Here is a link for P567 to join Duolingo and learn French,
https://www.duolingo.com/o$o=josephine.clark@portellen.argyll-bute.sch.uk&s=P567%20PEPS
Here is a link for P567 to join Duolingo and learn French,
https://www.duolingo.com/o$o=josephine.clark@portellen.argyll-bute.sch.uk&s=P567%20PEPS
For the past few weeks we have been practicing for our leavers assembly and making progress everyday. But this year we have made theme is Harry Potter; everyone has a main part and everyone is in a scene or two but some of the characters have different names and they intemperate things and people in the our school. We wrote the script ourselves and there are lots of jokes.
We are also doing a few songs; which are Dark Lord Funk you up, You’ve Got a Friend in me and a lip dub for-When I’m 64.
all the characters are;
Harry: Torin
Ron: Logan
Harmione: Abbie
Anwen is herself
Nicholas is himself
Prof Sprout, Ginny, Cheerleader: Jodie
Dobby: Eleanor
Cheerleader, Emily, Wolf: Emily
Crabbe: William
Prof Umbridg, a dementor: Beth
Draco, Prof Trelawney: David
Dumbledore: Ciara
Snape, Goyle: Oliver
Vodemort: Elizabeth
Bellatrix: Emma
It is really good and we have included information on our time at Port Ellen. We hope everyone enjoys it!
My class went the high school for an Endeavour fair but before that we had a a bunch of maths and literacy problem solving stations. You get 10 points per station depending if you do well or not. There were lots of different people from different schools from Islay and Jura. It was very fun and challenging at the same time. We also were helped S4,S5 who also gave us clues to the problems but we lose points if we use them.
by Nick and Beth
On wednesday it was sports day. All of the P1,2,3,4,5,6,7 and the nursary had a whole afternoon of sports and fun also the sports champion was to be revealed and there was the relay races. The sports champion was Ross Thompson and Jodie Jamieson and Texa won the relay and Texa won the shield for the most points.
Over the last few weeks P6/7 have been doing the sports championships. The sports championships is where you take part in lots of different activities and then get points for what place you come in or if you take part. If you come first you get 100 points, if you come second you get 75 points, if you come third you get 50 points and if you take part you get 25 points. The activities consist of cross country, 100m, 50m, high jump, long jump, hurdles, obstacle, football dribbling throwing and basketball hoops. At the the end of sports day the person with the most points will be given a trophy and medal if second or third you get a medal. This year for the girls championships in 3rd place was Bronagh from p6 2nd was Beth from p7 and sports champion was Jodie from p7. For the boys championships in 3rd place was Logan from P7, 2nd was Ronan from p6 and the boys sports champion was Ross from p6. Everyone enjoyed taking part in the sports championships.
By Emily and Jodie 🙂
Last week was finance week. Each class learned about different aspects of finance and managing your money. P7 learned about tax, payday loans and interest rates and they also made finance board games. With Mrs MacDonald P7 made a Gaelic cafe and they had to learn and teach the customers how to ask and pay for food in Gaelic.
P5/6 were working out the proper cost of their soaps with all the ingredients prices added up together and worked out they should be selling the soaps for £1.06. Mrs Connor came in to help them with making spread sheet for their soap business. They also made board games about different aspects of money including accounting and managing money and accounts. A pupil named Murray made an animation on how to make soap.
P3/4 made up their own shops in groups using pretend money and foods. The shops were called The Square Shop, Good Food, The Yummies and Eat Up. They were also learning about saving and managing money.
P1/2 made different dips and sold them to the school for 30p. They were also learning about saving money.
By Abbie and Izzy 🙂
Last Tuesday P7 from Port Ellen Primary School took a trip to the Gaelic College along with Mrs MacDonald. During school Mrs MacDonald has taught us about food, how to order it and prices, all in Gaelic. A pound in gaelic is” not” and a penny is a sgilean. When we went over, in order to get a cake and juice you had to order in Gaelic. We had to say, “Ha me a geerie aun…” and then whatever we wanted. Everyone managed to successfully order what they wanted in gaelic. After we had our order we had to answer Gaelic questions. Then we played Twister in gaelic colours and a Gaelic board game about how to take care of yourself. Overall we had a great day and we all learnt something new and even Mrs MacDonald.
