Welcome! We hope that after having a look at our blog you will find out some more information about life at little Leswalt Primary School.
It is not the quantity – but the quality that counts!
Getting Muddy at the Rugby 🏉
Today P4-7 welcomed back Niamh, the school’s Rugby Development Coach back to start a block of lessons to develop our Rugby skills. We started off with a game of ‘Capture the Flag’ which aimed to support our tactical thinking and ‘Switch’ to practise changing positions and avoiding opponents. 😄
Afterwards, we headed away from the comfort of the concrete to grass to practise some ‘contact’ activities on a soft surface. Pupils paired up to have a go at 4 different safe tackles. Niamh explained that being able to tackle and be tackled safely and effectively is an important priority in rugby and it’s important we can do this before we try a real game situation. 🏉
It was certainly lots of laughs and the mud only gave us a soft place to practise our new moves!😅
Meta-Skills
Adapting Alexander
Initiative Ivy
Leading Li
Collaborating Cate
UNCRC Articles
Article 31- Right to Play, Arts and Culture
Article 29 – Right to Education
Article 12 – Respect for Children’s Views
P1-3’s Vet Visitor🐶🐱
Today, P1-3 were very excited to welcome Ailsa Buchanan into school to talk us about her job as a Vet, especially given the number of aspiring vets we have in the school!🐾
Ailsa told us all about the skills and qualities she needed to become a vet. She explained that in order to be a vet, you must have a kind and caring personality and love animals! Which was great to hear for all our little animal lovers!😻
She brought with her some of her special vet equipment; stethoscope, thermometer etc. and explained how vets use them to help animals to feel better. Then, it was over to us to become vets, Ailsa brought with her some X-Rays from some attention needing animals and we had to work out what was wrong with the animals and why they needed help from the vet. We saw the X-Ray of a poorly pup who had swallowed a stone, some broken paws and a pregnant dog too!🐶🐱
A huge thank you to Ailsa from Academy Vets for taking the time to visit Primary 1-3. We absolutely loved hearing all about her job and the work she does to look after our furry friends! 🐮🐶🐱🐹🐰
Meta-Skills
Collaborating Cora – Vets often work alongside other vets/farmers, to work out what is wrong with animals. Being able to work as part of a team is crucial. there is absolutely no way Ailsa could do what she does alone, it’s all about teamwork! 😀
Focussing Fergus – Concentrating is a big part of veterinary work. We want our animals to have the best care to get better so being able to give pets our full attention and get the job done right is so important for Ailsa and other vets🐩
Communicating Cate –Ailsa explained that one of the toughest parts about being a vet is not being able to speak the animal’s language. What people don’t always realise is that despite this, animals do often try to tell their owners and vets what is wrong through different communications. Vet’s have the challenging job of trying to work out what is wrong with the animal. Vets also need to be great at asking pet owners the right questions to get to the bottom of things too!😀
Critical Thinking Chris – Often vets have big problems that they may not always know the answers or solutions to straight away!🤔
RRS Articles
Article 13 – Freedom of expression
Star Bakers Celebrate Sweet Success ⭐️
Yesterday, P 4-7 Star Bakers Rebecca, Rachael and James celebrated their bake off success with a trip to The Coffee Bean in Stranraer with Miss Douglas! We decided that it was only right, after their hard work, to sample what cakes the Coffee Bean had to offer😄. They enjoyed a luxury hot chocolate, with cream and marshmallows (or course) and a slice of Malteser traybake. The critics gave the Coffee Bean’s cake a rating of 9.5/10. 😋Afterwards, we decided to see what sweet treats were on offer in Tesco and continued the sweet, sweet celebrations with a Kit-Kat and some smarties. 🍫
We had a fantastic time in Stranraer conducting some real market research and enjoying some obligatory treats too! 😍
All The Services, No Emergency 🚑🚒🚨🚔🆘
Yesterday, P1-3 welcomed some special visitors into school to get VERY hands on exploring their health and well-being topic – People Who Help Us!
Part of this was looking at people who can help us when we find ourselves in danger and need urgent assistance and thus… Emergency Services Afternoon was made! Big thank you to Mrs Warwick for her excellent work in co-coordinating all these kind volunteers to come to the school.
Pupils had inputs from;
Coastguard – Learning how in a seaside town like Stranraer they have an active role is making sure that people stay safe out on the Loch and further afield!🚣🏼♂️🚤
RNLI – Just like the Coastguard, they are another essential service to have this close to the water. They experience many call outs all across the area from people struggling in boats. 🏊🏼♀️⛵
Police – We learned about how our local police help us daily by keeping the place we live safe for us and are always quick to respond in an emergency should we ever need their help! 👮🏼♀️🚓
It’s always fantastic for the pupils to get hands on during these open afternoons and it really helps bring the topic to life for them! A huge thank you to the kind volunteers who gave up their time for this. I know when P1-3 were buzzing with chat from their afternoon.
Meta-Skills
Sense Making Samira
Curiosity Carlos
Focussing Fergus
Integrity Ivy
UNCRC Articles
Article 3 – Best interest of the child
Article 6 – Life, survival and development
Article 24 – Health, Water, Environment
A Big Thanks to the Rotary Club
This afternoon we were delighted to welcome three lovely gentlemen from Stranraer Rotary Club in to speak to us about litter and the importance of keeping our wee community clean!🚮 Ben and Murray were pleased to see Donald McColm that they’d met at the Rotary Lunch again and were excited to see that he had brought along some of the hi-vis vests they had modelled at the lunch along with some bags and litter pickers.
