Primary School of the Year 2022
P12 have read Katie Morag and the New Pier. The children were very excited to go on a trip down to the ferry to meet Linda and Innes who were ready to let them be ferrymen and women! We got to try on the uniform, beep the tickets, talk on the radio and even see a life jacket inflate and hear the whistle to attract attention. We had some brilliant questions about the pier, the different ferries and the jobs available at Calmac. Thank you to the team for letting us come and visit!
We had the most amazing trip to the sorting office today to learn about how our mail gets to our houses as this weeks book is Katie Morag Delivers the Mail. We were astounded by the volume of mail that our wonderful posties have to contend with everyday. We learnt all about the different areas of our island and how there are secret messages on our letters. We think our posties are fabulous and are working so hard for our community especially at the moment. 
We had a very exciting afternoon, the fire brigade came to see us! We got to use the BIG hose and make our own rainbows with the reflected water. Some of us were brave enough to try on the fire helmet and turn on the sirens!
We have had a fantastic day in the woods as part of our Maths Week Scotland learning. We walked the whole way to the woods, set up our base camp, had some healthy snack and a good explore before getting into our groups. We then had to follow our map to find all the teachers hiding at different points. After collecting all four signatures it was time to head back to base for some lunch and then a trip to the distillery to use the toilets! It was back to base camp for our final mapping activity – a scavenger hunt to collect items to work out our treat…. Thank you to all our grown ups for our yummy lunches and giving us cosy clothes to wear!
Last week in the playground Mr Heads fixed our basketball hoops! It went from rusty poles to our new and improved basketball hoops. Loads of us enjoy them. So we are writing him a thank you card. Thanks Mr Heads!
Jimmy’s mum gave us a worm world so we filled it up today with soil and put 5 worms inside from our garden wormery 🪱🪱 We talked about what the worms would do in our worm home and what they could eat 🍃 We will keep an eye on them and keep them in nursery this week then let them go back in to our womery 😄 ⭐️ We are learning about worms and the important job that they do. 👣 Continue to watch our worms and feed them.
What Is Citizenship?
Citizenship is something that Port Ellen Primary have been doing for many years, in recent years of covid the whole school has not been able to do it together. However, in covid times primary 5/6/7 have been doing it in their class by themselves. Just this year, Port Ellen Primary has been able to start doing together again. The school has been split into Citizenship groups, Bee Eco, Bee Respectful, Bee Readers and Bee Healthy. All of these groups are led by teachers of different years in our school, all of the teachers have different groups and are the leaders of the groups.
What Do We Do?
In our Citizenship group, we did a questionnaire and the older students had to help the younger students write down and read out the questions to them. As this was only recently, we went round in a circle and we introduced ourselves to everyone and told them a thing that we like or dislike. We talked about children’s rights and how we should respect them, we went through a slideshow and we had a look at different children’s rights.
Why Is Respect Important?
Respect is important because it is a happy motion also known as esteem. Respect is something that you show to someone or something a feel of happiness, gratefulness, kindness or politeness.
Iona
On Monday the 26th of September the whole school had the first citizenship meeting of the year. In citizenship there are 4 groups: the Eco group, the Healthy group, Rights respecting schools group and the reading group. In the meeting we thought of ideas for what we could do for our group.
Some of our ideas were to cook healthy food so that people would be encouraged to eat healthy. We might sell the tuck for money so that we can buy more playground equipment.
We are going to make things like smoothies and fruit salads. We will make the in the morning at the first break so you can get some food for your break as well as fruit.
We are going to run sports clubs so that people will be able to have fun while getting exercise from running and it will show people that exercise can be fun. To encourage people to be healthy we are going to make videos on why being healthy is good. To see what game to play we are going to do a survey on what game to play we are going to put games like football, dodgeball and basketball.
By Hugh
Every Thursday we go the Ramsey hall to do carpet bowls with Ms Brown the people who teach us are Eddie and Terry. There are two carpet and four people per carpet and two people in a team.
Last week we had point sheets to keep track of our score and see who wins we play five rounds per team. there is a white thing in the middle you have to get past and if you hit it your bowl is out. When you get it past you have to make it in a square box on the carpet. There is a big circle and a small one you always need to have the small one in the inside of the ball. When someone is playing and you aren’t playing you can do a job which if it goes out you can get it and put the white thing back in place. Thank you south Islay development for sponsoring us to play carpet bowls.
