Jakub Kautsky	Primary 1a	Jakub has been working very hard at home and has made great progress in phonics and writing. Well done Jakub!
Harris Pendelton	Primary 1b	Harris has really shone this week and has been working hard learning new sounds and writing sentences with our tricky words. He has also been a super scientist and has enjoyed taking part in our ice experiment! Thank you for trying your best everyday.
Kenia	Primary 2a	Kenia has been working really hard during this week. She has improved her numeracy skills and now she is able to do some sums.  She has also developed her creativity skills when writing her comic! I am delighted with her progress 🙂
Jack Hawkins	Primary 2b	Jack has very much enjoyed our whole school theme of STEM Week and has been working hard at home with all of his learning this week.
Kieran	Primary 3a	Kieran has been working hard on his independent reading at home. Well done Kieran!
Angus	Primary 3b	Angus has been a wonderful home learner. He has enjoyed lots of different creative activities, and has really tried his best with reading and writing. Well done you Angus!
Stanley	Primary 4a	Stanley has been working very hard. He has been learning new skills and using them independently. He has structured his work and completed his tasks with great organisation and accuracy. Keep up the good work !
Vivienne Trawinski	Primary 4b	Vivienne has been a responsible and hard-working home learner. This week Vivienne applied her multiplication tables skills to create super division word problems. She then shared them at our class meeting for us to solve. Keep up the fantastic work Vivienne!
Liam Gunn	Primary 5	Liam has worked hard to complete all his numeracy & literacy tasks this week with Mrs Kelly. Keep up the good work Liam!
Lewis Granger	Primary 6a	For a fabulous Scots poem about Leith and for his enthusiasm and participation on our daily lessons, well done Lewis!
Edgar	Primary 6b	Edgar has been working hard over the last few weeks submitting all the work required of him daily.  He regularly goes above and beyond, challenging himself and trying most of the tasks from the home learning grid. He communicates well and shows enthusiasm and positivity towards his home learning.  Well done Edgar! Keep up the good work 🙂
Holly Reid	Primary 7a	For his effort in completing her home learning tasks. She demonstrated her confidence and understanding with the work she has submitted, including an excellent poem using onomatopoeia! Well done!
Christina	Primary 7b	Christina completes every task to a high standard and is always willing to help others. Well done!
Keirin Cattell	School Hub Bubble	Keirin has set an excellent example to others. He has been able to complete his tasks online and join in with lesson in the hub. Well done!

Dear Parents/Carers,

HEADTEACHER’S FEBRUARY HALF-TERM UPDATE

I hope that this letter finds you in good health and spirits. 

Although it has been short, we are already at the half-way point in our spring term. Next week, schools will be on their half term break. Learning, whether online or in the school hub, will resume on Tuesday 16th February.

Hard Work of Staff

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the Leith Primary School staff for all their hard work and resilience over the last month. They have thrown themselves in at the deep end, becoming as much online presenters they have been class teachers. I hope that I don’t lose any to CBeebies over the coming weeks! Thank you to staff for manning the school hub, supporting individual pupils online and over the phone and offering to go the extra mile when needed. Thanks also to Angie Brack and Hugh Stuart who have been our resident IT Helpline for many of you. What they don’t know about Microsoft Teams now is not worth knowing!

Hard Work of Parents/Carers & Pupils

Thanks of course must go to all of our amazing Leith Primary parents and carers. We have been overwhelmed with how well the majority of our pupils have been engaging with learning at home and that can only be with the support and encouragement of you. An enormous well done to all of our wonderful Leith Primary pupils who have demonstrated responsibility and perseverance in spades by adapting to learning in this very different way. We know it’s not easy so thank you.

Food Support 

My gratitude also goes to the Leith Primary Parent Council (LPPC) who have very generously agreed to fund our school subscription to The Cyrenians who will provide us with food every Wednesday along with the Hibs Community Outreach Team so we can support the large number of families who indicated that this was a need within our school community. Thank you as well to two very generous members of the public who wanted to support our families at this time with very welcome donations of both money and food. We will share more information about our food store shortly.

