Month: September 2022

Shape Hunts, scavenger trails and  some STEMazing kicked off our celebration of Maths Week Scotland!

P1-4 held their very own shape hunt in school with Mrs Warwick. They went on a 2D shape hunt around the school, armed with an ipad and a tally mark sheet.  Lots of circles and squares, the odd rectangle and 1 hexagon! They also joined in with the Cuthbert Sees Double interactive story and activity.  They listened to a story about Cuthbert the Crocodile finding he couldn’t double his numbers and was sad that he couldn’t join in with his friends game.  His friends helped him learn ways to double so he could join in.  The pupils then had a shot at playing our own doubling game using dice.  They even tried to make it harder by using more dice!

STEMazing involved the whole school getting together for a live lesson which was led by Anne Okafor from Cruden Construction. She is a construction planner and talked about the maths involved in her job. From the three Cs: being curious, creative and courageous to designing prototypes and carrying out Tests to Destruction! Working in groups; using 8 sheets of scrap paper, some tape and books as a weight – the pupils investigated which shape could bear more weight; building triangular prisms  or cylinders to be used supports. It was agreed that the cylinders worked better as they have no  corners (weak points) and the circular face of the cylinder is equal the whole way round so allows for equal weight distribution.

P5-7 headed off to DGC Stranraer Campus for a fabulous morning of maths/careers and further education awareness with their North Rhins friends. See the blog post especially dedicated to this for more details and some fabulous photos!

Back in class, pupils explored maths through science through maths with their data analyst hats on and the P5/6 team created an indoor maths trail for P1-4 to solve with a P7 buddy (Mrs F created a maths trail for P5/6 so they didn’t feel left out!)

This Friday afternoon fun maths activity rounded off a week of Maths Week Scotland!

 

By-passing secondary altogether, out intrepid team of maths superstars headed into the DGC Stranraer Campus today! On offer was an interactive morning of maths fun! And my oh my, it was a very a busy time with pupils involved in everything from (are you ready for quite a list…!)?

• following a recipe to make play dough
• reading instructions and measuring amounts to make up baby bottles
• using logic to solve jigsaws and games
• using directional language to play Twister
• number knowledge for a game of bingo
• measuring liquids to create fruit drink concoctions
• thinking about fractions when slicing fruit to add to a healthy fruit salad!
• Then, top all of that off with, some STEM construction work involving 3d shapes and straws and K’nex and you have what was summed up as “the best day of school…ever!”

Phew! What an action-packed session. Huge thanks to the lecturers and students for being so accommodating and to Ms Whorlow for organising the whole event! It was absolutely fabulous!

We successfully applied for funding from the Edinburgh Mathematical Society (EMS) School Enrichment Fund to pay for transportation costs for all three schools from our trio to attend this great event. Thank you also to this organisation for making today’s learning experience possible.

 

After almost 25 years working at Leswalt Primary school, Mrs Smith our fabulous learning assistant has called it a day. 

Leswalt pupils were sad to see her go, but all were happy to have had that special Mrs Smith sparkle in their life.  She has worked so hard, for so many over the years.

Sadly, she was off unwell on what should have been her final day on Friday – but the pupils did not forget about her!  A special delivery of flowers was sent out to her house from the staff. And, on Friday we were all treated to a huge Simpsons sponge cake, thanks to a  generous donation from Lorna Drummond.  All the boys and girls were treated to a piece, before Mrs Baillie took the cake to Mrs Smith after school.

The Parent council and staff have all got generous gifts ready and waiting to hand over to Mrs Smith.  It has been decided to hand these over when we all get into the new and improved Leswalt Primary school.  Mrs Smith has suggested she would like a wee tea party there and we look forward to welcoming her back to pass on our appreciation.

Thank you Mrs Smith!

In preparation for Maths Week Scotland next week, we all got to participate in a hands-on, fun maths workshop today led by Mrs Hall from the D&G STEM team and created by the Liverpool Mathematical Society. And it certainly lived up to its name – it was indeed MEGA!

The P1-4 crew enjoyed their maths fun first thing; whilst the older bunch got their thinking caps on after breaktime.

The pupils kicked off their session with some triangle problem solving – they talked about the different skills they were using to find the solution: trial and error, logical thinking, guess and check, look for a pattern and work backwards.

Pairing up with their Talk Partners, they then chose from the many challenges on offer…and my oh my were those brain cogs whirring!

Such a fun morning of maths challenges using oodles of skills!

Just look at the happy maths faces below!

 

‘Farm to Fork’ is the title for this term’s topic in P1-4, and what better way to learn than meeting some local farmers and finding out more about what they do.

We were lucky to have a nice sunny afternoon to welcome our visitors to Kirkcolm, and by kind permission of Jack Milroy, were able to use a field next to the school. 

First up was Grant Hurcomb, aka The Sheep Shearing Expert!  We got to watch him shear some sheep, discussed why he does this and then we got feel the wool and find out ways it is used.  Grant was ably assisted by Jack who was able to give us an idea of the value of the wool.  Turns out, not a lot!

