NEWS

We have had a mathstastic week in Port Ellen primary!  All the classes have been busy outside snapping pictures for the Maths Inside competition, where you have to take photos of the maths you see in the world around you.  P567 have been baking cupcakes this week using their maths measuring skills and had a masterclass online from Peter Sawkins from the Great British Bake off.  P234 had to find their way out of a class escape room using their maths skills, it was very tricky but we can report that they all managed to escape!  P12 have been using the story Cuthbert goes on and on to learn all about infinity! 

P567 have been learning all about sustainable food choices this term as well as developing their cooking skills.  They have looked at food miles and created their own low food miles bramble jelly and rosehip jelly from foraged local produce.  We also made harvest chutney from locally grown vegetables.  After learning some key chopping skills, how to make bread and how to scale, gut and fillet a fish they chose and cooked healthy meals from around the world.  During maths week Scotland they used measuring skills to create a range of cupcakes: bramble, rosehip, citrus, chocolate orange and bubble-gum flavour.  Finally they chose to give a gift of the products they had made to the people in the community who helped during Covid.

Primary 1 and 2 had already collected and distributed food for the senior citizens in the village.  On Tuesday we delivered the 6 gift bags we made up to say thank you to our local covid heroes​.  Each bag contained jars of the jellies and chutney and a selection of the cupcakes.  P234 made lovely harvest loaves of bread to share as well.  They delivered the bags to the Co-op, the Post Office, the Ferry, Local Carers, the Doctors surgery and the School.  As a community school we feel it is important to support and say thank you to our wonderful community for supporting us!

For our topic we are doing food. And we are doing a healthy plate. To  have a healthy plate 45% needs to be  vegetables 30% needs to be carbohydrates 10% protein 14% dairy 1% oil and spread. Scotland is one of the worst healthy counties in the word. Because we eat so much sugar it gets us more heart disease and strokes. Our five a day should be the size of our hand.  So eat a balanced diet!

The Be Eco group is all about trying to be more eco friendly during life because we want to stop climate change and global warming. The people that run the group are James Norwood, Connor Stevenson, Jacob Hart and Hugh Mackinnon.

Some of are goals are to make bee bombs so that we can plant more flowers, and another one of our goals is to plant some more trees around the school. There are lots of other goals for our group, but there are to many to mention.

In school we were cutting different foods. One of them was potatoes and we were watching videos of the different cuts which were the bridge and the claw grip and peeling.  Be careful because peeler is sharp! Some people made chips by cutting the potatoes in a an angle and we also made mash potatoes so we used a peeler and peeled the potatoes and then used the bridge grip to cut them in two.

We are doing citizenship which is were there are groups that are going to help the school. We are the mindful group which is going to help kids be more calm and work harder on there work. It will be during morning break. We will also be doing healthy tuck.

The people that own the group is Katie, Chloe and Duncan.  Chloe is the magnificent manger, Duncan is the radical researcher, Katie is the radiant reporter! Chole and Duncan made an amazing sign for mindful group and our moto is lend a helping hand.

For tuck we are going to make smoothies and raspberry cookies. We went round every class seeing what everyone’s favorite fruit is. The most popular was strawberries. Then after the survey we went down to Mrs. Holyoake to see the amounts we need. Once we got all the ingredients we told Mrs. Clark and she bought all the ingredients away. Today we are going to make our smoothies for tuck we will be using strawberries, blueberry’s and bananas. The tuck is going to be free up in the fab lab.

A few days ago we made naan bred and butter chicken the people that made it is Evie, Jack, Chloe and Duncan.  Butter chicken is from India and this is the recipe for butter chicken and the ingredients.

Ingredients

1 boneless chicken

Full Fat plain yogurt

Olive oil

Ginger garlic paste

Spices 

Method

1 In a medium bowl, mix all marinade ingredients with some seasoning. Chop the chicken into bite size pieces and toss with the marinade. Cover and chill in the fridge for 1 hour overnight.

2   In a large saucepan and heat the oil. Add the onion garlic , green chili ginger and some seasoning. Fry on a  medium heat for 10 minutes or until soft.

3 Add the spice with tomato puree cook for a further 2 mins  until fragrant, then add the stock and marinated chicken . cook for 15 mins and add any remaining chicken left in the bowl. Simmer for 5 mins , then sprinkle with the toasted  almonds .

It is not that hard to make and this is what it look’s like but you don’t need any rice in though.

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!

Mya, Jacob, Katie and Teddy made chili. Mya made the Guacamole by cutting a  avocado twisting it then squeeze the side with the stone in it into the bin. Then she cut lines in the avocado and scraped it into a bowl so that it was easier to mash. So she got a fork and mashed it firmly. What you need to do next is squeeze some lime into the bowl and add some salt and coriander. Then put it in the fridge for about one hour.

0n Friday we made a fruit salad that had oranges, grapes, apple, honey and strawberries.

How we made it: we chopped the grapes, apples and strawberries. we then grated the orange and then put it in the bowl with the rest of the fruit.  Then we put the honey in it to make it taste great and sweet.

After we made the fruit salad our whole class  came in and  we ate it  and it was delicious and sweet .

P5,6,7 has been split in to citizen groups. One of the groups has been based on the recent progress of the shop in the box it has donated lots of  school and we are buying lots of stuff. The  group is called ‘the sports group’ the members are me, Teddy, Ben and William. The school had a vote to show what we should  buy, the wining thing was a climbing wall with 29 votes. We might also buy a climbing frame with 14 votes. Even though it does not have many votes we think we might repair the round house. Only 3 people voted for it I think it will be better than ever before (it actually was only 2 people and 1 teacher one of those people being me.) We are also hoping to have  a dodge ball tournament  and a football club. 