We await to hear further plans about schools returning from the Scottish First Minister in today’s statement in parliament. Parents and carers will be informed as soon as plans for a return have been confirmed with the City of Edinburgh council.

Online Survey Response

Thank you to everyone who completed our Snap Surveys on home learning. Some of the feedback was really helpful and will inform our planning for after the February break.

Question Theme	Parents/Carers (129)	Pupils (74)
How are pupils coping emotionally with lockdown?	66% well/very well 17% neutral	50% good/very good43% Ok
How are pupils coping with learning at home?	63% well/very well19% neutral	60% quite well/very well35% Ok
What is helping pupils to cope with lockdown?	Daily Teams calls/videos with the class teacherInteraction with friends either online or in-person outsideSpending more time with family	Daily Teams calls/videos with the class teacherChatting to friendsSpending more time with familyGoing outside for a walk
What is helping pupils to manage home learning?	Seeing the class teacher every dayThe routine of daily tasks or a daily class check inBeing able to ask the teacher questions	Support from mum/dadSeeing my teacher every dayAsking my teacher questions when I am stuck/unsureHaving an iPad to work on
What more can school do to support pupils and families?	More time with the teacher onlineSupport with ITWorksheets	More help with TeamsShorter videosTeams meetings with the class

Families Online

Find the new edition of the online magazine Families Edinburgh here.

Support for Families

 Please check out our updated Support and Information page on the school website with a huge range of supports and contact details: https://leithprimary.org.uk/coronavirus-info/

Practical Pupil Supports 

We have stationary, learning supports, keyboards, toys and clothes available 

at the main front entrance. Please take what you need.

Thank you again for your continuing support both of your children 

and of school at this challenging time.  Keep persevering!

Yours sincerely,

Fiona Craig

Headteacher

Leith Primary School

Thank you to all of our hard working pupils this week and an especially big thank you for your super-duper hardworking mums, dads and carers! You’re doing a great job 🙂

Holly Jeffrey	Primary 1a	Holly has been finding fun ways to practise phonics and writing at home, including inventing her own games and making a birthday card for a classmate this week!
Benjamin White	Primary 1b	Benji has been working so hard this week and has enjoyed learning lots of our scots words! He has also been working hard learning to read and write with our new sounds. Keep up the brilliant work Benji!
Mihir	Primary 2a	He has been working really hard everyday with persistance and effort. His writing has highly improved, now it is really clean, neat and pleaseant to read. This can be appreciated in his story of Tom and the Giant! Congratulations.
Alexa	Primary 3a	Alexa drew and coloured in a lovely picture of a butterfly after listening to Ms Harris’ story time this week. Well done Alexa!
Fraser	Primary 3b	Fraser has done some super pieces of writing at home! He has really tried his best to use descriptive words and different sentence openers in story writing, and he has created some fabulous poems.
Marianna	Primary 4a	Marianna has been working very hard online. She has persevered when things were tricky and has been doing excellent self-reflections on her work and progress. Keep up the good work 🙂
Lucy Zdrojewski	Primary 4b	Lucy for perseverance and responsibility. Lucy has been working really well on continuing her learning at home finding extra skills to practise and contributing in our class meetings. Fantastic job Lucy!
Steven Martin	Primary 5	Steven struggled with his equivalent fractions task on Wednesday, however with a little bit of online guidance and a lot of perseverance he went back and corrected the whole thing accurately!
Fraser Shaw	Primary 6a	Fraser has worked so hard from day 1. Completing his daily tasks and the tasks on his grid. He has been on every live call and is always full of enthusiasm!
Elisha	Primary 6b	Elisha has been trying hard since home learning began.  She wrote some fantastic Scots poems this week and has participated well in our live call reading these poems with confidence.
James Weir	Primary 7a	James did really well with his literacy task this week. He listened to a chapter of  the ‘Nowhere Emporium’ and used it to draw a detailed pictures which he surrounded with descriptive words and phrases. He then used this to write a setting paragraph which painted a really fantastic picture of where the story was set. Well done !
Subhan	Primary 7b	Subhan has been working really well at home, completing and uploading all of his tasks. Well done!
Amy Gunn	School Hub Bubble	Amy works hard on her independent tasks, she joins in with group activities and is always helpful and polite to adults helping in school. Thank you Amy!
Louis Livingstone	Support for Learning	Louis has been working very hard at home, he completes all of his assignments and puts lots of effort into doing them. He is also very enthusiastic and motivated in our live group lessons. Keep up the good work, Louis!

