St. Joseph’s Consult on the Local Hermitage Park Development

St Josephs PS Herm Park 1Representatives of the St Joseph’s Pupil Council and Eco Committee from P4, 5 & 6 went on a fact finding trip to the Victoria Halls last week.

Ambitious plans for the redevelopment of Hermitage Park were unveiled and the St Joseph’s pupils wanted to make sure that the interests of children just like them were heard.

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Dalmally enjoys BBC live drawing lesson!

Dalmally PS big draw 1Primary three to seven took part in a LIVE drawing lesson as part of the BBC’s Big Painting Challenge. Illustrator Nick Sharratt, famous for his illustrations in the Tracy Beaker books, gave us lots of hints and tips for drawing characters with different facial expressions. He showed us how changing a character’s eyebrows and mouth can totally change their expression. Everyone really enjoyed the session, gained lots of new skills and built their confidence with drawing characters.

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Bowmore Primary Paints the Town Red!

Bowmore big paint 2At Bowmore Primary, we all took up the Big Painting Challenge thanks to the BBC! From Pre 5 to P7, we all followed carefully the live art lesson on Wednesday 25th February. It was a great opportunity and we created some spectacular illustrations alongside Tracey Beaker illustrator, Nick Sharratt.

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Scottish Kodu Kup 2015

mc-koduThe Kodu Kup Scotland competition launches today. This competition follows the same format as the UK Kodu competition. The closing date for both competitions is May 29th 2015.

This year students not only have to create a great game, but develop a business plan for a game franchise and create and produce a least one single piece of merchandise that promotes their game. Schools may wish to link this to current entrepreneurial or business projects already taking place.

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News from Strone Primary School

Strone PS Skills testStrone Primary enjoy the Marine Education Day
The P5-7 class attended the informative and creative Marine Education Day organised by the GRAB Trust in Dunoon. They enjoyed a variety of activities, having the opportunity to listen to sealife stories, find out about sharks and seabirds and even make their own jellyfish and marine mobiles.

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Achaleven’s Choc-tastic trip!

Chocolate Shop Workshop 016_webIt’s Fairtrade fortnight and Achaleven Primary are celebrating a very important product this year – cocoa. What better way to research than a trip to The Oban Chocolate Company! There was no shortage of staff volunteers for this trip where the pupils were able to learn where chocolate comes from, see what a cocoa pod looks like, as well as getting to sample the different types of chocolate available. They were also able to see the chocolatiers in action in the factory through the viewing window. The pupils then unleashed their decorating talents with their own chocolate designs of lollipops and truffles. The wonderful Chocolate Company staff then helped them box up their wares to take home. Continue reading Achaleven’s Choc-tastic trip!

St. Joseph’s Helps Local Community Foodbank

St Joseph's Foodbank 1The SVDP (St. Vincent de Paul) representatives of St. Joseph’s Parish made a visit to St. Joseph’s School last term to ask if we could help advertise the new local Independent Voluntary Foodbank which had opened recently at the Red Cross Hall, 116 East Princes Street, Helensburgh. They informed us that no referral was necessary for anyone to benefit from this new initiative in the town and could we please let parents know of its existence via our next school newsletter.

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Tackling the Tour

Rhu PS tour de france 1Primary 6 pupils at Rhu took on a mighty challenge as they cycled their way around France, without even leaving the comfort of the classroom.
While Tour de France riders battle it out in the mountains for the much-coveted maillot jaune, the pedal-powered pupils each took a spin on a road bike, firmly secured to a turbo trainer, while scenes from last year’s race played on the whiteboard to bring the atmosphere to life. With a cycle computer attached to the rear wheel, the keen class were able to see how far they had travelled and how fast they were pedalling. Continue reading Tackling the Tour

FREE TWILIGHT CPD (during March): Using film to bring texts to life for primary and secondary

Into Film Logo Red small.jpg copy5,4,3,2,1….5 shots, 4 cast/crew, 3 objects, 2 minutes long, 1 area of story focus. These sessions are entertaining and extremely adaptable to ALL curricular areas, levels and needs. Enable your learners to make a film using tablets, flip cameras or smart phones, following a brief and developing their literacy and communication skills. Continue reading FREE TWILIGHT CPD (during March): Using film to bring texts to life for primary and secondary

‘Scottish X Factor’ Competition

Children of John Logie Baird Primary School entered into the spirit of Robert Burn’s Day when they participated in a fun and entertaining ‘Scottish X Factor’ competition. Our talented and very hardworking children learnt the Scots language and produced some extremely entertaining and convincing performances for the whole school to enjoy.