Next was the turn of Stuart McCrindle and his sheepdog Zak.  This winning partnership were last year’s Scottish Champions so we knew we had the best team to demonstate a sheepdog working with some sheep.  Zak was a true professional and guided the sheep around the field with ease.  Some of us even got the chance to give Zak some commands too.  Stuart had also brought along the newest member of his team, an 8 week old collie pup.  The children all got the chance to name the puppy, and the winning name chosen at the end of the day was ‘Jem’.  The perfect choice!

The children then had the chance to meet local contractors Angus Brown and Steven Adams.  Despite their busy schedule and the dry weather, they took time out from silage making to visit us with a chopper, tractor, mower and a rowing up machine.  It was a chance to see these machines up close, find out what they do and have a seat inside…and toot the horn!   Being a contractor also means you have to be a mechanic and engineer, fixing problems as you go.  It’s a tough job!

We also had a local sheep farmer there, Ian McKnight, who talked us through rearing and caring for animals.  We learned about the farming calendar, saw some tools and medicines he uses and got to see different feeds for the animals.  He also had the quad bike he uses on the farm too with him.

Finally, we had our very own Alexander Clark (budding auctioneer) on hand to finish proceedings with an auction.  He stood in at the last minute after a cancellation and he did an awesome job.  We got to see him in action with groups competing to buy some calves and win an extra 5 minutes of breaktime!

What a lovely way to spend a sunny Friday afternoon.  A big thank you to all of our visitors who have perhaps inspired a few young people towards a career in agriculture!

The children were excited to become App designers  today!

Francis Wallace, Principal Engineer of the Make It Happen Club joined us this morning to offer us the opportunity to take part in an exciting App Design challenge.  The children have the chance to enter their own app design creations into a competition just for the North Rhins Partnership. The winning design from across our three schools will be made into reality for everyone to enjoy and use!

The children really enjoyed listening to Frances and looking at some previous winners. They ranged from number apps to help people with their times tables, flags of the world questions, apps to help people with day-to-day routines etc. Lots and lots of brilliant ideas.

We took some time to think about all of our ideas and then we put pencil to paper and created our own app design. They all designed individual  apps – ones we would certainly love to install and use!

App designs  completed and entries submitted to Frances. We’ll await the results! Good luck all!

 

Digital Leaders from Kirkcolm, Leswalt and Portpatrick came together for a training session today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The children covered a lot of areas as part of today’s agenda:

• Roles and Responsibilities
• Correctly handling, storing and charging devices
• Login – personal information, successfully accessing sites
• Bookmarking favourites and displaying our favourites bar
• Adding tiles to personal Glow launch pads e.g. Teams, Email, One Drive etc.
• Creating and sending emails with attachments to the correct recipient
• Discussing possible breaktime clubs e.g. Scratch Coding

Our inventive team decided that they would like to collaborate with each other across the partnership to plan events such as Safety Internet Day.  We have now set up an email group just for our digital leaders so they can communicate with each other.

The session was very productive and our team are ready to support their classmates in any way they can.

Here is a useful guide for parents to support your child online.

Digital-Learning-Parental-Leaflet-2022_23 (2)

# Responsible Citizens

As a celebration of our tattie planting and harvest, today we planned to enjoy a day of tattie-related activities in conjunction with the Dandelion Growing Project!

Our plans did alter slightly on hearing the sad news of the passing of our Queen yesterday. We felt it right that some time should be used this morning to talk about her life, death and lasting legacy. All pupils showed their respect by watching the CBBC Newsround clip and joining in our group chat with their thoughts and feelings.

Following this, we then got on with our day’s events.

Lots of us planted the tatties we got last term at home and some have even shared photos of their crops. The plan for today was to be an all-out Dandelion Project celebration back at our shiny new Leswalt Primary but, as we’re not there yet, this has been postponed. Still, it seemed a shame not to celebrate our gardening efforts in some way!

Starting off with some potato based cooking, we worked in teams to create traditional Scottish macaroons using a recipe with a tattie base! We confess to being a little dubious at first, but after adding the icing sugar and mixing all together to create a fondant and then rolling these into balls, we had to admit the plan seemed to be working out!

Michelle popped these in her fridge to set and we then dipped them in melted chocolate and coated them in coconut.

Whilst they set for the second time, we headed outdoors for an afternoon of Tattie-athlon activities. From a Tattie Toss to a Tattie Tip-toe; Tattie on a Teaspoon to the Tattie Tumble and the Tattie Target to the Tattie Trot – each team put forward a team member to take part in an afternoon of good fun, teamwork and sport!

Popping our sweet tattie creations into our tupperware boxes, Mrs F and Mrs McKnight totted up the scores… which team would be crowned Top Tatties?! Would it be the Choppy Chips or the Tattie Planters? Perhaps it would be the Tattie Heroes or the Tanging Tatties? Or maybe the Tattie Tossers or the Tattie Demolishers?

The points were checked and verified and the Tattie Tossers were declared the Top Tatties! The team proudly posed for a photo with their ‘no expense spared’ Tattie Trophy and prize of three tatties each to take home!

Fun Friday indeed!

 

P5-7 are enjoying a block of fun rugby sessions with Neve the Rugby Development Officer!
Every Friday for 6 weeks, the pupils don their PE kit and head outside for an activity fuelled hour! Check out the photos below 😊