Voting has opened! Please take a moment to vote for Leith Primary Parent Council’s bid for money to support the purchase of breakfast and snack food which, until now, staff have been buying themselves for pupils. Thank you for your support! http://www.leithchooses.net/eithchooses-2020-2021/projects#16

Click on any part of Ms Craig’s office to explore music, stories, videos and more connected to our new Building Resilience focus: Respect Yourself. Parents and Carers can check out information just for them on the Parents Notice Board in the picture.

Enjoy creating your own assembly!

Izabela Ilie	Primary 1a	Izabela got off to a great start with her home learning. She has been able to show what she has learned by creating her own phonics video to show the sounds she knows! Well done Iza!
Martha Sheen	P1b	For having bundles of enthusiasm with her learning everyday and trying her best to  improve on her personal best. She has been working particularly hard on her letter formation this week and is growing in confidence with it. Well done Martha!
Amelia	P1b	For putting 100% effort into all of her learning this week, particularly with her literacy work. Amelia has been practising her tricky words everyday and has been learning to read sentences independently. Keep up the super work Amelia!
Aleksander Narolski	Primary 2a	Aleksander has been working every day really hard to do all the literacy and numeracy activities. He has had some ups and downs but overall he has been progressing on his learning and his behaviour. He needs to be recognised to realise the importance and postivie things of working hard.
Alfie Anderson	Primary 2b	Alfie has went above and beyond this week with his learning. He has been consistently trying his absolute best at all tasks. He had done particularly well this week with his reading and writing. A huge well done to him!
Seren	Primary 3a	Seren has taken on every activity with enthusiasm and has kept having fun with a smile along the way! Well done Seren!
Leland	Primary 3a	Leland was rightly proud of his work in the school hub  on Monday and Tuesday this week. He did a great job doing the life skills section of his grid performing duties as a waiter in a café. Fantastic Leland!
Amos	Primary 3b	Amos has really persevered with his reading and writing this week.
Ewan Lothian	Primary 4a	Ewan has been engaging really well on Teams. He has done all his set tasks and is challenging himself. He is also quite the expert at Teams. He has learned to use all the features we are using and he has helped others when they were stuck. Well done Ewan you’re doing a fantastic job.
Alistair Sweeney	Primary 5	Great IT skills from the get go.  Has uploaded a huge amount of excellent work and has shown super engagement in our daily lessons and through Teams chat.
Rija Alvi	Primary 6a	Rija has completed lots of fantastic work this week including an experiment where she extracted DNA from a strawberry! She has also been on our daily calls every day and is always willing to un-mute and join in!
Joe	Primary 6b	Joe has been working really hard since home learning has begun. He has put in a lot of effort and completed a lot of the work that has been set asking for help when needed and communicating well on live calls, messaging and submitting assignments. Well done Joe!
Matthew Finlayson	Primary 7a	For his engagement with online learning and his great responses when meeting with his groups online! Well done Matthew!
Judy Ataleeb	Primary 7b	Judy has persevered to research and produce a detailed essay on theories of Creation. Very impressive effort!
Melody	School Hub Bubble	Melody has worked exceptionally hard in school this week to complete all her literacy and maths tasks set by her teacher. In addition she has persevered for two days to construct a very creative marble run from junk modelling. Well done!
Kai Newman	Support for Learning	Kai has been working so hard at the tasks given to him by Mrs Ciechanowicz. He wrote a great story about a shark in the park! He has been practising his sounds and sharing his learning. Keep up the great work, Kai 🙂

Dear Parents, Carers and Friends of Leith Primary,

Happy New Year to all of you!

2021 has already started off as a challenging time for many. The Scottish Government announcement this week about ‘lockdown’ measures means that until at least 1st February, most of our pupils will engage in remote learning from home.

School staff are already very busy planning learning experiences for pupils whilst they are at home and support for families who will find another lockdown challenging.

