Pupils from the two schools working together on one of the maths circle activities.

Thanks to the five P7 pupils from Tollcross PS, along with their Depute Head Teacher Mrs Fiona Chadwick, who came to Preston Street earlier this week for a Young Leaders in Learning visit. They were hosted by five of our Young Leaders in Learning: Liya, Lily, Zuhaib, Saif and Ammana.

The Young Leaders in Learning visits allow small groups of senior pupils to visit each other’s schools and find out how different schools operate. The Young Leaders are encouraged to share good practice from their own school; to identify areas of good practice in the other school; and to think about how they can use what they have learned during the visit to improve their own school. So far this year, we have organised Young Leader visits with James Gillespie’s PS and Tollcross PS, with different P7s being chosen to participate each time. We hope to organise further visits this year to enable as many of our young people as possible to have this opportunity.

One of the dialogue groups.

The focus of this week’s visit was on maths and numeracy. The Tollcross Young Leaders joined in with one of our P7 maths classes, participating in a ‘maths circles’ activity with P7B and Ms Craig. They also spoke to young people from P5, P6 and P7 about a number of areas related to maths, including our lunchtime Sumdog club, our before school maths club, and ways in which we learn within the classroom.

Our Young Leaders will be making a reciprocal visit to Tollcross in two weeks’ time. There, we will observe the ‘Tollcross Counts’ programme, which is an initiative which they use to promote maths and numeracy across the whole school. We look forward to getting some good ideas which can be implemented in due course at Preston Street.