Council which pulls the National and Local contexts together. We hope this helps families to plan a proportionate and manageable workload for each week. Two guides are attached to help, the Council guide and the National Parent Forum guide, this is a useful reference document also.
Letter to Parents from Council
Andy Gray, Head of Schools and Chief Education Officer has written to Parents regarding the Feb half term. This is attached.
Parent Council
We had a positive and supportive Parent Council meeting last night which was well attended on Teams. The minutes and updates will be posted on our website in due course. Thanks to Laura Brown, Chair and all those who attended.
SQA
We await announcements next week from the SQA following the update from the First Minister on Tuesday. Latest updates can be found here…
For Pupils https://www.sqa.org.uk/sqa/96546.html
For Parents and Carers https://www.sqa.org.uk/sqa/96547.html
LGBT History Month
We will once again support and champion our value of DIVERSITY across our community of Leith. Keep an eye on our twitter page alongside your Teams sessions with Teachers on updates and ways we can come together to show support.
Online Learning
Feedback has continued to be good in many cases with engagement online, we are doing all we can to try and make this new transition online as positive and impactful as possible within the pandemic challenges we are all working through.
This week, we began to send support emails to Families if their child was not online for a session we expected them at, this will continue for S4-6. We will also be monitoring S1-3.
Mr Stewart has also sent out a very quick questionnaire to help us further plan / develop our online learning. There is a set of questions for Pupils (this was sent to school emails yesterday) and one for Parents – this will be emailed to Parents directly today.
500 Miles latest score!
S6 pupils are off to flying start in the race to be the first House to reach 500 Miles. As it stands
Anderson are on 156 miles
Barton on 241
Cowan on 101
Port are off and running on 54 miles
If you are an S6 parent please encourage your child to join in and log their miles in the spreadsheet in their Team. Please support our S6 in supporting the YPI connection to Joshua Nolan Foundation, The Junction and Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre. If you are able, please visit ParentPay and donate £1, or more, to 500 Miles and help our S6 to help those charities which help us.
Take on board the points made in the Mental Health Assembly, try to find things to be grateful for and do things you like this weekend.
Well done from all at Leith Academy.