On Friday 16th the whole school went outside and planted a tree in memory of the Queen. The oldest and youngest pupils in the school planted the tree and we also planted tulips around the base. We held a minutes silence as well.
The Queen used to be a mechanic in the war. She has visited Islay before. She became queen at 25 years old and she was the longest serving queen, reigning for 70 years. She was still working two days before she died, and was very dedicated to the country.
As part of their transition activities, P7 went on the bus to Bowmore to do orienteering with other P7s.
The course was in the high school playground and the football pitch. You would get a map and a compass to find a thing that snips your map and it makes a shape.
At the end we were talking and playing on the grass and then went on the bus and went back to the school.
Port Ellen Primary on Islay has received a silver award in the Pearson National Teaching Awards for ‘Making a Difference – Primary School of the Year’.
The awards celebrate excellence in education and recognise the life-changing impact that an inspirational teacher can have on the lives of the young people they work with.
Port Ellen received recognition for its commitment to achieving excellence for all, enabling pupils to flourish in an environment that values every child, promotes high expectations and provides opportunities for achievement. The school has now been shortlisted to win one of just 16 Gold Awards later in the year.
Maureen Macdonald, Head Teacher at Port Ellen Primary School, said: “At Port Ellen Primary we endeavour to provide an education that enables all our children, from early years right through to primary seven, to acquire and develop the skills, knowledge and attributes needed to thrive in and to shape our ever changing world.
“We aim to give our learners the confidence to develop and celebrate their individuality and creativity and to help them see their worth and value in society.
“I feel so privileged to work alongside passionate, conscientious staff and so proud of everyone within the school community who collectively support our children to be the best they can be and to realise their potential. That’s what makes the difference!”
Argyll and Bute Council’s Policy Lead for Education, Councillor Yvonne McNeilly, said: “The Pearson National Awards are widely recognised for celebrating the best educators in the country, so it is wonderful news that Port Ellen Primary has been selected for a prestigious silver award.
“Teachers play a vital role in our young peoples’ lives. From their earliest school days right through to their senior years, a good teacher can have a massive impact. They can help young people grow in confidence and, with the right encouragement and teaching methods, they can inspire our young people to achieve their goals.
“I am extremely proud of everyone at Port Ellen for the commitment they continue to provide pupils on a daily basis and I wish them all the very best as they progress through to the gold awards.”
In school we are all using a plastic count sheet to tally mark all of the plastic items we throw out or recycle from tonight until Thursday night. On Friday we are will use these sheets to create a class graph of all of the plastic rubbish we have thrown away. This is part of our Eco Schools work to reduce plastics use.
We started to set up our vets surgery today. We have lots of patients in already and lots of resources to make them feel better. We read a story about Mog the cats visit to the vet. We also have a lovely story sack with lots of puppets that goes with a book called Old MacDonald. We sang Old MacDonald had a farm and shared the puppets.
In school we were making clubs for the school and our group is the dodgeball club and the people that run it is Teddy, Duncan, Jack and Dylan. We do it every Friday. It is for everyone in the school and if you misbehave you go off for 5 minutes. We enjoy playing dodgeball!
There is a football club on Monday at lunch break 12:30 to 1:00. It is for everyone in the school P1 to P7. It is run by William, James, Ben and Finlay.
We will split everyone in to 2 or 3 groups and do some drills and then a football match. All the teams will be a mixture of P1 to P7 so it can be fair. We enjoy coaching football skills.
On Thursday at lunch we have a club called coding club which P1-7 can come up into the fab lab and try coding there own and making games. We also teach them how to code and make there own code algrithrom and have fun.
At lunch break on a Wednesday there is a rounders club. It’s run by Mya, Katie, Callie and Thomas. This is part of our leadership and citizenship activities.
This is what we tell people that don’t know how to play it. You will have a bat or a tennis racket in your hand, Someone will be throwing the ball to you. You get three chances to hit the ball, Even if you miss it on your third try you still have to run. There is also four hoops on the ground the first one is the base that’s where you hit the ball. The second one is in the middle left that’s where you can run to as your first base before someone, and then there is fourth base. If you run all the way round you get a rounder. We enjoy playing with the school at lunchtimes!
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.
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.
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