Author: Mrs Ferguson

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

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!

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!

 

P6/7 welcome Robert McCrorie, a Community Safety Advocate for the Fire and Rescue Community Safety Team who talked to the pupils about how to keep themselves and others safe around fireworks and Bonfire Night.

He talked about fireworks, sparklers and bonfires and the issues we might come across. Ellie demonstrated how to hold a sparkler safely – at arms length and not being waved about, and Colin showed us how to Stop, Drop and Roll if any clothing caught fire.

We also discussed items which definitely shouldn’t be added to a bonfire and why not, and some of the rules and regulations which surround buying and setting off fireworks.

This was a really useful safety input and we hope it helps everyone to look after themselves this November 5th.

 

It’s back to school and a spooky one at that! P6/7 have enjoyed exploring all things pumpkin this week..

The week kicked off with group work as they named their pumpkins and scooped them out in preparation for soup making.

Tuesday was a busy day as groups worked with Mrs Kyle to chop ingredients and cook their Spicy Pumpkin soup, roast the pumpkin seeds and use wholemeal bread to make croutons to add to their finished dish.

Wednesday was design and carving day as each group worked together to give their pumpkin’s some added character! The class also tried their soup and shared their cooking with P1-4 too.

Thursday led to experiment day – with a chemical reaction of Hydrogen Peroxide, washing up liquid, food colouring and yeast being used to make each pumpkin puke! Delightful!

And that leads to tomorrow’s Halloween Party!

 

This afternoon, P6/7 joined a live lesson working on the use of Adobe Express. Each pupil worked on an iPad to create a multi-media collage with a spooky theme. They selected a background, added design elements, assigned animations to each object and layered sound effects over the top! What fantastic results!

The pupils then screenshot their work and emailed them to me (another handy computing skill) for me to upload them to the blog. You can’t quite get the full multimedia effect of sound and movement – but it does give you a glimpse of just some of the super computing skills in use.

Well done all – superbly spooky stuff 🙂

 

Today we had the pleasure of welcoming Jack and Linea from the Children’s Parliament back to talk about Sustainability.

Today’s focus was on our ‘campus’ and how we use our school building. This ties in with the Scottish Government’s aim that by 2030 they want to make sure that…

• all schools are eco friendly in how they heat, power and use materials at school.
• all spaces can be used to learn outdoors within,
• all spaces respect children’s rights.

The pupils were set the task of re-creating the school campus using anything they could find in the classroom – not easy but they worked together and did so well! They then needed to write down how each area is used and how eco-friendly these areas are. We linked our school campus back to the UNCRC Children’s Rights Charter so that we could see these rights as they are put into action. This gave us lots of things to talk and think about.

We are doing lots already to make our local campus as sustainable as it can be, but we know there are lots of steps we could take to improve. Some of these things we would need to help to put into action – but Jack and Linea said that all our opinions are important and they’d take all ideas back to the Scottish Government.

Another great session! We are looking forward to our next session next month too 🙂

This week is ‘Maths Week Scotland’! It’s a chance to explore, enjoy and discover all things relating to Maths – and realise just how much Maths we use everyday – sometimes without even realising it!

Each day, both classes have had lots of Maths fun doing different activities.

On Monday, P6/7 watched and talked about the maths relating to Alice in Wonderland with an online Maths Live event – who knew just how much logic was used in that famous story! They also brushed up their Maths whizzkid number skills with their weekly Beat That and CLIC number challenges.

On Tuesday, P1-4 had lots of outside fun with Liz Tindall – the weather was in their favour for that ! They enjoyed a Beetle Drive, stick measuring, symmetry and made a giant pizza! Lots of maths concepts being used in a variety of ways.

P6/7 enjoyed a Pairs Puzzle (planned for outside but the weather had other ideas!) Working together, pupils solved number puzzles hidden all around the school, unscrambled an anagram of the letters on each puzzle piece (yo spell ‘we are the greatest!) and were rewarded with a Puzzle Prize at the end (Haribos!)

Wednesday was a very busy day with P6/7  using their number skills in French with a fund outdoors game with Mrs McKnight – ooh la la!

On Thursday, P1-4 participated in two online events exploring storytelling and maths whilst P6/7’s online session explored the idea of infinity through a story called ‘Infinity and Me’ by Kate Hosford and listened to the experiences of a STEM Ambassador who explained her route towards the job she does now as an engineer and the part which maths plays in this. Plus we had fun doing our maths games such as Kahoot (a VERY competitive game enjoyed by P6/7!) and coding Spheros to follow an obstacle course.

And to round the week off, on Friday P6/7 headed outside for a challenging outdoor Maths Trail. Pupils worked together in pairs to answer the questions about various things outdoors, from calculating the number of rectangles in the fence surrounding the car park, to identifying different types of angles outside.

The finish off our busy week, we participated in the #ShowYourWorking event and welcomed in 2 parents, Andrew (Betty & Ela’s Dad) and Lauren (Gregor’s Mum), who shared how they use maths in their every day lives and work. Pupils were prepared with some questions to ask them to gain an insight into how vital a skill maths is for everyone, and even put them on the spot to see how many times tables they could remember!!

Phew! It’s been a busy week!

P6/7 are lucky to be enjoying Living Life to the Full sessions with Matthew Robinson from the D&G Youth Work team. This ties in perfectly with their HWB focus on Feelings and Self-Esteem. Pupils have been participating in team-building games and reflecting on different emotions and thinking about their reactions in different situations. Lots of chat and fun helping pupils to work on their self-belief and ability to recognise and deal with their feelings.
Thanks to Matthew for his input. Looking forward to the next few sessions 😊

P6/7 were delighted to welcome Jack and Linnea to their class today to lead them through a Dignity in School Children’s Parliament session. The class met Dodger the Red Squirrel and considered the rights Dodger has as well as the rights we all have – and the ones we share/differ. We linked these to our Children’s Rights and thought about the Digni-tree as it has safe, happy and healthy as its branches and our rights as its roots – where everything grows from!
We were set the challenge to think about things we learn about when we’re outdoors, things we learn about other children and their countries and challenges they might face and things we learn about the environment, nature and climate change.

We are looking forward to seeing Jack, Linnea and Dodger again next term when we are exploring our Government and Democracy topic!