By Emily and Jodie 🙂
Over the last week, we have been trying to create our own wave power devices and see if we can light an LED light by generating electricity from waves. 3 groups in P7 are entering the Junior Saltire awards with their devices. All the groups have different designs for the wave power to make the LED light work.
The first group is called the Electricity Generators and the device is called The Electric Cradle. The second group is called The ABAE and the device is called The Wave-Inator 360. The last group is called TLWN and their device is called The Donut.
We are going to enter all 3 devices and hopefully our school will have some success with 1 of our devices.
By Abbie and Eleanor 🙂
2 weeks ago we went to the High School for Science week because we were doing food science with all the schools around Islay and Jura. We went to Mr Kitching’s room first and we were testing foods for energy. We had Peanuts, Pringles and Bread and we burnt the food with a Bunsen Burner and then put it under a test tube that had water in it. We also had a thermometer in it and we had to check how much the temperature went up. The peanuts had the most energy then it was Pringuls and then it was bread.
The next class was Mrs Moran and we made a really gooey thing out of cornflour and water and mixed it all together then we put it on a big music speaker and it looked like it was dancing and then we tided up and went to the next class room.
The next class room was Mrs McNaughton’s class and we were testing foods for starch, fat and protein. We had busen burners and we put different foods into test tubes and added Benedict’s to test for sugar. You had to put the test tube in and out the bunsen burner and also used iodine to check for starch. If it has sugar when you put the Benedict’s and add the heat it should go orange and if you do the same with the iodine it will go blackish.
I had a great time.
BY William Monaghan
Day of Dance this year started with us missing the first half of it because the bus man forgot us. Apart
from that it was great. The first dance was the for the Reel for Jeanie and the last was the Dashing White Sergeant, the class favourite dance. Half way through the day they repeated the Flying Scotsman. In all the day was great and thanks to Mrs Shaw and Mrs Campbell for teaching us so well:
A Reel For Jeanie.
First you dance in a circle for four back for four.
Next the top couple walk down the middle then cast of with the rest of the people following.
Make an arch and the rest of you walk though.
Then you clap 8 times and spin with right hand.
By Anwen Baker
At school we learned about rivers for our water topic and near the end we decided to work in our groups to make something to show our learning so we went into our groups and made things to show our learning.
One group made an animation and a small poster while another made a dance to show stages of the river and the the third did experiments to see if water can clear away sand, soil and gravel and the last made a clay mountain model to show how a river would flood and knock over small houses.
By Torin
Last Monday Port Ellen Primary School had their swimming gala. A swimming gala is a competition where each and every class takes part in swimming races. Each person races other people in their class. The boys swimming champion was Ross Thomson and the girls swimming champion was Katie Middleton. Orsay came in 3rd, Nave came in 2nd, Texa 1st. Everyone had a great time and had lots of fun.
By Beth
Yesterday afternoon Keills P67 came to our school. They came because we were getting a visit from Child Line. Child Line is for children to support you if you are worried, sad or anxious about anything. They are open 24-7 and are confidential. They won’t tell anyone about the conversation You don’t need to tell your name and you can tell them a fake name. We got put in to groups to talk about pictures and vote what we thought of the pictures. The child line mascot is a speech mark called Buddy. We all enjoyed it and listened well.
Child line number: 0800 1111
By Annie Farrell
Port Ellen’s Primary 7’s went on an Endeavour trip to Bowmore to share their Endeavour with Bowmore’s Primary P5-7 to inspire them and help new ways to improve their Endeavour. They came around different tables talking about what they wanted to do for their Endeavours and how Port Ellen can help and give them some good tips. They also asked questions about their Endeavours and what good skills and strategies they could use to help them. In the end we ended up playing bonding games and making new friends.
