Day: February 24, 2022

We may have mentioned before our pride in having the utterly fabulous Vicky Wright (Olympic Gold Medallist) and equally amazing Bobby Lammie (Olympic Silver medallist) as past pupils of our wee village school! And with this in mind, Malcolm (one of our House Captains) approached teachers with a thought…might Leswalt get a Gold postbox in honour of the Ladies’ Curling Team’s success?

Only one way to find out Malcolm, and that’s to ask those in the know! Malcolm and Breagh (both of our House Captains) took on the role of penning a letter which was sent to the Royal Mail and local councillors explaining who they were, their link to Vicky and Bobby and their special request of a lasting memento.

And the responses were super speedy! Within ten minutes, they had replies of support from councillors and one from the Royal Mail who forwarded their email onto the relevant department.

Today (less than 24hours later!) letters arrived for Malcolm and Breagh sent by Special Delivery! These came from Michael Hogg, Senior Public Affairs Manager at the Royal Mail Headquarters in London. He wrote to thank them for their beautifully written request. Unfortunately, the gold postboxes were only done following our ‘home’ Olympics in London 2012 as a ‘one-off’ and so this won’t be happening following Beijing.  He did, however, promise a memento of specially commissioned Royal Mail collector’s stamps for every pupil in the school in this special Platinum year for Queen Elizabeth II as a token of the initiative of Malcolm and Breagh! In fact, Mr Hogg phoned Mrs Baillie today to say just how impressed he was with their letter. He said he doesn’t send many letters to Primary pupils but this particular one was a very special one and so deserved a very special reply!

Top work House Captains – what Responsible Citizens you are!

And, as for the lasting memento of our past pupils’ amazing Olympic successes, well we’re on the case! Due to move back to our newly refurbished school next term, we will ensure the Gold and Silver legacy of Vicky and Bobby will be there for all to see for many years to come. Watch this space…

From February 21st- March 6th is 2022’s Fairtrade Fortnight and so P5-7 Leswalt pupils spent some time finding out more.

Working in Talk Partners, the pupils researched the key questions about this topic:

What is Fairtrade?

When this started?

Why it started?

Where can Fairtrade products be bought?

Who Fairtrade works with?

How we can do our bit to help!

They used reference materials, website links, a video clip and our classroom chat to help them with their fact-finding. This was a top task for those all-important employability skills of negotiating, working within a time-scale, organisation and co-operation. And, most importantly, this task also raised awareness of Fairtrade.

The task was rounded-off by the pupils sharing their work with their classmates and enjoying some Fairtrade chocolate too! Yum! We might go as far to say that this was the highlight of the lesson!

 

 

 

 

As part of our journey towards Rights Respecting Schools Silver status, the children have been discussing all of the rights within the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). They have discussed what rights they feel are most important and have explained their views. Here is just a sample for you to see what responsible citizens we have!

RRS-Silver-Our-Views-On-Rights-video

If you would like to find out more about Rights Respecting Schools, here is a link to their website.