A few members of our Eco committee went along to the Great Scottish Grow Off today to have a look at all the displays including our own.  We did really well and the ‘Terrific Tollcross Tea Party’ was awarded silver! Fantastic effort everyone, thank you!
We had lots of fun learning about flight and testing our O Wing Flyers today.
Thank you to Phyllis Stephen from the Edinburgh Reporter for this wonderful video documenting our Comenius Project with Colegio Joaquin Blume in Madrid.
Our Spanish visitors visited classes today to share learning and to help us with our Spanish . Everyone is having a great time, learning songs, sharing information and making new friends.
We all had a great time at our School Sports Day in the Meadows today. Everyone participated and worked well together, our Spanish visitors really enjoyed getting to know everyone and had a great first day at Tollcross Primary !
We are very excited at Tollcross Primary ! Next week our friends from Colegio Joaquin Blume in Madrid will be visiting us. This will be a great opportunity for everyone to practise their Spanish and make new friends. We have many exciting events planned and we hope our visitors will have a great week with us at Tollcross. We are looking forward to welcoming the group of 25 pupils and their teachers to our school. We will update our blog with news throughout next week.
OoVoo is a high quality video chat application similar to Facetime or Skype. It allows people to connect with up to 12 friends at one time and video chat or have a voice call. You can download it on an iPad, iTouch, iPhone, Android phone, etc. And you must be 13 years old to set up an account, which doesnât slow anyone down who can subtract 13 years from 2015.
What are the concerns for your child using ooVoo? As with all social media, the main concern is who can search out your child easily. The easier it is to find the child, the faster a predator will find them, start talking to them and find a way to connect with them without the child realizing what is happening. The second concern is the way in which ooVoo is being used. Young children (pre-teen) find this app through their peers or older siblings. Itâs Internet-based and often used at home in the YP or childâs bedroom. It has been the case that whilst talking with friends an adult has entered the group chat.
How do you manage your childâs ooVoo account?
1. Always know your childâs password. This will allow you to ensure that they are using ooVoo safely.
2. Make sure that the privacy settings are properly set up. Without using the privacy settings, your child can be contacted by anyone at anytime and anyone can see the profile of your child. (I have my daughterâs set to âNobodyâ so that only people who know her ooVoo ID can contact her).
3. You can review the history of your childâs account. You will be able to see who they are chatting and messaging with. Ensure that you know all of these people and are comfortable with it. Note that your child can erase the history.
4. If your child receives an unwanted friend request, ignore it AND check the box to Also block this person from contacting me again.
5. If your child experiences a more serious encounter with an adult contact CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection) Command https://www.ceop.police.uk/
6. With young children (pre-teen) You can frequently review your childâs friends to ensure that you know them all.
7. Remind your child to always log out when they are finished using ooVoo, especially if another personâs device is being used.
8. Learn how to use the product! If your child knows that you are involved and understand the technology they are using, they will not feel free to do whatever they please because âMum doesnât have a clue how this works!â
ooVoo is not necessarily bad. Like most social media apps, there are some great uses for teens. For example, working on a group project would be a great use of ooVoo, given the ability to have multiple users on the same video chat session. However, the dangers come when children and young people use them in unproductive ways and when the privacy settings are not set tightly. This is where our job as parents is so critical. This is where if you drop the ball you could end up dealing with a lot more than an unwanted friend request.
Thank you.
  We would like everyone  to wear something blue to school on Friday ( 22/5/15) and bring a small donation â if just 4 people bring 50p each, that is enough for one metre of pipeline to help WaterAid supply clean fresh water to those who desperately need it.
The girls were entered in the Sciennes festival for the p4/5 and p6/7 teams – there are 3 group stages with 4 teams in each group – to qualify for the final you need to win your group but you also need to be one of the two best group winners – winning your group isn’t enough – if you are the 3rd best winner you go into the 3rd 4th place play of with the best runner up. Like Scotland Tollcross/Bun sgoil taobh na Pairce have never been out of the group stages and never been in the final or the play offs. But this year we drew 0-0 with a strong James Gilliepie’s team with some great save from Alana in goal – next game we won 1-0 against Pentland with a great goal from Myriam – to have any chance of getting into the play offs or the final we needed to beat Craiglockhart and we did 1-0 with a great goal from Niamh – great defending from Alanna and Niamh and brilliant midfield play from Sade, Niamh and Issy – Vaila (who is in p3) played all over the park and nearly scored – we got to the final where we lost 2-0 to a very strong Sciennes – team – but who cares our best ever result. The p6/7 team of Katie, Amèlie, Eilidh, Georgia, Lily, and Mollaidh did really well losing 2 games 2-0 and drawing 0-0 in their last game – they did brilliantly as they only had 6 players for two of the games well done to all the girls you made the school proud.
Tollcross Primary School 