Understandably, we are experiencing a very high number on emails from parents/carers at the moment. We will be in touch at the end of the week to give you more details about how home learning will work over the next few weeks and how to get support if you need it.

**Please let us know immediately if you have not received this post through email**

Today, childcare started in school for a very small number of pupils who have two parents who meet the criteria for key worker status in categories 1, 2 or 3 and who have no other means of informal childcare with extended family or friends. We have also offered spaces to another very small group of pupils who were known to us and other agencies prior to the lockdown as requiring a very high degree of support or who are Care Experienced.

For the vast majority of pupils, home is where they will be safest however we do not underestimate the challenge this will present many of our families.

We will continue to do our very best to provide as much support as we possibly can during these next few weeks for our pupils and families and will be back in contact soon.

Persevere.

Yours sincerely,

Fiona Craig Head Teacher

School return in January 2021:

All children are on holiday until Monday 11^th January 2021.

All children will resume remote learning from home from Monday 11^th January to Friday 29^th January 2021, unless offered a place in the school hub, if eligible.

We will update you if and when this changes.

Children of Key Workers and vulnerable children

The school will be regarded as a ‘Hub’ for children of Key Workers and vulnerable children to attend from the 6^th to 29th January.  We will operate the school for core hours of 8.50am – 3.15pm (Mon-Thurs) and 8.50am – 12.25pm (Friday).

Vulnerable children will be known already to the school and other agencies such as social work and parents/carers will be contacted by a member of the Senior Leadership Team to be offered a place. 

Key Workers should have established themselves via the Key Worker definition and flow chart and applied for a place by Monday 4th January 2021 as per our communications in December. Currently all eligible key worker places have been confirmed.

If you fit the criteria as a Key Worker (see criteria and flow chart below) and now wish to request a place please email the school office at admin@leith-pri.edin.sch.uk or Contact Us page on the website.

** Please note, if any parent/carer is not a key worker, is working from home or is not at work, the child should remain at home.  Children should only attend school if absolutely necessary and meet the criteria as highlighted in green in the flow chart below. **

School ‘Hub’ operational details

We will operate 4 ‘Bubbles’ of children:

Nursery Bubble: Based in the nursery large room. Enter and exit via the main gate of the nursery.

P1/ P2 Bubble: Based in the nursery small room. Enter and exit via the Nursery main entrance.

P3-P5 Bubble: Based in Room 1 on the first floor. Enter and exit via the Main Door.

P6-P7 Bubble: Based in Room 7. Enter and exit via the Upper Playground Door.

** Please note, we must minimise the staff working in school and the majority of staff will work from home. Staff will work on a rotational shift pattern throughout ‘Lockdown’ and therefore your child may not be supported by their usual Class Teacher or Pupil Support Assistant when at school. **

All ‘bubbles’ will run from: 8.50am – 3.15pm (Mon-Thurs) and 8.50am – 12.25pm (Friday).

All parents / carers will be permitted into the playground to drop off/pick up, but must remain socially distant and wear masks/face coverings at all times. 

Children of eligible key workers should attend the hub only if both parents are at work. If either parent works on a rota or shift basis, their child should remain at home at those times to reduce the overall number of pupils in the hub.

Children should bring a full water bottle, snack, suitable warm clothing and packed lunch if they wish, although a lunch of soup and a sandwich will be provided each day.

From the 11th January children should bring their own laptops/ipads/jotters, etc. for learning at school if they have them. 

Key worker definitions:

Category 1 – Health and Care workers directly supporting COVID-19 response, and associated staff; Health and Care workers supporting life threatening emergency work, as well as critical primary and community care provision; Energy suppliers (small numbers identified as top priority already); staff providing childcare/learning for other category 1 staff.

Category 2 – All other Health and Care workers, and wider public sector workers providing emergency/critical welfare services (for example: fire, police, prisons, social workers), as well as those supporting our Critical National Infrastructure, without whom serious damage to the welfare of the people of Scotland could be caused.

Category 3 – All workers (private, public or third sector) without whom there could be a significant impact on Scotland (but where the response to COVID-19, or the ability to perform essential tasks to keep the country running, would not be severely compromised).

Key worker flowchart: