Author: Mrs Ferguson

This morning, P5-7 enjoyed their second and final session with Laura McClymont from Active Schools, which resulted in them all being awarded with their Young Sports Leader ‘Playleader’ awards!

Their introductory session was just before the Christmas break and the class took some planning time this week to refresh their memories and organise a game which they could then deliver to their schoolmates.

They needed to think about organisation, safety, groupings and rules. An extra challenge was to go ‘equipment-free’ if possible!

What a range of games were played! The pupils had created a wide choice of games including: Rome Tig, RaRa Relays, Spire Tig, Minecraft Mayhem, Warmongers, Cat and Mouse, Hide n’ Tig, Catch the Villager and Rounders Catch! Laura was most impressed!

Certificates to follow. These are recognised national awards at level 2 – go P5-7!

Well done all!

We’ve had a fantastic week being all back together and today topped it all off with our Share a Smile for Red Nose Day celebrations!

Pupils and staff came to school dressed casually or as superheroes for a small donation. Red noses had literally being flying off the shelves all week, superhero masks were designed, pupils enjoyed Red Nose Day activities and found out more about this charitable event; what it does and the many who benefit from the generous fund-raising!

In the afternoon, we all enjoyed watching the many Talent videos which had been sent in from entrants across the North Rhins Trio. From drumming to dancing; horse-riding to golf; impressions to table tennis and scootering to gymnastics – the wealth of talent across all three of our schools was clear to see!

Every pupil had one vote and, once these had been cast, we headed outside to enjoy the Spring sunshine. Some helped Mrs Richardson with some gardening whilst the rest played octopus tig with Mrs McKnight and Mrs F.

Just before 3pm, Mrs Baillie popped out to reveal the results! Leswalt’s runner-up was Breagh with her horse-riding and the winner was Murray with his scooter skills!

We had a great day whilst raising money for a very good cause (the total to follow).

Many smiles were shared at Leswalt!

 

 

So we may not be physically in the same building, but does that stop the pupils of Leswalt Primary from taking part in their annual Scots Week Celebration? No chance!

The children – with the help of their parents- have been writing out their poems for the handwriting competition and creating their own artistic interpretation of their poem. Massive thanks must go out to all the families who have contributed their efforts to this. It is hugely appreciated.

Below is just a sample of some of the amazing work which has been emailed to teachers. Wow! We’ve very proud of you all.

To take things even one step further, we have our very own North Rhins Inter-School Burns Competition this Friday! Our invited judge for this year, the well-known Burns enthusiast Mr Alec Ross, has the unenviable task of judging the handwriting, artwork and recitations across our partnership. Mr Ross has already shared his Burns recitations, and given the back story to the poems, to help support our Scots week. I’m sure many of you have watched and enjoyed these!

This year pupils are working on:

p1 – Wee rid motor – Sandy Thomas Ross (8 lines)

p2 – Nessie by JK Annand (12 lines)

p3 – The Circus by JK Annand (16 lines)

p4 – Fireworks aff the castle by Matthew Fitt (20 lines)

P5 – Magic Pizza by Alison Fitt (20 longer lines)

P6 – The Whistle – Charles Murray (36 lines)

P7 – Any Robert Burns poem or excerpt of their choice eg To a Moose, Address to a Haggis etc…

Are you working hard on those recitations?

Can’t wait to hear you!

Tune in this Friday at 9.30am via Teams for our very own Scots TV!

 

What a fantastic week we’ve had at Leswalt Primary!

The P1-4 class enjoyed their party on Wednesday afternoon, with P5-7’s turn on Thursday afternoon. House Captains Andrew and Gregor had organised a fun-filled afternoon of dancing and games with a quick snack refuel as a mid-afternoon break! They played the ever-popular Snowman game, Christmas Corners, Musical Bells and Reindeer Relay  to name just a few. Some fabulous dancing moves were on display too! Happy smiley children made us all feel very Christmassy!

Unfortunately, Covid-19 restrictions meant that Santa wasn’t able to appear in person but he had communicated with the Parent Council who were able to carry out his wishes and have the presents delivered ready for the children to open as they took a quick break from their party fun! They LOVED their gifts and there were some very excited squeals as the paper was ripped off! A delicious party snack and the children were all ready for some more partying!

The Christmas parties were fabulous – full of lots of giggles and cheery faces! Thank you to all those who helped to make it special – including a big thank you to the Leswalt Community Association for supporting our Christmas parties and in-school festivities, by using the funding they received from the D&G Council Christmas grant 2020. Much appreciated!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

 

Huge thanks to Laura McClymont from Active Schools for popping by Leswalt and delivering Playmakers session 1 out of 2 to Primary 5-7.

The pupils discussed ‘what it means to be a good leader’ – offering up keywords such as sportsmanship, including everyone, encouragement, clear instructions and planning organised sessions.

Some of the older pupils have worked on some aspects of Playmakers before and are acting as mentors to the younger pupils, with then end result to be a planned activity session with groups of children from P1-4.

Laura will be back with us on Friday of our first week back in 2021 for session 2. The pupils have been tasked with writing up their lesson plan for then – time to get our thinking caps on!

It was such a joy to be outside today for Fresh Air Friday, as we learnt about food chains, sustainability, recycling, eco-systems and the planting calendar  – whilst developing our teamwork, communication and listening skills in a real-life context which we can use outwith school too. A win:win situation! It has to be said, this could not be done without us having  Mrs Richardson working with us, as her knowledge about gardening far surpasses ours! We are extremely lucky!

