A couple of months ago we were invited to attend Oakgrove Primary’s Halloween community assembly. It was a brilliant morning- all the children and teachers were in fancy dress and after the primary six class “Thriller” dance we had the song in our heads for the rest of the day. Community assemblies are a chance for families to come into the school, find out what the children are doing in school and to recognise the achievements of the children.
After the assembly we were able to speak to the head teacher, Jane Cerexhe about why it started. “The community assembly was really an attempt to engage with families in the wider community. We had a newsletter that was going out monthly but I was quite concerned that not all families were able to access it. We thought if we did a community assembly monthly we could have things in the community assembly that were also features of the newsletter. . . We just feel getting parents in over the door is a good starting point, and welcomed with a smile and seeing their children happy and engaged and seeing the teachers engaged with the children is important. The wonderful thing about today is you can see all the staff be part of it as well it’s not just my idea, it’s what we do here.
We give out a lot of certificates linked to the school values, and this has a very high profile at these community assemblies. Sometimes it is difficult for children who are arriving say in Scotland, new to the Scottish education system to be able to access the curriculum because English is in the early stages of acquisition but we are looking at the whole child. We celebrate all the traditional achievements in literacy and numeracy but we are also looking at wellbeing things how children are getting on with one another. There was a really nice award handed out today for a child who was looking after another child who was new to the school and new to English. Actually a year ago he was that child, struggling with a new culture and new language, so that’s a really lovely opportunity to recognise that.”
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