Leswalt Primary School

John Cooper, Conservative MP for Dumfries and Galloway, visited Leswalt P6-7 this afternoon as part of their Democracy and Government topic. John explained to the pupils about his role as an MP – representing all 78,000 citizens in D&G at the Parliament in London.

He explained that he works in the House of Commons and gets to ask the Prime Minister questions. The House of Commons is controlled by the Speaker and he isn’t allowed to speak until he’s been invited to do so.

He told the pupils how he became an MP, starting off as a journalist for the local Free Press, before becoming a Special Advisor to Conservative MP at the time, Alistair Jack. He then spent the last year canvassing D&G constituents before being elected on 4th July this year. He very kindly left a copy of his Maiden Speech, which all MPs have to do after being elected, otherwise they can be kicked out of parliament.

John also takes part in votes to introduce new bills and laws. He showed pupils his parliamentary pass which he uses to enter the House of Commons and either the Aye Lobby or No Lobby, depending on how he is going to vote.

Pupils got the opportunity to ask him some questions to help them learn a little more. They learned what he was interest in when he was at school; what his favourite and least favourite aspect of the job is; and how long he is elected for.

A huge thank-you to John for giving up his afternoon to visit us (especially given that he was in London at the parliament yesterday!).

Primary 7 pupils travelled to the Stranraer Campus of Dumfries & Galloway College this morning, as part of Scottish Careers Week. The event was organised by Skills Development Scotland and we were joined by Castle Kennedy, Glenluce and Sheuchan Primaries. After an introduction from Kathryn and Lucy (SDS), we had 3 activities that we worked our way around throughout the morning.

The first activity was learning where the Careers Advisers are located at Stranraer Academy and what their role is. We then played a ‘would you rather…?’ game considering different aspect of various jobs, e.g. would you rather have a job that involved people or animals? We then split into 3 small groups and were given items to look at and had to list any job linked to those items – the careers advisers were impressed that 1 group got over 20 jobs and said that was the most that any school had thought of! Finally, we looked at the My World of Work website and learned about the job profiles sections which helps us to learn about different career options.

Next, we were given a tour of the college. We explored the various college courses that are on offer, including childcare, cookery, carpentry and construction, mechanic, hairdressing and beauty.

Finally, we went into the Skills Development Scotland office in the college. We worked in teams to complete a problem solving challenge – we had to imagine we were stuck on a deserted island surrounded by sharks. There were 5 people on the island with us – a scientist, bodybuilder, banker, doctor and pensioner. The rowing boat that we had could only hold us and 3 others so we had to decide which 3 people we’d take on the boat with us. We used lots of skills throughout this challenge – communicating, listening, compromising, team work and problem solving.

To finish off the morning, we all gathered together and participated in a little competition to win a £10 Greggs voucher – we had 1 questions to answer regarding the careers management skills we had learned about and all slips were put into a box and the winner drawn. Unfortunately, our schools didn’t win, but we had a brilliant morning learning all about the various jobs and careers on offer to us, what options exist locally and how to get advice.

World Children’s Day was on Wednesday 20th November and to celebrate this, both classes at Leswalt came together yesterday morning to take part in a live assembly.

This linked well with our work on Rights Respecting School work we have been doing over the past few years and continue to work on. The focus of World Children’s Day this year was looking at climate change and how we need to address issues with it in order to secure a safe future for the children of today.

We learned about initiatives that other schools have been implementing where pupils identified an issue that was causing environmental impact and how they made changes to address it, such as decorating the drains around the school to show that the ‘sea starts here.’ Hopefully this keeps our pupils inspired to continue being the sustainability superstars they have always been!

As part of Book Week Scotland, P1-3 parents and family members were invited into school yesterday to find out about the Bookbug (P1) and Read, Write, Count (P2-3) bags that are provided to children by the Scottish Government and Scottish Book Trust. We looked through the contents of the bags – each child received between 2 and 4 books, an activity booklet, and either a card game and maths resource, or a magnetic whiteboard and magnetic numbers to take home and keep. We also looked at all of the online resources that are available to support children’s learning at home using the bags.