By Nicholas
Over the last few weeks we have been doing Scottish Country Dancing , with Mrs Shaw and Mrs Cameron. We have learn lots of different dances such as, Strip the Willow, The Circle Waltz, The Dashing White Sergeant The Canadian Barn Dance and the Bamkin. Everyone had partners, and it had to be boys with girls. My partner was Oliver however, Abbie was with Annie because there wasn’t enough boys, and Emma had Ciara. One of the dances that we found very difficult was The Dashing White Sergeant because near the end of the dance we have to do a figure of eight and many people found this very hard. We are looking forward to the Day Of Dance.
We asked Bronagh questions about what she did in Westminster in London. We firstly asked her a question on why she was there. She went to Parliament because she was an young Scottish winner of an art competition for I love Amazon schools. In Parliament they were taking photos and talking about the rain forest. She had to go through lots of security when she was entering Parliament. She was in there for 2-3 hours just listening about the rain forest and getting photos taken. They also asked her questions like “How did you think of your slogan?”which was ‘Hands off our trees, Leaf them alone.’ She also learned that every minute a football pitch worth of trees is cut down and the situation is so critical.
But in conclusion she had a lovely time in Westminster and learned a lot about the Amazon rainforest.
By Nicholas and Torin with help from Bronagh
This week is going to be our last week of swimming. We have been learning all about different techniques to keep our heads above the water. For example we used a techniques called treading water, the mixer and the recovery passion. We also practised doing a safe entry. A safe entry is when you sit on the side of the pool and then you put both of your hands to one side of you and then twist your body round and slowly release your self into the pool and then swim as carefully as you can over to your casualty. Last week we were starting to swim lengths. This week we are going to be doing a comic relief day swimming on Friday 13th March.
In school p7 we have been reading and writing short stores. A short stories that we read called the Examination is a story about a young boy called Richard that lives in an oppressive state. In the oppressive state when you grow to the age of twelve you have to get an I.Q. test to see how intelligent you are. When Richard takes the test he get killed because he exceeded the test. After reading the short story, p7 then wrote a book review on the Examination. We sructured the book review by answering questions like ‘how was the story structured’ and ‘what do you think about the opening’ also questions like ‘what is the theme of the book’ and ‘can you describe the setting of the story’ also ‘what do you think about the ending’. I found the actual story was great but I most enjoyed how the story is so unpredictable and twisted at the end. Writing the book review, I found it most interesting because it makes you read in between the line to find out more about the story.
In class, p7 have been learning to convert fractions, decimals and percentages, we have been focusing mainly on fractions and decimals. Fun Fact: If in a decimal, a number is repeated lots of times, like 1/3 is 0.33333333 etc. you would write 0.3 with a º above the 3.
We have learned lots more, like :
1/4 is 0.25 so 2/4 would be 0.5 you would keep doubling until you got to 4/4 which is 1.00
1/2 is 0.5 which is equivalent to 2/4
1/5 is 0.2 so 2/5 would be 0.4 .
1/6 would be 0.166
1/10 would be 0.1 because there is 10 10ths in 1
We have also been learning to convert percentages to decimals for example:
20% as a decimal is 0.2 as a fraction is 1/4
25% as a decimal is 0.25 as a fraction is 1/5
50% as a decimal is 0.5 as a fraction is 1/2
75% as a decimal is 0.75 as a fraction is 3/4
80% as a decimal is 0.8 as a fraction is 4/5
100% as a decimal is 1.0 as a fraction is 1/1
These are just some of the vast array of fractions, decimals and percentages in the known world. Hope you found this intreaging and interesting. hopefully you have learned something new.
