Author: Mrs Ferguson

Wow – what a brilliant day we have had! The children of Leswalt P5-7, Sandhead, Portpatrick and Drummore got together at Sandhead to work on their production of ‘Dragon of the Western Seas’ produced by The Scottish Opera. The children had been working hard on the song words since the start of February and had them mastered, now it was time to add that extra sparkle with choreography, acting and costumes.

The mini-opera production told the story of a Chinese Emperor, his Admiral, their fleet of explorers and their travels across India, the Persian Sea and the continent of Africa. The children were split into groups of Indians, Pirates and Africans and then took the lead from the three members from The Scottish Opera for their moves and actions. After a very busy morning of listening carefully, following stage directions, adding some snazzy dance moves and getting those costumes on; the children were ready to stage their show.

Over 50 parents and friends came to enjoy the final performance. And what a rousing and emotionally-charged mini-opera it was! We loved every second of it – I hope all the boys and girls did too! Well done to all involved.

Rain, wind and hail did not deter this bunch of ‘Tough Tinas’ one bit at Stronord! The boys and girls of P5-7, accompanied by Mrs F, Gael Gaw and Kim McGuire enjoyed an overnight residential stay packed full of fun, new experiences, yummy food, night-time blethers and mud!

The first day involved a 5mile hill walk up Larg Hill beyond Creetown. They were led by Outdoor Instructors Robbie and David. The children climbed over 450 metres through marshy land, burns and rocky crags. The wind knocked a few sideways and the hail was unrelenting but did they moan or grumble? No way! This bunch simply started singing their Scottish Opera songs and ‘Flower o’ Scotland’! It was their positive mental attitude that impressed the instructors hugely. They were full of praise for the attitude of the children.

Dinner was a huge hit. Unfortunately, the cook for Stronord was unwell and so we had to be very resourceful and cater for ourselves. The day before we left, some P7s and Mrs Gaw headed off to do some shopping for our breakfast, supper and packed lunches. Thursday night’s tea was a Starfish dinner! Yum yum! The boys and girls then settled down in their pjs and sleeping bags to watch Paddington 2 . All was quiet and settled. It was the calm before the storm!

In all honesty, everyone behaved very well! There were just a few of our younger pupils who were far too excited to sleep. Their giggles and excited whispers were heard long into the wee hours of the morning… but eventually they nodded off.

Friday dawned (a little too quickly for the adults!) and once we were up, dressed and breakfasted, Robbie, Alex and Ed appeared to get us kitted up for the day. We split into two groups and headed off to either mountain biking or orienteering. The day was initially chilly but bright – the rain held off until after lunchtime.

The children had a fabulous time and came home dirty, tired but full of enthusiasm. They were a pleasure to be with. Huge thanks to Kim and Gael for coming along to share the experience with us! I really do believe the children gain so much from an annual residential trip; confidence, socialisation, independence and the chance to try something a bit different a million miles away from the classroom setting.

Just take a look at these photos – what an amazing part of the world we live in. Don’t you agree?

On Monday the 12 of March, to celebrate the fact that the sun was shining, p5-7 went outside for their Maths work. We went over what we knew about angles and used new learning to calculate volume. We also shared what we already knew about shape by spotting and naming real-life 3d shapes like the portacabin, bug hotel and pencil bin!

We got sticks and used them to measure and find out the size of angles. We all had a great time outside. It was a nice day but still quite cold. We enjoyed doing something a bit different to start off our week!

Reporter Euan McCredie

 

 

The staff, parents and pupils of Leswalt Primary enjoyed an afternoon of Science as part of our British Science Week celebration.

British Science Week runs from 9^th-16^th March and is designed to raise awareness of all things Science-y and encourage boys and girls to hone their investigative skills.

The Leswalt Primary pupils worked on a range of Science tasks; Magic Ink to Poo from the Past, Coding with Lego WeDo to bird nest building, programming the Mouse Maze to Electrical Circuits to name but a few! Parents enjoyed working on these with pupils too. Creating ‘poo’ for a Science experiment – what’s not to like!

Parents and pupils go stuck into the activities with great gusto – having a shot at the many STEM (Science, Technology, Maths and Engineering) activities on offer. It was a very busy but fun afternoon. One mum was amazed at how quickly the time flew!

Fun Science activities, all working together and raising awareness of important ecological issues equals a very successful afternoon’s learning. Watch out for those future scientists!

Check out our photos below!

Thursday 1st March was World Book Day! The children enjoyed a wonderful day of reading based activities all designed to encourage us all to take the time to read.

The pupils arrived at school this morning armed with a pre-loved book which they then donated to The Great Book Swap. What a vast array of fabulous books were on the table for pupils top choose from. Each book had been signed by its owner and a short message of goodwill written inside.

The boys and girls thoroughly enjoyed choosing their new books which are now ready to go to their new homes to be loved all over again.

The P1-4 class are enjoying their class novel, Demon Dentist and the P5-7 class are sharing Charlotte’s Web as it had been read to Mrs Ferguson when she was a pupil at primary school. You are never too old to enjoy listening to a story!

D.E.A.R. time was had three times during the day. This stands for Drop Everything And Read for five minutes. From the littlest P1 – to the teachers, everyone downed tools and enjoyed their book – you truly could have heard a pin drop!

Pupils were also aiming to take an Accelerated Reading test in class wherever possible too. So many words being gobbled up by our resident book worms!

In addition to all of this, pupils are coming home with their World Book Day tokens today, which can be used towards to purchase of a brand new book. Lots of boys and girls have also handed in their entries for the ‘Design a Book Token’ competition already – but there’s still time if anyone fancies entering this.

