Category Archives: Curriculum for Excellence

St Andrew’s Primary – VE Day

Today is Victory in Europe Day and a very proud moment in St Andrew’s history as our P6/7 children were invited to attend the memorial service, the reflection on the sacrifice of so many, and the twinning of Bute branch of Royal British Legion with Skipton British Legion.
Curriculum for Excellence came to life for our children in a very real and meaningful way, as they marched, prayed and honoured the fallen and those left to entrust their memory on to a new generation.

“Take One Picture”

The Creative Learning in Schools Team (CAST) have been piloting a project in primary schools in Kintyre, “Take One Picture” installing artworks from the Argyll Collection in six schools to inspire cross curricular creative learning. Pupils and teachers from Carradale, Castlehill, Dalintober, Drumlemble, Gigha and Rhunahaorine Primaries have been working with artists Sian MacQueen, Nicole Heidtke and Stefan Bamberger and dancer Tony Mills to create new work inspired by the artworks, taking part in workshops on conductive printmaking, relief sculpture, dance, digital sculpture, life drawing, shadow puppetry, collage and painting.
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GET CREATIVE MUSIC CPDs 2018-9

Are you interested in developing your skills in delivering music in the classroom?

Creative Arts in Schools Team (CAST) launched Get Creative in 2018, a music resource aimed at all primary teachers, packed full of creative ideas, activities and learning outcomes to enable you to deliver musical activities with your class, regardless of your musical experience. Continue reading GET CREATIVE MUSIC CPDs 2018-9

Edinburgh Celebration Event

Rockfield Primary Gaelic classes were delighted to receive an invitation from The Scottish Book Trust to showcase their hard work and endeavour at a celebration event for The First Minister’s Reading Challenge. The event was held at ‘The Hub’ in Edinburgh on the 20th June and Rachael Deans (Principal Teacher Gaelic), accompanied by Gaelic pupils Rufus Hughes (P5) and Bethan Neil (P4) had a great time sharing their work with the 400 strong audience as well as The First Minister Nicola Sturgeon herself.

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Bravo Taynuilt Primary School!

Bien joué! ¡Bien hecho! Gut gemacht! Molto bene! (Well done!)
On Monday 15th May five Primary 6 pupils from Taynuilt Primary travelled to Edinburgh to the Euroquiz National Final 2108. The competition involved 470 schools from all over Scotland taking part in Euroquiz heats to represent their own areas. Taynuilt Primary won our area quiz to represent Argyll and Bute. There were 31 schools at the Final, from the Borders to Shetland to the Western Isles, and was it held in the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament. Continue reading Bravo Taynuilt Primary School!

Maths Week 2017

Maths Week Scotland starts on the 11th September and we cannot wait to hear about all the fantastic activities that will be going on in Argyll and Bute!  Have a look at SALi for some great ideas that you can be using in your classrooms and don’t forget to send your ‘How Many?’ selfies in to activeinlearning@argyll-bute.gov.uk.  Why not tweet about it as well using #MathsWeekScot?  There is also a competition running on Sumdog and all our schools still have their full subscription so test those numeracy skills and win some prizes!  Most of all – have fun!

Lochdonhead Primary School Nature Trail

Lochdonhead Primary School was selected as the Regional Winner 2017 in the Better Energy School Awards. The school have won a cheque for £500.00 “Congratulations to the pupils and staff of Lochdonhead Primary School – what an ambitious project you have embarked upon and you have adopted an extremely professional approach. We were very impressed by the way you have sought detailed information and knowledge from experts and the way that you have involved your community in the development of your nature trail.

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Isle of Gigha School wins My Favourite Pocket Garden Award at Gardening Scotland 2017!

Isle of Gigha School and Community are very proud to announce that Bailey Bannatyne’s Gigha Garden, inspired by our beautiful island has won the My Favourite Pocket Garden Award at Gardening Scotland 2017!

Visitors who voted convincingly for Bailey’s design were entertained and inspired by her creativity and attention to detail. They especially enjoyed how the garden encapsulated the children’s love for their island and its beautiful natural heritage.
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Skills Week at Achaleven.

Achaleven’s Got Skills!
12th – 16th June was a very busy time at Achaleven Primary!

