Primary School of the Year 2022
On Friday the 14th of June Port Ellen Primary school hosted our sports day where there were races for nursery all the way to primary 7. The winner of the inter house relay was Texa, second place Orsay and third was Nave. The winner of the sports champion boys was Thomas Edwards in 1st Freddy Munro in second and third was Hugh Mackinnon. For girls it was Ayla Denby in first Evie Wood in second and third was Ella Barford. The winner out of all houses was Texa.
Star warts is an amazing panto that is set in outer space. It is about a mother who calls a doctor because her son has spots and the doctor leaves with the baby. Little does she know that the baby would gone on to become the umpire. The umpire is an evil villain who is shrinking galaxies into tennis balls when suddenly one goes missing and he tries to capture the thief by hiring 3 idiot space rangers.
I thought that this was an amazing panto. The acting was incredible, and the scenes were amazing everything was impeccable. The solos in the songs were outstanding and the dancing was perfect. The makeup was brilliant
For me, the dance battle was my favourite part it was closely followed by Lukewarm water’s solo who was acted by Thomas Edwards.
“This panto was amazing I thought it was a 10/10.” says Rachel Frances Heads. “The panto was very enjoyable.” says Freddy John Allan Munro.
By Hugh
Towards the end of November 2023 Primary’s 1,2,4,5,6 and 7 wrote to Blue Peter about a book we liked and drew a picture from the book . I wrote about Diary of a Wimpy kid. About a month later we got badges from Blue Peter and a letter and we also got special Blue Peter cards. All of the people that got badges or cards had a big picture together.
On June 12th 2023 Port Ellen primary school had a sports day for everyone from nursery to P7. We all had different races like the flat race, sack race and obstacle course. At the end of the sports day we had an inter house relay for the p5,6 7s. For the relay the captains chose 4 of the fastest runners form their house in primary 5,6 or 7 and then pick an order. After the relay they announced the winners for the sports championships the winner for boys was Finlay in second Hugh and in third Dylan the first for girls was Chloe in second Iona and in third Evie. The overall winning house by points for the whole of sports day was Nave. For winning sport day Nave you get a plaque/trophy.
On Thursday the 18th of may 2023 PortEllen primary school had a health and wellbeing afternoon. Some of the people that came to help were the Coast guard, MYFOS and we had some doctors in to talk about baby massage.
We were all split into groups. The groups were all different letters going from A to F. I was in group E. We all rotated around the different stations. The first station we did was internet safety with Mrs Clark then we moved on to dyslexia awareness and we kept moving on until we had gone through all eight the last one we did was orienteering with Ms Tait. My favorite station was the station where we learned about how much sugar is in different drinks. It’s my favorite because I found it interesting learning about the different amounts of sugar there are in different drinks. But we also got to make a sugar free pizza that we got to eat and they were delicious. Then we got to go home
What is Endeavour?
Endeavour is a project that must be ambitious you must learn more skills to do with your Endeavour. Firstly, you must make long term planning for your Endeavour. Secondly you must complete your Endeavour Independently. Thirdly you must also Write a letter to who is a professional that does the same thing you are doing for Endeavour. Fourthly you must have something to show in the Endeavour fair. My Endeavour project is game design. Endeavour lasts from April to July.
What is game design?
Game design is where people make a game using a software of their choice. The game can be anything from a maze game to a space shooter game.
I am making my game on Kodu. My game is going to be a maze game where you must collect missiles to shoot at aliens and you get points for killing one you need ten points to get to the next level.
photo of Kodu
Some of the things I have done are: A prototype game on paper, a start to my maze and some tutorials on how to make my game.
The next things I must do are to finish my game and to maybe start to make a website and prepare for the Endeavor fair.
I hope to make a game that people can play.
The One Show came to film our school because we had won the Pearson National Teaching award for Primary School of the Year. P5/6/7 were filmed at the woods where we got to do special activities like orienteering.
We arrived at the woods and got sorted into our clans the clans were MacDonald clan, MacLeod clan, MacKinnon clan and Macrae clan. Each clan had a teacher and when we went to get the orienteering flag and bring back the answer from the flag and give it to the teacher the answers were all in Gaelic the clans were split into two groups one group would find the colour one group would find the object. We thought that going to the woods was really fun.
In the woods we were lighting a fire to cook bread on a willow stick. But we needed to whittle the stick to get the bark off the stick. Then we had to sterilize the stick in the fire and then we put bread dough to cook it over the fire. Then we ate the bread and it was really delicious. After we got to try light the Kelly kettle with Mrs. Hannett. AND WAS REALLY FUN.
While we were in the woods part of the film crew were in the school filming the other classes do their activities like doing the beach clean.
Once the P567s came back from the woods, we had to get changed a quick as possible because there was a big surprise in the hall.
Once we sat down, we all got ready for the big surprise- We had won the Primary School of the year award!!! Then Joe (the tv presenter) said that he brought the choir back together without us knowing. The P3 and P4 were practicing their song S’ann an Ilè. But when they performed it, they did it with Skipinnish!
It felt amazing that Skipinnish were here! They sang songs like Walking on the waves. It was so cool! We Thought that it was amazing seeing them that some of us got our t-shirt or jumper signed. We are really proud of winning the award and had great fun with the One Show!
By James Norwood and Brody Shakespeare.
In school we made a distillery and a company for whisky. Our group was called Port An Eas. We made the distilleries in groups of five people and our group had Evie, Hugh, Connor, Iona and Calin . Everyone in the group had a different role in our Distillery: Evie is milling and mashing, Hugh is casks and ageing Connor is distillation, Iona is malting and peat and Callin is fermentation.
To make our whisky drinks we had lots of whisky smells and we had to pick the three smells that we liked best. Together we chose rose, caramel and coconut. A few Days later we made teas that replicated the smells that we chose with different flavours of tea. You can make it with 4tsp of black cat caramel tea, 3tsp of rose black tea ,1 pukka relax tea bag and 6 leaves of stevia.
We made are distillery with card and some modelling card to make it stand up because it is a circle it couldn’t stand up on its on own so we cut up strips of card to hold it up.
We have been learning about corncrakes with David Wood from the RSPB. We made corncrake books in groups on Book Creator. We made one about a game called egg hunters. We had to have rules that were you had at least 1 hider and at least 1 hunter to play. In our group we had William Campbell, Hugh Mackinnon, Thomas Edwards and Duncan Campbell. There was five different groups that made them they were called Crazy Corncrakes, Corncrake runners, Corncrake Escape and Corncrake Kahoot.
Scrumptious Scrummy Spring rolls
On Friday Hugh, Finlay and Callin made spring rolls Recipe for spring rolls: Ingredients: pepper, courgette, spring Onions, a tin of bamboo stalks, six carrots, spring roll wrappers and hoisin sauce.
Step 1 cut up a courgette, pepper, spring Onions, carrots and bamboo all into thin slices and put them all into a mixing bowl with the hoisin sauce and mix it all around
Step two boil some water an put it into a bowl and dip the rappers in and get them coverd in the water
Step three get the rappers out of the water and put them onto a baking tray then get some filling and put in the middle of the rappers fold the bottom and top on the filling then rolls them the other way.
Step four cook them in the oven at two hundred degrees. Then you have delicious spring rolls!