As a group, we got chatting about what we would like to achieve in our playground and, collating the ideas of children and with some top tips of her own, Mrs Richardson was able to come up with an action plan! We’re ready, willing and, even more importantly, now have some guidance about what needs to be done to tidy up and prepare the soil for planting!

The pupils enthusiastically offered some suggestions and, working in a group of 8, set to work. Mrs Richardson will be working with us weekly – and will take groups of 8 pupils (a mix from P1-4 and P5-7) to help realise our plans.

Pupils will be encouraged to bring old clothes to school for their gardening stint – which will be on a Friday afternoon unless the weather forecast suggests another afternoon might be better! We will keep an eye on weather reports to see what suits best each week. We might also be looking for some assistance from the community, as our plans unfurl, in the form of cuttings, seeds, planters and tyres. We’ll be in touch…

This afternoon really had the feel-good factor!

Today was Outdoor Classroom Day, so the pupils and staff of Leswalt Primary headed out into the fresh November air. We weren’t quite expecting the great Scottish midges to be out in force – but they most definitely were!

Still, we all had a lot of fun!

P1-4 started with a morning walk up to the Wetlands. Along the way we said “Hi!” to Mr McHallum who is working hard replacing the walkway there. We gathered a selection of different coloured Autumn leaves for an art project later in the day, and twigs/sticks for out maths tasks. We managed to fit in a few games of ‘Scatter’ in the woods before returning back to school for break.

We used the twigs to solve some maths problems involving triangles. Isla and Ela were victorious, closely followed by Kaiden and Cara. We then had to work in teams to see who could build the biggest twig tower. The P3 group were worthy winners. They communicated well and everyone joined in. Top Team!

In the afternoon we used the leaves, twigs, berries and rashes we had gathered to make firework patterns. We think they look great! We then used out twigs and clay to build our own Guy Fawkes for the bonfire. A Stickman Guy Fawkes!

P5-7 headed out to do a village percentages quiz before returning to the playground and recapping their prior knowledge about the 4 and 8 point compass. They then used sticks and wool to create spider webs – using the 8 pt compass as inspiration. They look really cool! Some pupils even used protractors to check their angles were correct: was N- NE 45 degrees as it should be? This will now lead onto our angles and bearings work which we will be doing in class next week.

After break, the pupils headed to the Wetlands where they heard the historical tale of Guy Fawkes. Clues were hidden for the pupils to find and photograph with their ipads. They then used these to collate facts about the story surrounding the Gunpowder Plot and even used sticks and leaves to ‘ilustrate’ a bonfire on their piece of work too!

In the afternoon, they set up their rainfall collection experiment (which links to this term’s Science topic) and enjoyed P.E. brushing up on their basketball skills!

 

Zombies, witches and scary skeletons – there were all sorts of spooky goings-on at Leswalt Primary today! Our school of usually fresh-faced, smiling children were transformed for the day into a terrifying bunch of Halloween characters! Aaargh!

The morning started with the judging of the Fancy dress competition.

P1/2 – Colin (with a special prize for Lily!)

P3 – Ellie

P4 – Kaiden

P5 – Rose

P6 – Malcolm

P7 – Joshua

Our two House Captains Gregor and Andrew had organised Halloween afternoon fun in the hall for each class which involved some zombie dancing, creepy corners game, pumpkin race and musical spooky chairs.

p1-4 had great fun both pumpkin AND neep carving. Safe to say the neep required all their strength. There was even a broken knife to show for it! In the afternoon, after their Halloween party fun, the boys and girls created a delightful concoction to make their pumpkin and neep carvings puke – yes it was as yucky as it sounds! STEM fun at its finest!

P5-7 created some stunning spooky silhouettes and then planned and designed their very own paper bat to participate on the Bat Track – which bat design flew the furthest I wonder? And to top the afternoon off, the pupils designed catapults. The challenge? Plan, design and build a catapult to launch your mini chocolate pumpkin through the air – could they land in the pumpkin patch?  Lots of fun – but hidden in there was plenty of engineering and problem-solving too. Check out the photos below!

On Thursday the 8th of October the boys and girls of Leswalt Primary gave their wonderful janitor Mr Brawls a handmade birthday card and something very nice to drink as a special gift – he has a big birthday coming up in the October holidays!

We sang Happy Birthday to him outside and Lily and Ewan handed over his handmade birthday card and gift to him!

We hope he has a lovely day!

Report by Malcolm

Media by Tristan

 

Shape fun

We had lots of fun exploring the properties of 2D shapes with Mrs Copeland and using these to create group pictures.

Symmetry

In pairs we used chalk to create a symmetrical pattern/picture by working across a line in the school hall.  We then searched outside for examples of symmetry in nature.  We collected symmetrical leaves, cut them in half and stuck the halves onto paper.  We then had to draw the other half of the leaf as accurately as possible along the line of symmetry.  This was tricky!

 

Measure/Estimation

We were asked to draw a line on the ground as close to 1m as we could without measuring .  We used a metre stick to check how close we were           (Ruby, Mark, Brandon and Holly were closest! – see photo 5040).  We then drew a squiggly line as close to 1m as we could.  This proved tricky to measure using a metre stick.  We had to use our problem solving skills and decided to use string to track our squiggly line and then used the metre stick to measure the string.

Check out our happy wee faces loving Maths!