We packed in a lot in a short space of time starting with tag rugby with Allan and Ellie who put us through our paces, kept us active and we worked together well to achieve great results. We planned a trip to Glen Nant for the Wednesday so this involved creating a risk assessment.

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DUNOON GRAMMAR NEEDS YOUR HELP!

A team of pupils from Dunoon Grammar School is calling for help from members of the public after being shortlisted for the People’s Choice Award at this year’s Apps for Good UK finals.

The youngsters beat of stiff competition from over 25,000 young people, from 1,250 establishments, to reach the final 10 with their innovative SafeStep idea. However, in order to win, the team needs members of the public to vote for them.

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Healthy Living Project

It’s all swings and roundabouts in Primary 6 at Rhu as pupils have been designing their own Healthy Living Theme Park.
The project has been a homework topic this term and children have taken the theme of a healthy, balanced lifestyle and turned it into a business venture. They have each designed their own theme park, with the emphasis on being active and eating healthy food. So gone are the burgers and coke to be replaced by smoothie bars and fruit snack shops.

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Minard and Kirn Primary Pupils learning outdoor together

Argyll & Bute may be geographically vast but that doesn’t prevent us from making the most of connections between schools to allow pupils the opportunity to learn co-operatively. On Friday 21st April five P4 pupils from Kirn Primary School in Cowal travelled with their teacher Mr Mair to join the Minard Primary School pupils in some outdoor learning activities in Minard Primary, near Inveraray. The Minard pupils were delighted to welcome pupils from far flung Cowal to share in the outdoor learning opportunities which are on their doorstep.

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Full STEM Ahead at Colgrain!

During Term 3 at Colgrain, the pupils from Pre-5 to P7 worked together to plan a whole school STEM topic. With the key focus of ‘developing our young workforce’, our pupils chose a variety of aspects of STEM to investigate. We worked closely with partners in the community to bring our learning to life. We welcomed Helensburgh Toyota, Royal Navy chefs, Lt. Cdr. Pinder and a number of parents to school to work with us.

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Rockfield Shares Learning in Music

Pupils in Rockfield Primary in Oban welcomed parents, carers and friends to school recently to share with them the learning they have been doing in music.

P4 and P5 pupils have been exploring the instrument families of the orchestra, with a particular focus on the piece ‘Peter and the Wolf’ by Prokofiev which uses recurring themes and specific instruments for each character.

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ARGYLL OUTDOOR & WOODLAND LEARNING PHOTO CALENDAR COMPETITION 2017

A Picture Tells a Thousand Stories
Capture the Spirit of Outdoor Learning in Argyll

The winning entries will be printed on a calendar, produced by the Argyll OWL Group, and will be distributed throughout Argyll & Bute to promote outdoor and woodland learning. Plus win great prizes to help you enjoy the outdoors.

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Dunoon Primary School Daffodil Tea 2017

Dunoon Primary held its Annual Daffodil Tea on Thursday March 30th. Our Senior Citizens from the local community joined us for a wonderful afternoon of music, samba drumming, fiddle, chanter and singing from our choir and P4/5/6. The show was carefully presented by our terrific P7 pupils who had produced entertaining introductions for each act themselves.

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Title – Open Afternoon at Southend Primary

Pupils became teachers for the afternoon at Southend Primary. Parents, Guardians and members of the community had taster sessions on writing newspapers reports, creating Animations, making Power Points, designing Rennie McIntosh screen prints, experiencing the thinking behind BMT and having fun learning about the weather in French.

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PUPIL READS ONE MILLION WORDS

On Thursday 23rd March 2017 the pupils from Lochdonhead Primary School travelled over on the ferry to Oban to celebrate Alex’s reading for enjoyment success. She has read one million words in six months and was awarded a book of her own choice from Waterstones to celebrate. This award was generously funded by our Parent Council.
This is an amazing achievement and she has read a total of 24 sizeable books to attain this. A big ‘Thank you!’ is extended to the Parent Council for funding the trip and the award.
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St Andrew’s Primary Science Week

During SCIENCE WEEK we organised science workshops for all pupils exploring electricity, gravity, magnets and brain processing of information.

We also had experts in school who worked with our P 5-7s. Scientists from Edinburgh University and Heriot-Watt University worked with us on a Seabeasties project finding out about the beasties that live off our Scottish coasts. Pupils made nets to catch plankton and viewed findings through smartphone microscopes.

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