Our staff, pupils and parent helpers all took part in a West End Ramble towards the end of last term.  This was very well supported and all sponsorship went to a local charity, Keiran's Legacy. 

At the end of last term our P4 class enjoyed a visit to a local business, Johnstons of Elgin. 

We had a fantastic turn out for our School Fayre this year.  It was an extra special one to mark our 150th Anniversary, with lots of support from the local community.  We had stalls from lots of local vendors as well as parents and pupils.  Primary 6 organised their own stall which was a big hit with their fellow pupils. It was lovely to see so many members of our school and the wider community supporting us. 

P4 enjoyed learning some sign language with former West End teacher Mrs Affleck.
They learned lots of signs and phrases so if you see a P4, see if they can share something they have learned!

Here is a quick round up of what the Health and Wellbeing group have got up to this year.
The aim of the group was to promote health and wellbeing and to get voices from P1 through to P7.
We have created some lovely displays to show children how to be safe/be seen, to show how we are doing with recording travel tracker and to encourage active journeys, and our latest one celebrated neurodiversity.
We created a subgroup of WOW Ambassadors who make sure classes do their Travel Tracker recordings, promoted Walk toSchool Week, and who help organise the monthly travel tracker badges.
Our last session for this year was on the 1st May and we ended our sessions by gathering everyone's thoughts on what we had achieved and what they enjoyed. These have been added to our display. We then had some fresh air and time to play, to help our health and wellbeing!!
Thank you to all the children who have been part of our group. We appreciate your the hard work and ideas.
Ms Chater and Mrs Moore

On the afternoon of the 27th April, the P6’s and P7’s took charge of the whole school with ‘Play Leaders’.  It was a wonderful afternoon with these children leading the learning and presenting, demonstrating and then running a huge range of games.
The Play Leaders have now organised a timetable of these games for breaktimes so that children, who wish to, can join in.  It is fantastic seeing the children taking on these leadership roles.  Thank you to Active Schools for training us.

What an amazing team!

A huge congratulations and thank you to the West End runners who represented us so well at Gordon Castle on 21st March.

Everyone was incredible with a fantastic attitude with some stand out performances as well!

Harry came 5th in the P6/7 boys!
Chloe came 1st in the P6/7 girls!
Cameron came for 4th in the P4/5 boys race!
And in the P4/5 girls race we had the best team performance that Mr Greene has ever seen:
1st Eliza
2nd Cora 
3rd Cherry

Well done team West End!!!

P6 were our first group of lunchtime volunteers on 19th March. They did brilliantly clearing weeds and turning over the soil in preparation for planting.
It is P5’s turn next!
All keen helpers will have an opportunity to go down to help at some point next term. 

As part of Science week Primary 5, 6 and 7 enjoyed a range of stem tasks. They had fun with short burst activities which were making a marble run, building card houses of different levels ( winner was 4 levels) and investigating bone structure of birds and how strong they are. The children were engaged and hard working - well done !!

On Wednesday 18th February a team from P5 and P6 headed to UHI Moray to learn about Floor Curling and compete against other schools.  We all had great fun learning new skills in the morning and then we spent the afternoon competing against all the other schools. Our team did really well and, with all their new skills, won the tournament. Well done to all that took part and represented the school at Floor Curling.

The Community Group have been working on ways to help everyone feel happy and included in the playground.
We are working on 3 things we think will make a difference.
1. Making everyone aware of our “Friendship Stop”
2. Clearing out the shelter to bring back our “Outdoor Library”
3. Making everyone aware of “Quiet Zones” in our playground.
Each class should have a poster to remind children they can go there if they need a friend.
More information to follow about the outdoor library and quiet zones. 
Thank you
The Community Group 

Well done to everyone who took part and congratulations to the sucessful ones who reached the leader board.

On Friday afternoon the Rights Respecting Group learned about World Book Day.

WBD focuses on fostering a love of reading for pleasure, on Friday we paired up older children with younger children to chose a book from our school library and read a book together.

When we came back together as a group we looked at the articles that are linked to World Book Day:-

Key articles and themes for World Book Day:
Article 17 (Information): Children have the right to reliable, understandable information, including books.

Article 29 (Education): Education should develop personality, talents, and abilities.

Article 31 (Culture/Leisure): Children have the right to relax, play, and take part in creative, cultural activities.

On Thursday each class will will take part in activities to celebrate World Book Day and children are encouraged to bring their favourite book to read for pleasure.

Kind regards
Rights Respecting Group

The Health and Wellbeing group enjoyed a visit from Roanna Trerise who works for the charity Living Streets. She came to talk to us about making active journeys to school and how we can improve our mental and physical health by getting out in the fresh air. She then worked with a focus group who volunteered to be WOW Ambassadors. Their role will include being responsible for travel tracker recording and planning class or school activities to get everyone moving.
We also found out about the competition that has opened to design senses themed travel tracker badges for next year so the rest of the pupil group started their design entries. The competition is open to all pupils.

We all enjoyed listening to our school community perform Scottish poems and songs.  I am sure you will enjoy listening to them on Class Dojo.  There were lots of confident indivduals who all performed really well.  Congratulations to all the children who stood up in front of the school and well done to you all for learning a Scottish poem or song.

We hope you all had a lovely Christmas and have enjoyed a nice break with family and friends.  What a strange start it has been to the new term!  With all the bad weather and poor conditions the school had to be closed for 3 days. Although the snow caused disruption it created an opportunity for some beautiful photos.  Please enjoy the ones of the school.

The Health and Wellbeing pupil group worked hard to create a corridor display about active travel to school and being safe and seen in the winter months.
We now have a leader board for active journeys which we record on Travel Tracker each day. If the children make enough active journeys they get a badge at the end of the month too.

M and M Productions came to school on Thursday to entertain us with their production of Cinderella. The show was thoroughly enjoyed by all the audience and a big shout out to Mrs Badenoch and Mrs Long who had a dance off with Cinderella's Ugly Step Sisters.

What a wonderful turnout we had for our 2 Halloween Discos last Thursday after school.  Please enjoy looking at the photos taken during the discos.  Sorry for the quality of the photos taken in the lower lighting.  

This week for Maths week Primary 2 took part in a daily estimation challenge where they had to guess the number of items in the jar. This led to great discussions around the sense of number, understanding quantities and sizes. The children also used skills like problem solving, logical reasoning and communication skills.