News

We are absolutely delighted to share that Port Ellen Primary School has achieved the UNICEF UK Gold: Rights Respecting Schools Award.

This is a very special achievement for our whole school community and recognises the hard work, commitment and enthusiasm of our pupils, staff, families and partners. We are incredibly proud that children’s rights are not just something we learn about at Port Ellen, but something that is woven through the life and work of our school.

During our accreditation visit, the assessor spoke with pupils, staff, parents and members of the Senior Leadership Team. The final report recognised that children’s rights are “embedded across the school” and “underpin every facet of school life.” It also highlighted the confident way our pupils can talk about their rights, explain why they matter, and describe how they are relevant to their own lives and to the lives of children around the world.

The report praised the school’s clear strategic approach to embedding rights, the passionate commitment of staff and other duty bearers, and the strong focus on health, wellbeing, inclusion and positive representation. It also recognised the important role pupils play in leading change through citizenship groups, pupil voice, campaigning, fundraising and community action.

We are particularly pleased that the assessor saw how children at Port Ellen are becoming confident rights holders who understand that their views matter. Pupils spoke about taking action in school, in the village and beyond, including beach cleans, the “poo patrol” campaign, Fairtrade work, fundraising, writing to CalMac, and sharing their learning with the wider community.

This award reflects the work of many people. We would like to thank our pupils, who speak so confidently and passionately about rights; our staff team, who work hard to make rights visible and meaningful every day; our parents and carers, who support our rights-respecting ethos; and our wider community partners, who help bring this learning to life.

Achieving Gold is not the end of our journey. We will continue to build on this work by helping children explore dignity, deepen their understanding of global citizenship, and develop further opportunities to challenge injustice and take action for children’s rights locally and globally.

We are extremely proud of everyone involved. This award belongs to the whole Port Ellen Primary School community.

We are delighted to announce that Port Ellen Primary School has achieved the Gold Reading Schools Award! This fantastic achievement recognises our commitment to developing a strong reading culture across the school, where children are encouraged to read for enjoyment, explore a wide range of books and share their love of reading with others.

A huge well done to all our pupils and staff who have helped make reading such an important part of life at Port Ellen!

For my last Endeavour fair, I wanted to pick something that meant a lot to me, so I picked first aid because when I am older, I want to be a doctor. Endeavour is a thing we do every year since p1-7, we pick a topic and we work on this topic for 6 weeks and on endeavour day we show it to parents and the entire school.  

For the actual first aid bit, I learned how to do CPR and how it stands for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation. And how CPR does not restart the heart but helps pump the blood to start it. Then I learned how to put someone in the recovery position and how to open the airway.  

I believe this was one of my best Endeavours and I would gladly do this again! 

The Recovery position

 

My endeavour this year was my last one, so I had to make it count. I chose interior design because I never even thought about doing it until Mrs Clark brought it up, I knew it would be an amazing for my last endeavour especially because I could make so much with this project.  

The first thing I knew I wanted to make was a model of a room and up-cycle something. I ended up making a mood board, a mini room and up-cycled furniture. The progress I made was super good because of what I had on my table. I had lots of compliments on my furniture because I showed photos of my before and after of my stool and my bedside table so people could see the changes I made. 

This year was super successful in my opinion because I achieved everything I wanted to, I had to overcome lots of things like my drawers not fitting but it all worked out in the end. 

Hello, my name is Kirsty, for my project this year was volcanology and geology. If you don’t know what Endeavour is Endeavour is an ambitious project that we choose.  on Endeavour we share half of a table and this year I shared a table with Ellouise. I set up my table with rocks such as pumice, a small part of a volcanic dike, two ammonites, fools gold, focalized water splats, and a rock with two piddocks in it.

When the fair started I was just talking about why I chose my project and answering questions that people asked me such as what is t4hat, how is it made, and what was challenging. I choose my project because I like looking a rocks and I also like watching videos of volcanoes erupting.

My project was games design. The reason I chose games design was because I love video games and they really entertain me.

“Kodu” is the application I used to program my game. It is easy to use and makes coding simple.

It uses “WHEN” and “DO” commands, for example WHEN the program sees an apple, the DO is used to walk towards it. It’s a fun simple application and I really enjoyed working with it. 

There was a lot of challenges on the way like how to restart the level when you die. It was a very long process but we got there in the end. I have really enjoyed using Kodu and presenting it thanks for coming to the endeavor.