Enjoy your new books everybody – it’s most definitely the weather to cuddle up and enjoy a story!

Ni Hao!

This afternoon, to add to their vast repertoire of experiences, the pupils of P5-7 welcomed Dr Meryl James from the  SCILT, Scotland’s National Centre for Languages, and CISS, Confucius Institute for Scotland’s School. She gave the pupils a fascinating insight into China, its culture, a little of the geography and history of this huge country and an introduction to the language. The children looked at Chinese symbols and their representation and were able to put together numbers and months with surprising ease. It was quite amazing, and most impressive, to see how hungry young minds are for knowledge and how quickly the children took this new information on board (they were far quicker than their teacher if truth be told!)

Dr James is an entertaining and interesting expert in this area, having travelled to China 24 times in the last 25 years! She said she finds new and interesting things out about the country every time she goes. She was particularly keen that the pupils of today should be encouraged to go out into the big world and explore. She’s definitely left them with an interest in all things Chinese.

Dr James has left some further information for us to have a look at and also recommended the BBC Primary Languages website which has a section on Mandarin on it. Go and check it out!

She also made a particular point of saying to staff just how impressed she was by the polite, well-mannered and enthusiastic children we have – so well done to all the boys and girls!

Getting into the sporting spirit of the 2018 Winter Olympics, pupils from Leswalt Primary enjoyed a Curling Extravaganza today at school.

P7 pupils headed off the to North West Castle in the morning, to take part in Curling coaching with some pupils from other schools. Two of our five P7s already go along to weekly curling, but this ignited the interests of the rest of the group too. They had a blast – and just a few slips on the ice too!

In class, the pupils are closely following the curling taking place in PyeongChang at the moment, cheering on local girl Vicky Adams, but today got the chance to meet a real-life Olympian; in Margaret Agnew (nee Morton), a member of the Olympic Gold Medal Ladies’ Team from the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics! To our pupils, she is much better known as the mum to Thomas in P2, so the children and staff were fascinated to hear about her experiences within Curling!

Mrs Agnew came into school this afternoon to share her Olympic story with the children; talking first to P1-4 and then to P5-7. She let them hold her Gold medal (only 5 of this particular medal were ever made, so it is very very special) and show them some photo memories she has of this. The pupils had some great questions for her, and were intrigued to find out about how she got into the sport, the training involved, qualifying for the Olympic games and the feelings she had before, during and after that momentous winning match!

Meanwhile, her husband, Mr Agnew (who is a curling coach) worked with the rest of the school in the hall on indoor curling! Gail Munro from the North West Castle and Alison Murray from Active Schools came along to assist him. The children very enthusiastically played on their rinks (or ‘sheets’ as they would be known) using their curling stones which moved using ball bearings. There was much excitement when it came to scoring! Some teams were celebrating, others vowing to beat them next time!

Many thanks to our local Olympian Mrs Agnew, Curling Coach Mr Agnew, Gail Munro and Alison Murray for giving up their time to give the pupils of Leswalt Primary a first-hand experience of this exciting sport. And the notion that perhaps, if they work hard, one day they too could be an Olympian just like Thomas’s mum!

Today the pupils of P5-7 from Leswalt, Portpatrick and Kirkcolm travelled back to the times of Wallace and Bruce led by Kathryn Purchase from History Alive. The children sat enthralled as they listened to this turbulent period of History; from the unfortunate death of King Alexander III through to the eventual recognition of Robert the Bruce as King. This covered many years of gruesome fighting – all of which the pupils rather enjoyed hearing about! The session truly did bring HISTORY ALIVE!

In the afternoon, the Leswalt pupils got the chance to try on some typical costumes/chainmail from that period and look at helmets and weaponry. It was utterly fabulous!

“I loved this – it was so fascinating! I found out where the word ‘hospital’ came from too!” said Phoebe and Auryn.

“Robert the Bruce’s heart led an army into a crusade. His friend threw it, in its lead casket, so that Robert would have fulfilled his wish to lead a crusade! That’s gory!” Finlay commented.

Kayleigh loved the fact that they got to actually try on some costumes with their friends.

Ethan agreed, “This was so interesting and much more fun than just reading a book about it!”

Thank you so much to Kathryn – making HISTORY ALIVE just makes all the difference. It becomes so real and the children (and staff) so enjoy your sessions.

 

Today we were lucky enough to enjoy a Coding session using Scratch led by Karen Creighton our local RAiSE teacher.

The pupils enthusiastically logged on to the website (Mrs F had set up their logins prior to the session) and followed a set of instructions to code their sprite to do different actions! Strangely enough, the pupils seemed much more au fait with this than their teacher! Coding has become big news in technology developments and it was fabulous and that our pupils got the chanc to explore this with guidance. This is something which the class can access from home and so add to their projects. Scratch is used worldwide by schools to introduce coding to children (and beginner adults!)

The class had a great morning – thanks to Miss Creighton for her expert input!

 

 

 

 

Final event, to culminate our January focus on Scots verse and song, was this afternoon’s Showcase Assembly!

Friday

Friday brought us towards the closure of our Scots festivities with the Showcase Assembly in the afternoon. Pupils, parents and staff gathered for an afternoon packed full of winning recitations and sing-along Scots class songs.

Every class stage had been judged on their handwriting, artwork and poetry recitation on Wednesday by Mr McCracken, and those winners were presented with their certificates at this afternoon’s Showcase Assembly. The audience were entertained with very impressive poetry recitations and both classes sang their wee hearts out with their class songs; The Wee Kirkcudbright Centipede and The Proclaimers’ hit ‘I’m on my Way…’

Everyone agreed it was a lovely way to spend a Friday afternoon. Well done to all the boys and girls!