Category Archives: Modern Studies

St Andrew’s Primary Eco Schools Green Flag Award

st-andrews-ps-green-flag-award-feb-2017This week, St Andrew’s Primary School’s pupils and staff were delighted to be awarded their fourth Eco Schools Green Flag. Eco-Schools is the largest sustainable schools programme in the world and is designed to encourage whole-school action on sustainable development education issues. The Green Flag Award is an internationally-recognised symbol of excellence in sustainable development education.

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Chris Riddell Illustrates Kirn’s Question!

kirn-ps-chris-riddell-1We’re always looking forward to Authors Live at Kirn so were eager to tune in to the latest broadcast featuring Children’s Laureate Chris Riddell. P4/3, P4, P5, P6/5 and P6 had already researched Chris and looked at a selection of books filled with his amazingly detailed illustrations. We had also prepared questions for Chris and emailed them in advance, hoping that one of our questions would be read out during the live show.

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Inveraray Eco Success

inveraray-eco-award-jan-2017Inveraray Eco Success

Inveraray Primary School was the first school in Argyll and Bute to gain Green Flag status as an Eco School back in 2003. We are pleased to share the good news that we have once again retained our Green Flag status through our Crofting and Kenyan Connections work which includes the whole school and the nursery.

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Rothesay Primary Recycling Centre

rothesay-recycling-centre-dec-2016The pupils at Rothesay Primary have been recycling cardboard, plastic bottles and packaging from their snacks, to help gain points for their school Houses. The eco committee monitor the collections and weigh these on a Friday before the points are collated. However, if there is something in a bin that cannot be recycled (the eco committee have a do’s and don’t poster beside the bins) then that House is disqualified!! Recycling has never been such fun!

Hermitage Primary School P7 Technology Challenge

hermitage-ps-dec-2016-tech-challenge-1On Tuesday 6th December the Hermitage Primary School P7 Technology Challenge came to a close with the group presentations to an audience of invited judges and guests. Using skills in Technology, Maths, Language, Science and PSD, the pupils had to work in cooperative groups to plan and design a working electrical vehicle which was supported by a good business plan. They kept track of their progress in a booklet using the Book Creator Ipad app and delivered their presentations supported by a Keynote presentation

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Furnace and Minard Pupils Go Gruffalo Hunting

furnace-and-minard-gruffalo-2Last Friday, while the ‘bigger’ pupils were off learning how to become Digital Leaders, Furnace and Minard ‘littler’ pupils decided to go off on a Gruffalo Hunt to Ardkinglas Gardens to have some outdoor fun and learn some more Scots words. The crispy cold day added to the sense of adventure, especially as we had recently read The Gurffalo’s Child. We followed the little mouse’s directions past Tod’s ‘deep-dooon hoose’, Hoolet’s “tree-tap hoose” and Snake’s “log-hoose”.

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Scottish Parliament Outreach at Strachur

strachur-scottish-parliament-1-nov-2016Primary 5/6/7 were delighted to welcome Miss Mairead Mackechnie, Education Officer from the Scottish Parliament, into the class for an afternoon workshop. They have been learning about the topic for the last two weeks and this workshop was very helpful.

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Prints of Play! at Cove Park

cove-park-prints-of-play-lauraspringThe Hands-On Cove Park Holiday Art Club offers a blast of creativity every day!
Prints of Play! is for children aged 8-11 interested in art, experimenting with colour, shape, texture and pattern. During a course of four daily sessions, 09:30-11:30 from Monday 17 – Thursday 20 October 2016, children will experiment with ideas around the theme of ‘play’ to create a series of quick, inspirational paper collages that will be used to inform a stencil design to print one or more t-shirt designs that they can go on to wear.
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Coding at Minard and Furnace Primaries

furance-and-minard-coding-1Pupils at Minard and Furnace Primaries were very fortunate last week to have developed their coding skills through two mini-technology days led by Steven Simpson of Argyll & Bute Council. The technology days came about as a result of pupil feedback saying they were really keen to learn more about coding. Steven came along to both primaries armed with Raspberry Pi, Lego We Do 2.0 (programmable lego) and ‘Flying Spiders’ (drones). Steven also showed us how to make mini-film trailers using Ipads.
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Argyll and Bute School Staff Receive a Professional Development Award

PDA Whole Group + Admin + RR - FinalOn the 21st June 2016, 22 Classroom and Additional Support Needs Assistants received certificates for the SQA Professional Development Award (PDA) in Education Support Assistance in a ceremony held in the Loch Fyne Hotel, Inveraray.

Roslyn Redpath, Principal Educational Psychologist, presented the certificates on behalf of Argyll and Bute Council and congratulated the candidates on their hard work and commitment.
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Scottish Education Awards 2016

JLB Scottish Education award June 2016John Logie Baird Primary School and Pre Five Unit have been celebrating their success at the Scottish Education Awards 2016. They were delighted to be a top 3 finalist in the Learning through Technologies category at this year’s event. Judges from Education Scotland visited the school back in April and spoke to pupils, staff, parents and members of the community who were involved in their hugely successful Oscars Night and their innovative new Improving and Achieving report –

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High Flying Luss

Luss High Flyer 1Luss Primary is this year’s Scottish champions In the Total Green Awards, sponsored by the Total Oil Co. and the Young People’s Trust for the Environment.
34,000 children took part in the competition. Over the past five years Luss has won the Totally Clued-up Category three times and on a fourth occasion we were awarded a Total Special Award created especially for them because the work submitted was of such a high standard.

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Rocket Science in Cardross Primary’

Cardross Tim Peak Rocket SciencePrimary 5 recently applied to the Royal Horticultural Society to take part in a very special experiment. British astronaut Tim Peake sent down a bag of seeds from outer space in April and asked the boys and girls to grow the seeds to see if being in an area of zero gravity affected the way that the seeds grow! After many weeks of watering, measuring and following Tim’s journey, Mr Henry sent the collected data to be entered into the ‘Rocket Science Database’, with some very interesting results! There certainly could be life on Mars in the very near future!

Solar Ovens for use on the Moon!

Kilcreggan Solar 1 OvensPrimary 5/4 pupils at Kilcreggan Primary have been creating Solar Ovens from everyday materials. Pupils had been looking at how technology has developed over the past 90 years and thinking about designing some technology for the future. Their discussions led them to think about how people might cook in the future.

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Toward and Innellan pupils go to the Capital.

Toward and Innellan Holyrood Park June 2016Pupils travelled through to Edinburgh to Holyrood Park where with the help of Rangers from Historic Scotland they travelled back in time to study the nature and type of volcanic activity was involved in shaping Arthurs Seat. They learnt the names for all the different parts of a volcano and were able to identify the different features in the surrounding landscape. They discussed and studied the best place to be if a volcano was about to erupt and decided to be as far away as possible especially as one of the Rangers mixed some vinegar and Bicarbonate of Soda to make a chemical reaction.
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Health Week Partnership at St Joseph’s

St Josephs 1 Health Week A1Last week saw the whole school and Pre-5 unit get involved in Health Week here at St. Joseph’s. Fantastic Physical Health activities were delivered, particularly in conjunction with Active Schools.

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