By Anwen and Izzy 🙂
P7 have been doing a lot of science lately for there topic about water. They have been learning some very good scientific words. They have been doing experiments using evaporation. Evaporation means a change from liquid to steam or vapour. They recently did an experiment to make clean water when they put vinegar, flour, sugar, baking soda and water in a cup and mixed it. Then we cut a big bottle in half and placing the cup in the bottom half and placed the top half on and the water in it would turn to steam and go to the side of the bottle and run down to the bottle and sit at the bottom as pure water. They also did another experiment when you put sand, water, bicarbonate of soda and vinegar in a tub and put a cup that is lower than the rim. Then you cover it in cling film tightly and tape it, then put a small rock above the cup and it will evaporate. They are all enjoying this topic so far and love the experiments they did.
By Annie & Beth
On Thursday 5th March it was world book day, everyone had to bring in their favourite book and dress up as their favourite character. We dressed up as Sarah Midnight from the book Dreams and Tilly from Magic Spirit. The first thing did was reading one of our favourite sentences from our book. In the morning some of the p7’s had to go and read to the nursery, we read them their favourite book. While the rest of us played games answering questions about books. We then read a short story in our reading groups called Examination Day as part of World Book Day. It was a really great story. Overall we had a great day and everyone looked great in their costumes.
By Emily and Jodie 🙂
This is our power point on Disability Discrimination. We have been learning in class all about discrimination so we chose to do this one! By Emily and Jodie P7 🙂

Check out P1/2’s new blog…..Adventures with Dinosaurs to find out what these dinosaurs are up to! Follow the link from the Learning Blog.
Wednesday 21st January
We are going to be getting all of our action points done and start them up.
By Annie Farrell
P1/2 have just finished building their Space Station and are looking forward to their trip into space. They have been been busy with their astronaut training – fitness and fine motor skills using different gloves, tweezers and litter pickers so that they can conduct space repairs in the Space Work Module (with tumble drier pipe and gloves!). The astronaut food is ready and we are just waiting for our spacesuits to arrive…….
Every year our school has a Burns celebration and all the classes in the school take part to learn a Scottish poem and also some of the main Scottish country dances. We enjoyed learning Strip The Willow it was so much fun. On Wednesday 21st January all the classes got assessed and in all the classes only six people got through to the finals. Then on the Thursday each of the finalists took it in turn to say it on front of three judges. On Friday 23rd January we had Burns Lunch and then everyone’s friends and family came up for a ceilidh where we also found out the results of the poem!!
Here Are The Results:
P7-Adress To The Haggis 1st Elizabeth Macmillan 2nd Abbie Morris 3rd Annie Farrell
P6- Twa Corbies 1st Bronagh Newman 2nd Ross Thompson 3rd Mirren Brown
P5- My Love Is Like A Red, Red Rose 1st Struan Colthart 2nd Ruaridh Macdonald 3rd Natalie Logan
P4- Oor Dentist 1st Rowan Morris 2nd Matthew Campbell 3rd Rebecca Morris
P3- The Brickies On The Building Site 1st Ellen Brown 2nd Holly Mckechnie 3rd Alexander Mctavish
P2- Sair Finger 1st Katherine Borthwick 2nd Dearbhla Newman 3rd Charlotte Rose and Millie Hollyoake
P1- Owe You Canne Throw A Sanne 1st Ricky 2nd Ciara 3rd Phoenix Davey
Overall we had a great time!!
By Emily and Jodie
Today Thusday 22nd Januray I had a visit from a lady called Maggie who makes bags. As part of my Endeavour i am making a bag from scratch and she was going to come in and talk about different bags. She taught me how to make handles and how to put lining in the inside of my bag. Also she showed me some of her bags which has giving me some ideas. Thanks very much !!!
By Jodie 🙂
Last week our class p7 entered a competition about photography and architecture run by the Scottish Civil trust. We went a walk round the village looking for photographs to take. There were all kinds of photos like roof tops, paths & drain pipes and they were taken at different angels to make them look eye catching. When we got back from the walk round the village we looked though all of our photo’s and picked out the best photo and edited it a wee bit to make it look better. Then they could enter it in to the competition.
by Logan Porter and William Monaghan