Hello, my name is Soarcha. For my project i did illustration, i was working on colour theory, contrasting colours, anatomy and perspective. i managed to make two posters, one focusing on colours while the other explaining tips for perspective and anatomy and a few colour tips. I made some drawings to put up on display like a small story showing sketches and a finished result, i also put my first time trying perspective on display too.

My project was very ambitious, i had a plan in mind a few months before endeavour day, i practiced for a long time trying to get anatomy mastered, although i still have lots to learn i think i have the basic muscles and proportions just right though, though my skill in perspective isn’t that good i still need to practice a lot I’m not able to put characters in backgrounds yet which is something i should practice.

I was sharing my table with Honor at first but she had a CPR dummy, it was to big for a shared table so she got her own, then i shared a table with George, i liked my project because i enjoy drawing and i wanted to push my art skills to the next level so i can draw more things, i enjoy a challenge but not one that would make me rage if i got something wrong, that’s why i picked illustration, i thought my endeavour was a great idea so i chose it and started practicing i used channels on Youtube for tutorials, but the channels i used the most were DrawLikeaSir, and Shrimpy. I made a blooket and let some people play it too, but the internet wasn’t the best today so sometimes it didn’t work, that was what i did for my endeavour!

 

For my endeavour I done quilting, I chose a patchwork quilt because it inspired me with its colours and patterns.

The quilt was up on display on my table I also had pretty pieces of fabric that I’m  going to make into a quilt but I haven’t finished it yet.  Lots of people came up to my stand to look at my quilt some people even asked me how to make a quilt.

We have been working on endeavour since the end of march to june, everyone worked really hard.

This year I done woodwork for my Endeavor and i loved it. I done it because my dad is a joiner and carpenter and I love his work it is so neat . I think i done a very well I think I done better than last year because last year i done sea glass jewelry and that was a bit rubbish. my project is really ambitious because if you cut a piece of wood wrong then the whole thing is ruined and I done a risk assessment for if i got cut. Today at the fair I was showing tools and my project with the dremal that I have Thanks

For my Endeavour this year I chose fishing because I thought that if I picked something I liked learning about it would be fun to do so I chose fishing.

products

My project had 3 things at the end and it was my mackrel patty my website and book that tells you about fish on Islay in fun ways.

Difficultys

When I was doing my projects I came across lots of problems such as

. tangles

. organising

. timing

and lots more but in the end I managed to get out alive and end up finishing successfully.

How was my project ambitus.

My project was ambitus because I wasn’t just fishing I was learning new techniques learning how to make a website and even having to go out with my uncle to lift up creels and they were really heavy

What have I learnt

I have learnt new ways to fish fillet and cook fish and now pulling up creels is a lot easier than when I first started

The children in P5-7 had a fantastic afternoon with the RAF coding and designing robots to deliver a special package to a satellites in space 🛰️ 👩🏻‍🔧👨🏻‍🔧 ! Well done for excellent teamwork, perseverance and problem solving 🌟

P67 went on a geology trip to Saligo bay with David Webster to learn all about Islay’s geology.  They identified rocks on the beach, had a go at splitting their own rocks and even made volcanoes! A fantastic day learning all about the geology of Islay and being geologists! Thanks to David Webster and the Field Centre for providing a wonderful learning experience. 🌟 We are learning about the geology of Islay 🌍 Article 29 We have a right to education that develops our talents.

 

P1/2 were amazing at performing the nativity on 17th of December  called the Knock Knock nativity. I felt really engaged with this performance because the children were outstanding and did an amazing job at playing their part.  We also had some amazing narrators and some great fluffy little sheep, which were performed by the nursery!

One of the most amazing things in this nativity was when they were using Makaton in their songs because it is a really hard thing to learn and it fitted in with the nativity.

Over all this nativity was outstanding and we loved to watch it.

This year we had a Christmas Fair on Saturday 6th December 2025.

In this Christmas Fair there was a baking Stall which had: Chocolate, Cupcakes, Waffles, Biscuits.

Bottle Stall which people brought different kinds of bottles like: Wines, Whiskey, Beer and Juice.

School Stalls had: Reindeer food made by The ELC, P12 made Christmas Tree Decorations, P234 made Board for Santa, P56 made T-light holders and Flapjack, P67 made Stockings and Sock Puppets.

In total we raised over £2000 towards the P7 trip.

Hope you have a lovely Christmas and a Happy New year.

The cupcake challenge was on the 6th of December and there was the cupcake challenge. On the 4th of December there was four groups and the designs were Christmas tree, penguin, snow men and the grinch .

We wanted to know what flavours and decorations that we want on the cupcakes, so we took a survey to see what the most popular flavour and design. The most popular flavour was caramel, and the popular design was penguin.

