Primary School of the Year 2022
P234 were talking about things that go on our skin and inside our bodies. We had a chat about what alcohol and how it affects the body. We then finished off our topic by making some mocktails, agreeing on the ingredients with a partner….some were very inventive! Lots of fun!
This morning P12 started our new IDL topic of biodiversity. We joined lots of schools across the UK to meet with Keeping Scotland Beautiful, The National Book Trust and the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland. We found out about the importance of food chains and how all species rely on each other, we got to meet the endangered Pine Hoverflys and Wolves at The Highland Wildlife Park and meet with author Gill Lewis to talk about some of her books which are about how humans and animals can work together to make a difference.
P234 were revisiting the past, present and future and making a timeline for Islay distilleries, including some of the early ones which closed. We discussed how distilling had changed over time and what it might be like in the future, remembering our Googlemeet with Georgie Crawford about the new Farkin distillery.
We have been looking at the design of Farkin distillery and all the different things involved in the planning. We have designed our own distillery, created a side view, made a model from Lego and then created a plan view of our design.
P12 have been inventing their own healthy mocktails as part of their distillery topic. They used lots of lovely fruit to make delicious cocktails and then they wrote evaluations of their drinks.
Last week P12 had the challenge of trying to get barley to germinate. Some of us decided we should put our barley outside (picture 1) this had two different outcomes. The barley which were left under/beside the train disappeared! We think some visitors ate it….. The barley that was protected by the creel was very wet but did begin to germinate slightly. The barley that was in the fridge (picture 2) went mouldy although it did begin to germinate too which Mrs Hannett was surprised at! The barley which was left in the classroom by the window and kept damp germinated beautifully and we will attempt to plant this tomorrow. Fingers crossed the deer don’t get it!
We were learning about the importance of exercise and how it is good for us. We had lots of good ideas. Over the next few weeks we are going to look at different aspects of fitness. We were finding out about the different aspects of fitness…speed, strength, flexibility, agility and stamina. We did some activities to test how good we were.
We were engineers this afternoon making paper aeroplanes ✈️ it was a bit tricky so Mrs Bonar had to help a little. We wanted to see who’s could go the furthest and decided that we had to be up high so used the cable reels. We made predictions and wondered if we needed stronger paper or if there was different shapes we could make!
This morning we have been investigating the red cog. This helps us to think about how different emotions feel inside our bodies and where we feel them. We watched the story Marvin gets Mad to help us think about how anger bubbles and builds inside us. We then used our Emotion Work resources to help us think about other emotions. We drew around Cievah and used her body shape to help us think. We then used tickets which showed the different body parts and added some describing words to think about how these felt – shaky, cold, tight, tense, butterflies… Afterwards we worked in small teams to do the same outdoors with different emotions.
We visited the library’s van this morning, this will be our last visit this term. We have really enjoyed going and choosing our own books. We know we must look after the books and return them for others to use. We are learning that there are people in our community that can help us and we must take care of the books as they don’t belong to us and will be shared with others. We will continue to visit the library van and also learn more about our community and who can help us.
This afternoon we had another joint session. This we thought about how we grow and what we need to ensure we’re growing healthily. We decided we needed exercise, good food and water and to have birthdays so we know we’re bigger!
Use the QR code to watch the video.
We had the loveliest morning chasing the ferry to the end of The Ard where we had a wee rest and some snack. Then we walked round the path and headed back to school. We are so lucky to have this on our doorstep and will be spending lots of time over The Ard over spring and summer.
Ms Brown has been teaching us Yoga in P234. Yoga helps to make us more flexible, builds our core strength and helps us to relax. It is good for the mind and body.
This morning we looked at the yellow emotion works cog. This helps us talk about the triggers for our emotions. We used Ruby’s Worry by Tom Percival to help us think about our worries and have been busy creating a new wall display to replace The Colour Monster that we have had up for a wee while.
We went on a sunny walk round the nursery and school ground this morning looking for signs of spring🌼 we noticed that the pond look really full, Mrs Logan found two frogs under the tarp and lots and lots of frog spawn 🐸 the children were so excited!
Well what an amazing day we have had! We left school and took the big new bus to Bruichladdich distillery where we went on a tour with Lesley who taught us all about the whisky process. After that we went back to the shop and met Kate and James who are the foragers for The Botanist. They told us all about their jobs and let us make our own bases for gin. Then we headed to the brand room to meet Adam and Julie. Adam told us about his job making the whiskey for Bruichladdich and answered our tricky questions and Julie helped us realise that the things we enjoy doing provide us with skills which we could apply to jobs when we are older. We then headed down to Port Mor for our lunch where Basia, Eilidh and Ranga had been busy making us cakes for our pudding. Luckily it didn’t rain so we got to have a good run about in the park before heading to the museum of Islay Life. It was tiring so some of us had a wee snooze on the way home! The children were superb today, fantastic behaviour, awesome questions and good listening! Well done P1/2!
We got some lovely new shapes for the light box and had lots of fun today using the shape spyglasses to find the correct shapes. The children loved using the shapes as glasses 🌈
The Bee Healthy citizens group ordered some free fruit trees and hedging plants from the Tree Council last year, so we could start to make an orchard to grow our own fruit. The trees arrived on Thursday, and we had to plant them before the holidays, so today we were out planting trees and hedging in the hail and snow! We were very lucky to Have Gordon Currie and Ello come and dig a trench for the hedging plant
s for us. Hopefully this autumn we will have some fruit to pick!
I was waiting for this day for ages! I was so excited. On February 2nd we did a rugby tournament with Bowmore, Keills, Port Charlotte and Jura.