We were wowed with some litter- related facts about how long it takes certain foods and materials to break down in the environment from a banana (2-3 weeks), plastic (2000 years) to glass (an eternity) to help us to put into perspective how damaging litter can be 😮
The big Stranraer clean-up has proven that our neck of the woods is in need of some greater care, with over 500 bags worth of rubbish being collected over the course of a year and the boys and girls were appalled to learn that that would fill our entire hall!! We learned that we need to take action now and play our part, starting with the 3 Rs
-
Reduce
-
Reuse
-
Recycle
Together the boys and girls worked together to organise the rubbish into plastic, paper and aluminium and we chatted about how we do this in school and home. We were most excited to get out into the community at our next litter pick to try out some the great new litter pickers that Stranraer Rotary Club and Leswalt Community Association had very kindly purchased for our use. Donald himself had designed and made triangle shaped bag holders that will really help us to make sure we keep Leswalt litter-free!😄
Getting Creative with Jane from Creative Stranraer 👨🎨👩🎨
This afternoon we had a lovely visit from a lovely lady, Jane from Creative Stranraer. Jane is involved in a project which adds some fun to the Southern Upland Way. Along the walking trail, they are hoping to add some kists filled with colourful ‘treasure’ stones for walkers to collect along the way. 🚶♂️
Jane brought along lots of stones and pens and tasked us with drawing a colourful picture on the stone. We had lots of minions, trees, patterns and animals, which Jane seemed super impressed with.🌳🐱🐶
Afterwards, in our groups, we were given a long sheet of paper to design a ‘Leswalk Mural’. We had a quick chat about the fanulous things we love most and special parts of Leswalt before starting to draw some pictures on our mural. These looked absolutely fantastic. Jane hopes to include 1 part from the murals in a collective primary school mural in Stranraer, which will be displayed along the beach. We can’t wait to see the finished project.🖌
We had a super fun afternoon, showing off our creativity and capturing all the fantastic parts of our wee community! 👨🎨👩🎨
Meta-Skills
Creative Cassidy
Collaborating Cora
Critical Thinking Chris
Focussing Fergus
UNCRC Articles
Article 13 – Sharing Thoughts Freely
Article 28 – Access to Education
Article 12 – Respect for Children’s Views
Article 31 – Rest, Play Culture and Arts
Syrup, Sprinkles and Sticky Fingers🥞🧑🍳👩🍳
Hot plate✅ , Ingredients ✅Nutella, Biscoff, syrup and sprinkles ✅
We were all set to celebrate Shrove Tuesday with some obligatory pancake flipping! With Mrs Kyle, each group had a go at pouring their mixture onto the hot plate and flipping their pancakes 🥞!
Afterwards, it was time for toppings! Pupils could choose to add some Biscoff, sprinkle, Nutella and syrup (or all 4😅) to add to their pancakes.
Meta-skills
Collaborating Cora
Communicating Chris
UNCRC Rights
Article 12 – the right to express their views and be heard.
Article 28 – the right to education
Article 24 – the right to nutritious food
P1-3’s Perfect Patterns in the Playground 🖼️
As part of their artwork this term, P1-3 have been exploring tessellation and symmetrical patterns. 🦋 👦🏼👧🏻
This afternoon Mrs McKnight saw a rare opportunity with the dry weather and planned a fun, hands-on outdoor art activity. Pupils were challenged to create a symmetrical picture in the playground. They collected up some sticks, stones and playground toys, and worked together to create a picture on the ground which included a line of symmetry. Their pictures were super, and they had a fantastic time making them! ☺️
Continue reading “P1-3’s Perfect Patterns in the Playground 🖼️”
THE GREAT LESWALT BAKE OFF!🍪🧑🏻🍳
It’s week 4 of cooking club, which means….ready, steady BAKE OFF! 👩🏼🍳👨🏼🍳
The teams, equipped with bowls, scales, sugar and all sorts of sweet treats were tasked with baking cookies this week. They followed a simple cookie recipe, adding their chosen chocolate chips and sweet treats to make their cookies original and stand out. 🍫🍪
James, Rebecca and Rachael put a lot of hard work into the presentation of their Nutella and Bueno White Chocolate cookies. Aria-Rose, Keira and Emma baked some white chocolate Rolo cookies. Murray, Colin and Ben cooked up cookies filled with M & Ms and Mini Eggs and Hannah, Eilidh, Lily and Olivia made some sweet mini marshmallow and Biscoff cookies. 😋
The teachers (judges) have very kindly offered to rate the cookies on their appearance and taste and choose the best cookies as the Bake Off Winners 🏆!
We have had such great fun baking together on a Tuesday afternoon, putting our maths measuring skills into practice and learning some yummy recipes along the way!🤩
Well done Team P4-7🥰!!
Internet safety day💻😀
Today the digital leaders Ben and Rachael ran an assembly for internet safety day. They were talking about smart tech safe choices, exploring the safe and responsible use of artificial intelligence. First of all we watched a cbbc live lesson that talked about chatbot. Then we introduced our chatbots that they needed to design and there is a winner in each class. Then we watched a cbbc news round that explained what artificial intelligence is. Finally we did a YouTube quiz (is it real or AI?) and that was our assembly about safer internet day.
💻📞📱📵☎️
By Rachael and Ben