The cakes sold out at the fair!

Captains meetings: we have one one a month and we have houses in school which are Nave Texa Orsay. We meet in classrooms and ask our house what changes they want to make in school. The right we use in captain meetings are number 12 the right to have you voice heard.

Roles as a captain

Captains don’t just give people points, we have to do roles like we have snack and toothbrushing, lunches and cloak room and finally scrap store. We also tally points; you get points for doing something good. Then on a Friday we go round and grab the sheet and we have this thing in excel that has all the pupils names on it and then we write that amount of numbers that they good and we write the total on a board down the stairs.  The Captains board is also something e have to make sure is up to date.  I like being a captain.

by April

On Friday 26th September our parents came in to the school to do some problem solving with us in the afternoon. We played many different math games such as square it, Rummikub, Got it, Hit the button and Poly plug rectangle. We sat in groups, and we told people how to play. There were six groups, and we all took turns on teaching our parents how to play the games. By the end of the afternoon lots of people were looking at different games. We had bored games and games on our laptops.

There were some hard games and some easy games like fruity totals was a game where you had to try and get the number of the fruit and add them together to make a certain number, and treasure hunt where you had to guess where the treasure is by typing in the correct nets. We could go and see the other classes with our parents to see what games they had.  The games were to help us develop our problem solving skills.

For maths week Scotland this year we were looking at the theme of Wild Maths along with Fin Finity, the Maths Week Scotland Mascot.

In ELC they packed some snack and headed round to the secret garden for a swing in the hammock and to play some number games. The children love playing hide and seek in the garden so they hid all our number spoons round the garden and had to find them. They even hid with their numbers which was also super fun 🤩 we love numbers!

Primary 1 and 2 went on wild adventures with Fin Finity.  They started their Maths Week Scotland adventure to Edinburgh Zoo! They visited the penguins first and had to calculate how many fish the King, Gentoo and Rockhopper penguins needed to eat. They thought that drawing out fish might help them but soon realised it took ages…so they counted 60 fish with cubes instead. They then found out that the King penguins would eat half of the fish, the Gentoo penguins would eat 1/3 and the Rockhopper penguins would have the rest so they needed to work out what half of and 1/3 of 60 was. After that they needed to find out how many fish to feed each penguin. They discovered that there were 6 King penguins, 5 Gentoo penguins and 5 Rockhoppers that were needing feed so we split our totals amount these. Lots of hard work!

In Primary 2,3,4 they worked with their P6/7 buddies to build different 3D shapes using playdough and straws. The children carefully recorded the shape they created, how many straws they used, and how many playdough balls were needed. The children had to problem solve and brain storm how to construct the 3D shapes without them falling/breaking!

Primary 5 and 6 also worked with their buddies on Fin Finity maths challenges, making symmetrical pictures.

Finally on the Friday we invited parents into the school to have a go at some problem solving challenges, and even see if they could beat us at times tables!

On the 8th of September 2025, the P7s went to Smoke Free Me. At smoke free me, they were teaching us about how bad smoking is and how we should never accept a cigarette from a random person or just anyone in general. 

 Instead of them just saying “don’t smoke its bad” they were acting it out and playing games with us. One of the games we needed to ring and bell and tell us the answers that were on the wall, the first question was how much toxic and harmful substances were in one cigarette, everyone was shouting out answers like 50 and 15 but turns out we were not even close! The answer was… 5000! And turns out 50 of them cause cancer. Cigarettes contain 600 ingredients and 4,000 chemicals! including tar, nicotine, carbon monoxide. 

Even though they were being very educational, they were also very funny! One of them dressed up as a dog because he was explaining how smoking can also affect your pets as well, even in the songs they were telling us facts! 

The bad guy in smoke free me was trying to find “replacements” because nearly 228,000 people had stopped smoking, the bad guy was trying to recruit us into smoking but remembering how many chemicals were in cigarettes we all shouted no! Near the end of smoke free me the bad guy was showing the pros of smoking, but the good guys were saying the cons like how Your lung can be very damaged or you could have heart disease.  

Then before I knew it, I got picked to do something for the good guys, me, April and one other person needed to put on something! I needed to put a hand that had bandages around it, April needed to put on a hand that was turning black and then the other guy needed to put on these glasses that were bloodshot eyes! Turns out all these things could happen if you smoke. I think everyone in that moment knew they that they would never touch or smoke a cigarette. 

By not smoking were following Article 24 Right to good health. I loved going to smoke free me I would do it again if I had the chance.