The Be Creative citizenship group is doing a contest for drawings that are going on tea towels or bags. There will be posters in each class Telling the rules on what the drawings needs there will also be one in the steam room.

You can only draw something related to Islay like a distillery, animals like a deer, Kildalton cross and Bowmores church. Your name must be on the the other side of the page along with what  class that you are in.

The kids that go to Port Ellen JRS FC  get to go to  different places in Argyll and Bute to play against a lot of other great teams over Argyll and Bute football teams. There is 7 teams that we are playing against. We are playing 7 home games and 7 away games but this time we played Lochgilphead Red stars F.C.

We had Calum in goals, William, James and Ben in defence, Teddy, Murry, Katie and Dylan were in wing, Mya and Finlay were in Midfield and Jack was our striker.  We won 2-0.  It was great fun!

Mr McDermid came into school with instruments  and he gave us some instruments and taught us a bit. He gave me a trombone  and he taught me a bit and he gave me a book that can teach me how to play and then a can do it and teach my family. He brought some other instrument and Finlay and James and William and James and me got trombones and Finlay got a tuba.

On Tuesday primary 5/6/7 had a google meet with Niall Kirkpatrick. He answered some questions of ours, told us all about what it was like when he used to work as a chef , and told us lots of cool facts like the most common dish he cooked was macaroni and fish fingers.

Did you know chefs that work on ferries make at least four hundred dishes a day? Ferries with cafés or restaurants normally use at least ten litres of milk a day on macaroni and drinks [not all ferries]. Normally people think that sharper knives cut you more often but actually blunt knives cut you more frequently; Sharper knives give you a more painful and sore cut.  Working as a chef would be interesting I think.

We have new citizenship groups this year in Port Ellen, read more about them below:

My endeavor is dog grooming and I love doing it because I get to be near other dogs. I have groomed lots of dogs here is a few of there names Patch, Sandy, Pippa, Baloo and Imogen.  Shona Isla has groomed lots of dogs. Some times I help tidy up the dogs hair when we are done. The only dog that I have groomed is my dog called Patch because my mum and dad said that I could trim her. I have to have the owners permission before I can trim the dog.

Welcome to my Endeavor, my Endeavor is British Sign Language. A Endeavor is  where everyone in primary 5/6/7 do an independent project for everyone to participate in . And I have been successful because I know the whole alphabet in BSL also I am learning phrases. I haven’t been successful in making a poster sometimes because I had to bin most of mine but I have one now. Once I started my Endeavor I didn’t know any sign language or anything about it but now I know quite a bit. Because I can spell things in BSL alphabet but it takes a bit to find out I know it sort of by heart.

For my Endeavor I built a little chicken coop for chicks that I hatched.  I built the chicken coop out of wood with nails and mesh. I put a brooder in the coop then I put water in it and food so they won’t die.  I got a box  so they are high up. There is four chicks; 1 boy 3 girls and their names are Chirpy, Cupcake, Wirpy and cheap. I made sways about chickens like what food they eat like grit, oyster shell,  corn laying pelts,  fruit.   Chicks need mushed up chicken food. In their laying boxes they need straw so they can lay nice eggs.  They have now a new home with 2 floors the upstairs in for sleeping and the down stair is for playing and where the food and drink is.  My big chickens have a swing and a ramp.

For my Endeavor I did natural art that is were you make art from around so If you were in a forest I could get leaves that are different and make something. Most of my art has been with stones.  The first is two stacks of stones that have been placed biggest to smallest  the other is white stones with black slates in shape of circle.

I have also made clay models, two done and one in the making.  The first is a oval with waves in the top on the sides is markings that are like lighting. My second one is a  horn that goes to the right the third is a circle with in the middle. I have wrote a poster on natural art also I have wrote an Endeavor letter to Andrew Goldsworthy and he responded. I have done all of my work before my main Endeavor work is done.

This year for my Endeavor I was doing coding  which was really challenging  because I have never coded before. I learnt how to code a plane, boat and a motorbike to go fast and to shoot rockets at people and I even made a missive track and some jumps on the way. To code the game I use a Xbox 360 and Teddy also does the same endeavor so we work together.   I have completed 3 levels a game for people to play at the endeavor fair.  The 3 levels are a race, a maze and a games were you have to shoot rockets . Me and Teddy have been working really hard  on the game for Friday at the endeavor fair but only p 567 can play due to coronavirus . At the fair I would like to do a contest . The contest will be a race and  who ever wins will get a prize . For the race the people will be using an Xbox 360 controller or a keyboard which is a lot harder than a controller.

My Endeavour is the history of Lego. I have find out how Lego has changed over the years. And how Lego has been one of the most successful company’s in the world.

I have in my Endeavour…

• Make a sway.
• built a Lego car at home.
• built a Lego house in school.
• started a poster.

I’ve learnt how Lego has changed in its models and in prices and how the company has been passed down to father to son. I wrote to the head of Lego in Denmark and he wrote back to me.

My Endeavor project is the eye, and I have had a lot of fun with it. Here is a list of things I have completed with evidence.

• Report on sway about eyes, it has loads of facts about the eye and has lots of pictures and diagrams.
• Letter to my grandpa who is an optometrist here in Islay and in Oban.
• Set of instructions about keeping glasses and contacts clean.
• Made a model eye and labeled it on seesaw and painted it
• I also have done lots of research on glasses and eyes and its very interesting

I have finished almost everything I want completed and am very proud of my work, although I feel I need to hurry and complete the last few things.