We then went into the classroom and gifted the children with their bags – they were very excited to get everything out and have a go at some of the games. We had P2 pupils putting their problem solving skills to the test with a Tangram; P1 pupils practising their numbers and sums on the magnetic whiteboard; and P3 pupils enjoying the ‘act it out’ charades game using the pack of cards. And to top it off, there were biscuits on offer for everyone to enjoy while they looked through their bags. I’m, not sure what the pupils enjoyed more though – the bags or the biscuits!!

Thank-you to all of the parents and family members who were able to make yesterday’s session. If you were unable to make it, please look in your child’s school bag for their Bookbug/Read, Write, Count bag – there are lots of beautiful resources for you to enjoy together to support literacy and numeracy at home.

As part of our Democracy and Government topic, we enjoyed a chat with MSP Finlay Carson to find out more about his role in representing us in Dumfries and Galloway!

He joined us via Microsoft Teams from the car as he travelled through to Castle Douglas. He’d had a busy morning of meetings in Stranraer at the Millennium Centre about a proposed new site for the railway station, a visit to the Riverside Centre in Newton Stewart and was heading home to deal with about 70 emails before heading up to Edinburgh where he is based midweek!

Mr Carson told us about the teamwork involved in his job – he works with 4 others who help him with speeches, research and organisation of his week. He meets with people in his local area on a Monday and a Friday and works at the Scottish Parliament Tuesday to Thursday working on committees, discussing issues in the Debating Chamber and meeting with cross party groups. He is the Convener of the Rural Affairs Committee which ties in well with his farming background and they discuss agriculture, wildlife, the countryside and , more recently, have been involved in looking at dog welfare in relation to the puppy smuggling and puppy farm news reports. These committees are set up to make a difference – and they really do!

Ben G, Ben T, Roman and Ewan were our Confident Individuals who asked questions which were sensible and well thought-out. We learned lots about the life of an MSP. Perhaps one day, it might be one of us representing our area!

UNCRC Article 13 Sharing Thoughts Freely

Article 24 – Health, Water, Food, Environment

Article 29 – Aims of Education

Pupils arrived at school today looking as if they had just rolled out of bed! However that was not the case – today was Children in Need so we dressed in our PJs for Pudsey to help raise some money! The Pupil Council also organised some other activities to help raise fund for this very worthwhile cause, including: selling Children in Need merchandise, face painting and pancakes for Pudsey – baked by our Pupil Council reps and Mrs Kyle – where pupils got the opportunity to buy a pancake and decorate it with toppings.

P1-4 pupils also held a toy sale as part of their toys topic. The boys and girls brought in a selection of used books and toys from home that they no longer play with and sold them for a small donation.

We are delighted to reveal that we made a grand total of £232.19 for Children in Need! Thank-you to everyone who contributed and donated.

Today is Odd Socks Day – a day when we remember it’s cool to be different, it’s ok not to be the same as everyone else and, in fact, life is much more interesting when we don’t all look the same, like the same, do the same and believe in the same things! We celebrated our differences by wearing odd socks to school – a clear sign that we are all different and that’s a good thing!

Odd Socks Day kicks off Anti-Bullying week when we take the time to emphasise what bullying is and strategies for how to deal with this. The theme this year is ‘Choose Respect’ so we had a chat about what this means to us. As we are proud holders of our Gold Rights Respecting Schools Award, we had lots of ideas as to how to show respect towards ourselves and others and ways in which we can help to overcome bullying! This all links into our UNCRC learning with a focus on Article 2 No Discrimination and Article 19 Protection from Violence. All explored through teamwork and co-operation within our happy wee Leswalt team!

Pupils of Leswalt Primary paid their respects today, on Armistice Day.

At 11am on the 11th day of the 11th month, all pupils visited the Memorial in Leswalt.