Out of all of our semi-finalists, Carla Gorman was surprised and delighted when she learned she was the best overall. The judges; Mr Foxx, Mrs Graham and Mrs Randall awarded Carla a lovely prize, part of which was a mug which said ‘I’m dead chuffed’ and Carla certainly was! It was a very hard decision and all our semi-finalists were awarded a special certificate.

Our thanks to Mr Foxx for his expertise and his recital of ‘To a Haggis’ at our wonderful event.

P3 The Big Bake Off at Dunoon Primary!

DPS Big Bake Off 1On Friday 20th February P3 held a Bake Sale in Dunoon Primary’s GP room. Having decided a few weeks previously that they wanted the opportunity to see a production of ”The Boy and the Bunnet’- a musical story they had studied last term, being held at the Queen’s Hall, funding the visit was a problem. £160 was needed to pay for the tickets. Hannah suggested we hold a Bake Sale and so the plan was hatched.

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Better Eating Better Learning at Kirn

Kirn PS Better eating 1The Primary 6 class at Kirn Primary School have this term participated in the Better Eating Better Learning” project in partnership with Children in Scotland ( www.childreninscotland.org.uk)

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Adventures in Space

Port Ellen Space 1P1/2 at Port Ellen Primary School have been learning all about Space. They have found out about the Sun, Earth and Moon, taking turns at being a Moon Monitor. They watched video clips of Apollo 11 and Neil Armstrong’s moon landing and built their own rockets, complete with different stages. They have looked at the lunar landscape and have investigated how craters were formed using marbles and a tray of moon soil!

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Developing business skills at Strone Primary

Strone PS Social EnterrpiseP5-7 pupils have been developing their entrepreneurial skills this term. They organised a Bring and Buy Sale at school to recycle unwanted toys, games and books and raised £90.00 towards the transport costs of their residential trip to the PGL Centre at Dalguise in April. Pupils have also been running their own mini enterprises in school as part of the Micro-Tyco initiative. The idea of the initiative is to start a business with £1.00 and make as big a profit as possible in six weeks, which then gets donated to charity. The P5-7 businesses include selling soft drinks at breaktime, selling used books, and selling sweets at afternoon break.

We are GLOWing at Rothesay Primary!

RPS Glowing in RothesaySeveral classes at RPS are working on blogging in connection with John Johnston of GLOW. We are working through tutorials with the classes through GLOW Meet and having lots of fun getting involved! The pupils will learn more about GLOW during the process and work on their communication skills!

Food for Thought: Education Fund

PeasPlease260_tcm4-757190Applications can now be made to the Food for Thought: Education Fund. The fund aims to support practitioners to improve learning and teaching within food education in Curriculum for Excellence. Awards of up to £3000 per project are available. Apply HERE Background: Education Scotland is committed to building the confidence and capacity of practitioners to improve learning and teaching within food education in Curriculum for Excellence using national initiatives such as the Year of Food and Drink Scotland 2015 and Commonwealth Games Legacy Continue reading Food for Thought: Education Fund

Park Primary is awarded 6th Green Flag

Park PS earth hour forPark Primary, Oban has recently gained a 6th Green Flag award for it’s work over the last two years on the topics of litter, health and wellbeing and waste minimisation. The school was commended for integrating the Eco Schools programme thoroughly into the curriculum and calendar through events such as One Planet Picnic, Earth Hour and our Apple Days and Green Days. Regular beach cleans and promotion of Fairtrade were also mentioned as was our support of charities such as WWF, MCS and Send my Friend to School. The pupils were described as “truly responsible, global citizens” and we are very proud of this.

Shake up your wake up

St Muns wake up your shakeup 1Primary 5/4 at St. Mun’s Primary School helped the whole school and Clyde Cottage nursery to ‘Shake Up Their Wake Up’ by taking part in The Big Farmhouse Breakfast week from 26th to 30th of January.

Pupils developed their organisational and communication skills by creating menus for each class; cooking different healthy breakfast options; carrying out surveys and devising a breakfast race to help everyone stay fit and healthy!
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