Month: February 2018

Ni Hao!

This afternoon, to add to their vast repertoire of experiences, the pupils of P5-7 welcomed Dr Meryl James from the  SCILT, Scotland’s National Centre for Languages, and CISS, Confucius Institute for Scotland’s School. She gave the pupils a fascinating insight into China, its culture, a little of the geography and history of this huge country and an introduction to the language. The children looked at Chinese symbols and their representation and were able to put together numbers and months with surprising ease. It was quite amazing, and most impressive, to see how hungry young minds are for knowledge and how quickly the children took this new information on board (they were far quicker than their teacher if truth be told!)

Dr James is an entertaining and interesting expert in this area, having travelled to China 24 times in the last 25 years! She said she finds new and interesting things out about the country every time she goes. She was particularly keen that the pupils of today should be encouraged to go out into the big world and explore. She’s definitely left them with an interest in all things Chinese.

Dr James has left some further information for us to have a look at and also recommended the BBC Primary Languages website which has a section on Mandarin on it. Go and check it out!

She also made a particular point of saying to staff just how impressed she was by the polite, well-mannered and enthusiastic children we have – so well done to all the boys and girls!

Getting into the sporting spirit of the 2018 Winter Olympics, pupils from Leswalt Primary enjoyed a Curling Extravaganza today at school.

P7 pupils headed off the to North West Castle in the morning, to take part in Curling coaching with some pupils from other schools. Two of our five P7s already go along to weekly curling, but this ignited the interests of the rest of the group too. They had a blast – and just a few slips on the ice too!

In class, the pupils are closely following the curling taking place in PyeongChang at the moment, cheering on local girl Vicky Adams, but today got the chance to meet a real-life Olympian; in Margaret Agnew (nee Morton), a member of the Olympic Gold Medal Ladies’ Team from the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics! To our pupils, she is much better known as the mum to Thomas in P2, so the children and staff were fascinated to hear about her experiences within Curling!

Mrs Agnew came into school this afternoon to share her Olympic story with the children; talking first to P1-4 and then to P5-7. She let them hold her Gold medal (only 5 of this particular medal were ever made, so it is very very special) and show them some photo memories she has of this. The pupils had some great questions for her, and were intrigued to find out about how she got into the sport, the training involved, qualifying for the Olympic games and the feelings she had before, during and after that momentous winning match!

Meanwhile, her husband, Mr Agnew (who is a curling coach) worked with the rest of the school in the hall on indoor curling! Gail Munro from the North West Castle and Alison Murray from Active Schools came along to assist him. The children very enthusiastically played on their rinks (or ‘sheets’ as they would be known) using their curling stones which moved using ball bearings. There was much excitement when it came to scoring! Some teams were celebrating, others vowing to beat them next time!

Many thanks to our local Olympian Mrs Agnew, Curling Coach Mr Agnew, Gail Munro and Alison Murray for giving up their time to give the pupils of Leswalt Primary a first-hand experience of this exciting sport. And the notion that perhaps, if they work hard, one day they too could be an Olympian just like Thomas’s mum!

Today the pupils of P5-7 from Leswalt, Portpatrick and Kirkcolm travelled back to the times of Wallace and Bruce led by Kathryn Purchase from History Alive. The children sat enthralled as they listened to this turbulent period of History; from the unfortunate death of King Alexander III through to the eventual recognition of Robert the Bruce as King. This covered many years of gruesome fighting – all of which the pupils rather enjoyed hearing about! The session truly did bring HISTORY ALIVE!

In the afternoon, the Leswalt pupils got the chance to try on some typical costumes/chainmail from that period and look at helmets and weaponry. It was utterly fabulous!

“I loved this – it was so fascinating! I found out where the word ‘hospital’ came from too!” said Phoebe and Auryn.

“Robert the Bruce’s heart led an army into a crusade. His friend threw it, in its lead casket, so that Robert would have fulfilled his wish to lead a crusade! That’s gory!” Finlay commented.

Kayleigh loved the fact that they got to actually try on some costumes with their friends.

Ethan agreed, “This was so interesting and much more fun than just reading a book about it!”

Thank you so much to Kathryn – making HISTORY ALIVE just makes all the difference. It becomes so real and the children (and staff) so enjoy your sessions.