Author: Mrs Ferguson

Well done to this bunch of super workers! Usually we would have an end of term assembly to celebrate success, but unfortunately Lockdown meant this couldn’t happen. Still, we wanted to give a big ‘high five’ to these fabulous readers and to those who achieved their Gold Star award too.

This happy gang of readers were STAR readers within their year group. What brilliant bookworms we have! Keep up the fantastic work.

P2 – Ela and Hamish

P3 – Faye

P4 – Struan

P5 – Aidan (also a Word Millionaire!)

P6 – Luke and Gregor

P7 – Finlay (another Word Millionaire and not in the photo above as he’s now in S1)

Ela, Hamish, Faye, Struan, Aidan and Finlay were also our winners in our inter-schools challenge. We had a super exciting trio partnership competition to aim to be the STAR reader across each stage in all 3 schools and, amazingly, 5 out of 6 of those pupils were from Leswalt Primary! Whoop whoop!

Star Awards are home/school activities which pupils work on throughout the year. There are Bronze, Silver and Gold certificates to achieve and two of Leswalt Primary’s pupils worked super hard to reach Gold last session.

Well done to the Gaw team of Phoebe and Noah – fantastic work! Phoebe has headed on to pastures new (S1 at Academy!) but Noah is pictured below.

 

We can’t tell you how good it was today to see all the smiling faces of the pupils of Leswalt Primary! We had the most wonderful day – check out our photos below to see for yourselves….

Mark and Rachael have been very busy whilst school has been closed! Mrs McKnight had set her task a weekly maths topic based around money.  Team Drummond decided the very best way to learn lots about money was by using it in a real-life situation, so they decided to set up a little shop next to the road at their farm.  They started selling crisps and rolls to passers-by. I am sure their winning smiles drew would-be customers in! They then decided to make cakes and biscuits to add to their stock. Their very kind Grandpa offered to match the money they made – and they contacted Mrs McKnight last week to say they had a fantastic £300 to donate to the school!

What a lovely thing to do and such super teamwork! A huge thank you from Leswalt Primary staff and pupils.

‘Get arty and create a rainbow of hope’  was the challenge set down to the pupils of Leswalt Primary by Mrs Copeland our Art Specialist. Well, neither she, or any of us, were quite prepared for the multitude of colourful rainbow designs which came flooding in. They certainly raise a smile to all who spot them in windows; at road-ends, pony jumps or even on a pony’s rear! Pens, paint techniques, chalk, fruit, vegetables, Hot Wheels cars, science experiments, salt dough, pony rosettes –  there really is no limit to the creativity of our pupils. Our tech-savvy pupils then emailed and uploaded their photos and pictures in to be added to our Rainbow blog to be enjoyed by all.

We absolutely love them! Most of all, we love the wee community spirit of Leswalt Primary.

Thank you! You have all made us very proud.

Sun shining? Tick! Smiling, happy pupils? Tick! All the ingredients for fabulous fun outside for Fresh Air Friday!

We looked out the playground games and enjoyed one another’s company. From skipping games to dominoes, hula hoops to draughts, balance boards to Connect 4 – there were plenty of laughs to be had.

I hope these photos make you smile. Hopefully we’ll all be back together soon to plan some more fun times.

Here is a handy ‘how to’ guide on how to access your child’s Glow account at home.  This gives access to email and shared resources could be uploaded to Microsoft Teams here too. Your child’s Glow login will be in their homework diaries.  They have all been checked as working today.

Some pupils tried sending emails to one another today, after being reminded about responsible internet use. They seemed to really enjoy doing this!

 

 

This morning we welcomed S6 STEM Ambassadors Lily and Emma into our P4-7 classroom.

The young ladies delivered four fun Science activities.

The first activity was testing our peripheral vision.  The boys and girls attached string to a protractor to create an arc with which to rotate an object into our field of view.  We were using our rod cells to sense objects.  There are fewer rod cells at the periphery of our retina.  This is why we could not determine what the object was until it was more directly in front of us.

Then, the children used their sense of smell to determine whether they could smell as well as a shark.  The pupils had to sniff vials of varying strengths of water/perfume from zero, 20ppm, 200ppm and 100ppm.  They then ranked them in order of weakest to strongest.

Next up, the pupil had the very enjoyable activity of making slime like a slug by creating a mixture of cornflour and water .  The children explored the properties of this substance – what force needed to be applied and how this linked to the movement of slugs.

Finally, the pupils engaged in a brain challenge.  They read colour words written in a non-matching colour e.g. the word pink written in green pen.  The children had to try and say the colour word and not the colour it was written in.  This isn’t easy!  Most people find it easier to say the word rather than the colour as the word has a strong influence on the brain.  The class worked in two teams to see who could conquer this tricky task!

The STEM Ambassadors held a Q+A session at the end and took feedback from the pupils.

It was a great learning experience – thank you Lily and Emma!

Our 4 P7 pupils formed a fabulous team for the annual Curling’s Cool Bonspiel held at the North West Castle Hotel in Stranraer.

They enjoyed a full and busy day curling, working well as a team and meeting new people who they’ll move up to Stranraer Academy with.

Many thanks to Finlay’s mum, Mrs Scott for accompanying them.

Leswalt Primary pupils enjoyed celebrating World Book Day today! The Great Big Book Swap Shop took place with everyone heading home with something new to read! Noah and Ellie, the library monitors, had created a Front Cover competition (this will be judged on Monday) and also took charge of the Swap Shop with a little help from the P7 pupils.

P1-3 enjoyed a book hunt in the library and watching author Chae Strathie as part of the Scottish Book trust author events. P4-7 were busy using the Book Creator app to design their own books linked to their RME topic of Sikhism and completing their own podcast stories using Soundtrap. They also enjoyed listening the prologue of an audio book through the World Book Day website and sketching freeze-frames of story scenes as they listened.

Pupils have all headed home armed with their pre-loved book (or perhaps quite a few pre-loved books!), a World Book Day sticker and a book token which can be exchanged for any £1 book in WHSmith or used to reduce the price of another book they like the look of!