This term at Port Ellen Pre Five Unit Christopher, Caillin, William, Connor, Katyn, Robyn, Phoenix and Dylan have been reading the fantastic Katie Morag books by Mairi Hederwick. They say;
We love the books and have decided to learn about floating and sinking, ferry boats and we’ve been comparing our lives on Islay to Katie Morag’s on Struay. We have even made our own ferries with help from Caillin’s dad Donald.
Continue reading Port Ellen Pre Five, Our trip to the finlaggan
The P6/7 children from Islay and Jura had a fantastic four days from 24th – 27th September with the Stramash Team, in and around Oban. A brilliant range of activities including coasteering, archery, dinghy sailing and climbing, challenged everyone (including the staff!). The Stramash staff supported us all to do our best, and the team at the Oban YHA looked after us brilliantly. New friendships were made and others rekindled after the Stirling Trip in May. We’re looking forward to lots of shared learning over the rest of this session.
On Tuesday 27th August Primary 6&7 went on an archaeological dig to Rubha Port an t-Seilich on Islay because they are doing a topic on life in Mesolithic times. The dig was run By Professor Steven Mithin from Reading University and a team of archaeologists.
The site that they were visiting was found when a gamekeeper bought pigs to dig up the bracken, but instead the pigs dug up a piece of flint that was over 9,000 years old. Continue reading PRIMARY 6&7 VISIT MESOLITHIC DIG ON ISLAY
The children in Port Ellen Pre 5 unit have been very busy looking after some exciting new pets from our donated butterfly farm. The children transferred all the knowledge and skills that they have gained during our minibeast topic and used this to take care of our butterflies. We were all very excited when our tiny caterpillars arrived through the post. During the week they ate more and more and they grew very big and very fat – just like The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
Continue reading Port Ellen Pre 5 Units Beautiful Butterflies
Port Ellen Primary 3&4 and 6&7 have been learning about India. In the topic we have had Glow Meets with teachers and students at Arwachin Bharti Bhawan School in Delhi in India. We got the chance to ask them questions about life in India. It was surprising that we have so much in common; they like TV like The Simpsons and Family Guy, music like Taylor Swift and films like James Bond, and their English was much better than our Hindi! We wanted to look at the differences in the festivals we celebrate. Continue reading INDIA CONNECTIONS
Primary 6/7 at Port Ellen were learning about renewable energy and wave power and decided that we would make wave power devices for the Junior Saltire Awards. These awards are open to schools around Scotland who want to design and build their own wave powered electricity generating devices. As we already have lots of Marine renewables on Islay, with the Limpet in Portnahaven and the new tidal generator planned for the sound of Jura, we thought we should have a go.
Port Ellen Pre 5 unit have thoroughly enjoyed their Lighthouse topic. The topic was based on the well known book The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch by Ronda and David Armitage. The topic was packed with numerous learning opportunities. The children planned and build their own lighthouse, they enjoyed making lunch for each other in their very own Mrs Grinling’s kitchen, we planned and built seagull proof picnic baskets and many more fun activities.
Continue reading Port Ellen Pre 5 Unit, Our Lighthouse Topic
All the P6/7 children of Islay and Jura got together for a fantastic trip to Stirling last week! New friendships were made and old ones were resurrected as the children spent four days together learning about the history of Stirling Castle, the Wallace Monument as well as enjoying the engineering wonder of the Falkirk Wheel! The views over Stirling were magnificent.
Continue reading Islay and Jura Primary Schools Trip to Stirling
A brand new after school Wind Band ”Ceol Na Cloinne”(Music of the Children) for Primary 3 & 4 children has been formed on the Isle of Islay; they meet every Friday at 4.00 pm at Islay High School and they are already making some great sounds. The young musicians come from every Primary School on the island and they really enjoy making music together.
ELECTRONICS PROBLEM
Help! I am in desparate need of help. My name is Jason Baker and I am in Primary 7 at Port Ellen Primary School on Islay. My Endeavour project is to build from scratch and programme an electronic vehicle operated by remote control. I have the parts for a universal remote control and the rover vehicle. The rover has a switchboard kit. I need help making the remote control send a signal to the receiver on the rover so that it will pick up the signal and move according to the remotes commands.