At the memorial, Daisy, house captain, read the poem “Flanders Fields”.  The oldest and youngest pupils at school, Sean and Gregor, laid the wreath.  This wreath was made by all at Leswalt Primary and was made by drawing round all of their hands.

This term, P6/7 are finding out more about Democracy and Government. We started with a chat about this yesterday which tied in some interesting History and Current Affairs which both linked to politics and government – the story of Guy Fawkes and the US elections!

Today, we enjoyed an online session with the Scottish Parliament. We joined the Teams meeting and met Isabel who led us through a very interesting PowerPoint all about the Scottish Parliament building, how laws are made, the difference in powers between the UK and Scottish parliament and MSPs who represent us in the Scottish Parliament.

Isabel shared lots of information with us and we participated in a quiz which really got us thinking too.

FUN FACTS

Did you know?

Anyone can take an issue to the Petitions Committee who will listen to the viewpoints and this can then be taken forward. The youngest petitioner has been a 7yr old who raised a petition to make using renewable water bottles mandatory at school!

Every ‘bill’ is an issue which is brought forward. This is then discussed by committees. If it goes on to become a LAW (this usually takes about a year) it is finalised by the stamp of Royal Assent from the King. The wax used to seal the Royal Assent is made from the beehives at the Scottish Parliament!

The Scottish Parliament has 129 MSPs.  There are 62 SNP members, 31 Conservatives, 22 Labour, 7 from the Green Party, 4 Liberal Democrats, 1 Alba representative and 1 independent member. The First Minister is John Swinney and the Presiding Officer (who takes on a role a bit like Mrs Baillie!) is Alison Johnstone.

We are really looking forward to finding out more about this topic – watch out for our own parties, campaigns and election!

 

Leswalt Primary all had some fabulous frightening fun at their Hallowe’en party today.

Some pupils came to school dressed in their spookiest best , and some had a costume change at lunchtime– we had a lot of zombified professions as well as some classics!

The party started with the best costume from each year group – this year Patricia the dinner lady had the very difficult task of judging . You can see from the photos everyone looked super spooky A big well done to the parents as well as the pupils – a lot of effort went into some of these costumes! 🧛‍♀️🦇🎃

The fabulously spooky winners were:
P1 – Betty
P2 – Cameron
P3 – Eilidh
P4 – Lily
P6 – Murray 
P7 – Daisy

Then we got stuck into some games. Pupils had a blast playing the games organised by the house captains.  The games began with everyone strutting their stuff to prove who was the best dancer.  Mrs Kyle was our own Craig Revel Horwood and judged the moves on the dancefloor. It was a win for the wee class with Beathan, Gregor , Jorgie and Hannah winning our glitterball ( or tubes of sweeties!)

Next was  a very competitive game of creepy corners, which features a lot of strategising but our final winner was Cameron! Next up we played pass the pumpkin with two of the smallest pumpkins ever  – our winners were Emma (P1-4) and Ela (P5-7). 👻💀

Zombie Arms was next on the agenda, when the music stopped arms would mysteriously disappear and pupils had to find somewhere to link up.  Our winners for this were Hannah (p1-4) and Colin (p5-7)

After all that running around we were all feeling a bit hot and sweaty so we thought why not cool ourselves down by sticking our heads in a huge bowl of water, filled with apples!! 🍎 Both classes played Dookin’ for Apples, a fan favourite which was lots of fun! Those wearing face paint sadly had to sacrifice their carefully painted designs in attempt to retrieve an apple, which meant we had some very wet, soggy looking pandas leaving the playground at 3pm!! 🍎🐼

Everyone left after “the best party ever” ( quote from some soggy P7s!) and was given a toffee apple and sweet treat from Leswalt Community association – who also provided all the prizes and apples, many thanks must go to them for their generosity. 

The  planning and hard work of this party has to go to the House captains, Isla and Daisy who have been working hard from the very beginning to ensure everything was ready to go and they put on an excellent time for the whole school!  ⭐🤩

Well done team! 

#Article31 The right to rest relax and play