First we all got our waterproofs on so we don’t get wet. When we first stepped on the pitch there was so many people! I only knew some of them. All of our group played a wee mini game to practice. Then we got into teams to play the other schools my heart was racing!
Our class got split into teams first the other team played Bowmore. It wasn’t contact rugby it was were we had a tail and if the other team got the ball we have to pull off their tail for them to pass the ball. The other team of our class got 8-5 Bowmore won. Then it was our turn first they got a goal then we got goal. Over all we got 11-4! I learnt the proper way to throw a rugby ball in that game.
The second game we were ready because we’d already played a game. We didn’t see the other half of the class but against Port Charlotte they got 5-4 to Port Charlotte. I passed the ball a lot then we got… 11-6 to us! We were all super happy. Then we were against Jura I was nervous because we heard that they were really good. We all powered through the rain and tried our hardest. Then the score was 6-4 to them. We were all sad but happy for them.
The other half of the class lost 5-4. Then last of all we played Keils. We were all having fun and laughing its didn’t matter if we lost or won. We played with big smiles on our faces. We won again 9-2! The other team got 9-2 too! Over all we had a great time. We all had yummy Pac lunches half way through aswell.
During our maths time today, we started talking about weight. We found it tricky at first to think about the different things we would need to weigh and why. After some discussion we realised we needed weight for cooking and some people like to weigh themselves too. We had a go at weighing ourselves and were amazed at how much Mrs Hannett weighed….we think she needs to stop eating biscuits in the staff room! We then used the balancing scales to see if we could find two things that weighed the same, this was really hard. In the end we worked together to estimate how many pieces of Kappla we needed to to balance a block.
We were super excited this morning that our orbeez that we had put in the freezer had frozen. 🥶 We enjoyed experimenting with them and we all chatted about different changes that water goes through. ⭐️ We are learning the different states of water (ice, water and steam) and using words to describe it. 👣 Our next steps are to continue using ice and experimenting with it inside and outside. Maybe we might even get some frost!
We have been learning how to make Christmas gifs using Keynote @AppleEDU pic.twitter.com/HWn2sGjLKz
— Port Ellen Primary (@portellenps) December 22, 2021
We would like to wish everyone a safe and merry Christmas 🎅 pic.twitter.com/0MtMzhzIhe
— Port Ellen Primary (@portellenps) December 22, 2021
Well here it is, P1/2 class of 2021 Christmas Nativity. The children have worked so hard to create this for you and hopefully have had some fun along the way too! Thank you to all of the other classes for their contributions, we really appreciate it! We hope you enjoy it!
We went on an Ardventure this morning down the dump road and to the rocks at the far end of the Ard. We were Ardventurers! It was great fun and we hope to go more adventures and be Ardventurers again soon 🤩
We got out to the library van today and got to choose a book to bring in to nursery. Charlotte enjoyed looking through the books and chose “A Piglet Named Mercy” 📚 🐷 ⭐️ I can explore and choose books to read and listen to. 👣 We will look at and read the books we chose from the van in nursery.
When we were up the path this morning for a walk we noticed lots of different signs that help tell us different things. The construction site had lots of big danger signs right round it telling us about all the dangerous construction vehicles are hard at work. We absolutely loved watching them and even got a few waves and toots from the construction workers! ⭐️ I am learning that signs have meanings and what they are. 👣 next steps we will be making a construction site with signs and construction vehicles.
We are pleased to announce that 3 of our pupils have achieved the highly Commended place in the Scottish Civic Trust’s My Place Photography Competition this year in the primary category.
The theme this year was climate change and the pupils had to take photos of their local environment that reflected this theme.
Katie took a photo of an abandoned house with the maltings smoke in the distance and called it Distant Threat.
Caillin took a photo of the electric charging point at the pier which looks very rusty and called it Charge Up!
William took an interesting photo of different building materials and called it Green Build- Stone, Metal ,Wood.
Well done to our three photographers!
For Maths Week Scotland this year the school took part in the Maths Inside photography competition. Maths inside is a photo competition open to everyone in Scotland and asks people to take photos and then comment on the maths that relates to those photos.
There are three categories- in the home, in the wild, and climate change. We have 2 children who have received a Second Level Commended Entry and certificate; Iona for her picture of the logs from chopped down trees on the Oa in the ‘Climate change’ category and Connor for his use of maths to estimate the number of words he read in a book in the ‘In the home’ category. We also have a highly commended at Early Level for Elana’s photo of the sea and questions How many fish are left in the sea?
Even more exciting we have an overall winner at second level; Finlay for his photo of fishing boats in Port Ellen- he talked about the different maths you needed to be a fisherman in the ‘In the wild’ category. He gets a certificate and £20 Amazon gift voucher.
Even MORE exciting we have the Overall Category Winner for ‘Climate Change’; Evie for her photo of one a locally caught fish we filleted for our food topic. She wondered about the maths needed to calculate how many fish and other creatures are left in the seas and how we know if we are overfishing. She receives a £50 Amazon voucher and certificate.
We also were a highly commended school for the number and quality of our entries.
Congratulations on your success in the maths inside photo competition! This really is an enormous achievement!
Earlier in the year we had Fiona from the INHT taking us out and about around the Ard and teaching us all about peat. As a part of this project the children in P567 wrote peat poetry. The winners and runners up of the poetry competition can be read below. Well done to those who took part.
P234 went to visit the RSPB farm at Gruinart. Here is a wee video from the trip. We had a fantastic time and it was very ;hands on” – much to the children’s delight. A huge thanks to the RSPB for organising such a great visit.
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