On the 26th of March Primary 6&7 and Primary 3&4 had a India afternoon. We invited parents and we had stalls ready for the parents to interact with. To start off the day we showed power points on different celebrations in India we also made Indian God masks to show to our parents. In p3/4 there was a shadow puppet show of Rama and Sita and Rangoli patterns to do also hand paints and guess the spice. We also set up a build the Taj Mahal with lego stall.
We have had a busy science week, which kicked off with a visit by Dr Dave Stodhart from the Fraunhofer Institute in Glasgow. Dave works as a scientist making lasers that can detect escaping gas, and talked to us about his work and being an inventor. He also showed us how to make our own spectroscopes to see the colours found in light. It was excellent. Primary 6&7 shared their learning on light with primary 3&4, who then went on to create shadow puppets with what they learned.
Continue reading National Science and Engineering Week at Port Ellen
On Friday 25th January Port Ellen Primary School on Islay had a very special guest for their annual Burns Lunch and Ceilidh. Mr. Mike Russell, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning for Scotland joined pupils, guests and staff for a delicious traditional three course Burns Lunch including of course haggis, neeps and tatties prepared by Mrs. Holyoake and Miss Brown and then the staff served the children and guests. Continue reading Mike Russell enjoys traditional Burns Lunch with Port Ellen Primary
On Wednesday 19th December 2012 there was a Nativity at Port Ellen Primary School. Primary 1/2 did the nativity with nursery, we thought it was very good they remembered all their lines. They were clear and they enjoyed doing the play, they liked singing the songs and the audience laughed, we really enjoyed it. It was really good Taylor was Joseph and Sarah was Mary and it was also known as the the lucky owl and Rebecca was the Owl. By Alicia Continue reading PORT ELLEN AT CHRISTMAS
This term the children from P3/4 and P5 have both been learning about aspects of Scotland.
We have all enjoyed finding out amazing and exciting historical facts and events. Both classes researched significant Scottish people from leaders and rebels to authors and inventors.
P5 used Digi Maps to help them develop their knowledge of the geography of Scotland and researched places of interest from all over the country. Continue reading St. Andrew’s Ceilidh Celebration at Port Ellen.
On Sunday 14th October Port Ellen Primary Gaelic Choir excitedly began their journey to Dunoon to compete in this years National Mod. The children had an early start on Monday morning with many competing as individuals before the choir competitions in the afternoon. All of the children had worked extremely hard to prepare for their competitions and we were delighted to learn that so many of our individual competitors had been successful in their categories. Continue reading Port Ellen Primary Gaelic Choir Success at National Mod
On Wednesday morning Leigh from the Mull Theatre group came to a workshop for P6/7 on creating props for the theatre. The props will then be used for a performance on Islay of the groups latest play called Scota-land. We made a map of the Isle of Mickle for their play Scota-land and we also made artifacts that will go in the pretend museum. We made models of black houses, a beautiful crown from copper leaves, ancient runic writing, clay pots and a dinosaur model that all went on the island. The Island was made by everyone passing a crayon along and doing squiggly lines. Continue reading SCOTA-LAND IN PORT ELLEN
On the weekend of the 8th Septemeber Port Ellen was once again host to the Islay Book Festival, with lots of well known authors visiting to share their experiences.
We welcomed some of the children’s authors into the school. Here is what the children thought:
All the latest news from Port Ellen Primary……
It has been a busy start to the new session at Port Ellen.
Tuesday 28th August: Stephen Baron Plays Haydn
Stephen Baron came to the school of Port Ellen primary to tell us about Haydn a very famous composer and it was very interesting. We played games with Stephen Baron and we danced to the music and it was very fancy and I want to do it again. My favourite part was when we played instruments with him it was very noisy. Continue reading New Beginnings at Port Ellen
On Monday afternoon Primary 4 & 5 were lucky enough to have a trip to the Machrie golf course on Islay to practice their golfing skills. Shona Ramsey had spent the term teaching them to putt, chip and hit the ball in the correct way, but it was so much better to get an opportunity to have a shot on a real golf course. The Machrie is in a beautiful setting right by the sea and it was a very calm and peaceful way to spend the afternoon. Some groups practiced putting with Mrs Clark, some chipping with Shona and some got to have a go on the real course with real clubs with Mr Gairns! Continue reading Port Ellen Go Golfing
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