Author: Mrs Ferguson

It’s a busy busy week – fresh from their superb show performances yesterday, Leswalt pupils enjoyed a fabulous party afternoon today!

House Captains Hamish and Carys and Vice House Captains Cara and Faye had been the organising elves and Mrs McKnight and Mrs F followed their plans so that everyone enjoyed an afternoon of festive fun.

The tunes were pumping as they played Christmas Corners, Musical Baubles and Pass the Present before taking a break for some crisps, juice and sweet treats prepared by P5-7 and Mrs Kyle. It was then back to the hall for a rousing rendition of Jingle Bells – just in case this might be the favourite song of a certain mystery guest….

Sure enough, we soon heard the sound of bells and who should join us in our school hall but Santa Claus!!

He was so cheery and chatty with all the boys and girls who, thankfully, had all made the good list! Phew!

Everyone had lovely time and headed home wearing their new personalised hats with pride and munching their chocolate Santas!

Merry Christmas to you all!

 

Huge well done to our Leswalt Primary 5 pupil Murray Reid for winning this year’s Millennium Centre Light Switch-on poster competition – out of all our local primary schools!

He will be enjoying a trip on Santa’s Float and be part of Stranraer’s Light Switch-on this Saturday. Look out for his winning poster on display as part of the town’s Christmas celebrations too.
What a fantastic achievement Murray!

U

Update – here are some of his fabulous photos from Saturday!

Lactalis Cheese Factory and McLelland Cheese Packing 

On Thursday 23rd of November, Leswalt P5-7 class went on a trip to Lactalis Stranraer. We started off in the meeting room, learning about the history of Lactalis (it’s owned by a French family), how it has grown over the years and the health and safety rules and guidelines which are really important to keep employees safe and produce top quality cheese. 

Then group 1 went to cheese packaging across the road from the main factory. Meanwhile group 2 went down into the cheese production factory to see how the cheese was made starting from the milk being delivered and through every stage (curds and whey and the use of ‘good’ bacteria) to the finished product of 20Kg blocks of cheese. This is all done in an area where there are HUGE machines. There is a lot of engineering and Science involved in making such tasty cheese. There was even a small museum there showing the ways in which cheese had been produced over the years. 

After that, the Groups came back to the meeting room and tasted different types of cheese. The types of cheese that we tried were mild, medium, mature and extra mature cheddar. That’s not something that we get to do every Thursday! 

Lastly, the two groups swapped over, and group 1 went to cheese production and group two went to cheese packaging. At cheese packaging is across the road at the McLelland Cheese Packaging plant and we watched the 20Kg blocks pass through on different lines to be unwrapped, then cut, sliced or grated, packaged up and sealed and then packed ready to go out for delivery. If the bits of cheese are too small, they get collected up and get sent off to be grated. 

Lactalis are working really hard on eco issues and recycle all their cardboard, are trialling some recyclable plastic packaging and are investing in producing their own power to run machinery. There are solar panels planned for next year. 

Do you know that Stranraer’s factory produces and packs cheese products to be sent all over the world?! And we learnt that there are so many different jobs at the factory – it was really interesting. 

Overall, we had a fabulous time at both factories, and we would all like to thank all the staff at Lactalis for giving up their time to show us around. 

Thank you! 

Report written by Faye Adams and Brandon Millar (P7) 

 

Report by Ela and Ellie…

Today, Aileen and Ross from the Glasgow Science Centre team came to our school with their roadshow called ‘Future Fuels’. Aileen told us about Fossil Fuels and why it is so important to find renewable energy sources. She showed us an experiment using methanol and demonstrated the Fire Triangle which  needs Oxygen, heat and fuel to work. The tiny amount of methanol made a huge bang when the Fire Triangle was completed but this is not something which can be easily controlled. It can be super dangerous (that’s why she demonstrated it wearing safety goggles and using safety equipment!)

She told us about research which is going into some amazing projects like the Solar Array in California, the Hydrogen Plant outside of Rome, Italy, the Solar Car Race which is held in Australia (Kaiden and Katie competed – the KGs!- competed in a mini version of this using a tiny car with a solar panel and a torch as the light source) and the Solar Impulse II which is an solar panelled plane! It took 505 days to travel all the way around the world so not handy for your summer holidays in the sunshine just yet, but maybe in the future!

Ross then demonstrated all ten exhibits which we were allowed to play with and investigate the different renewable power sources. The exhibits were called:

Directional Drilling        Nuclear Reactor        Solar Array        Windmill Kit

Million Watt Drop        Three Phase Generator        Crank Power        50 Hz

Hydrogen Launcher        Hand Crank Generator

We had a great morning finding out about Science of the Future! Thanks to Ross and Aileen for visiting us.

 

 

Following on from yesterday’s World Children’s Day, PC Walker visited Leswalt Primary this afternoon to talk about UNCRC Rights of a Child and the role the police play in keeping us all safe.

Working in our assembly groups, we all chatted about our rights and what each article meant for us day-to-day. There was lots of chat about the right to be safe, to learn, to be fed, to be warm and to be listened to. PC Walker talked about adults who are there to help make sure children’s rights are met. We also talked about the importance of respecting the rights of others.
There was time for a chat about the ‘day in the life of a police officer’ and how there is no typical day for them. She told us about the age at which you can be charged with a criminal offences – it’s 12! Some of us thought that was a bit too old… what do you think?

Many thanks to PC Walker for taking the time to come and speak to us.

UNCRC Rights of the Child – Article 17 Access to Information

Pupils and staff rocked up to school today wearing blue (to support World Children’s Day on Mon 20th November) and with their pockets full of pennies to add to our Children in Need collection bucket!
All week, House Captains had been manning their Children in Need merchandise shop and selling Pudsey ears, pens and pin badges. Their shop was super busy – with lots of money being raised.
As a school, we checked out the Children in Need website and chatted about where our donations go and how they are used to help children.
Grand total to follow… thanks for everyone’s support!

Today the pupils of Leswalt Primary headed to the war memorial to pay their respects ahead of Remembrance Day tomorrow.

Before we left, we watched a short video clip from PoppyScotland and talked about the reasons behind the poppies which the House Captains Hamish and Carys had been visiting each class with over the last week. We took some time to think about how their donations would be used and why they were needed. We also found out a little about the history of the poppy and then, taking our own home-crafted willow wreath, we set off for Leswalt’s war memorial.

There we read the inscriptions on the memorial, the House Captains laid our wreath and we held our own two minute silence as pupils showed their respect to all those past and present who have served their country.

This week is Computing Science Week – a chance for us all to investigate, discuss and explore different aspects of the Computing Science world.

From chatting about the HUGE variety of jobs under the Computing Science umbrella, watching and talking about women in engineering (hopefully we have a few budding male and female engineers of the future in our class!), exploring coding using Spheros at our college campus day and using ipads, laptops and PC.s to create video games through the Microsoft MakeCode website ( a session led by Morna Fisken from My World of Work) we have enjoyed a very busy few days!

Today, Morna joined us in-person (we have already enjoyed two online sessions in previous weeks). She led the pupils step-by-step through the Microsoft aracde.makecode.com website. Using a wide range of employability skills; problem-solving, working to deadlines, learning to adapt and self-evaluate and following instructions – the pupils were then able to create their own interactive video game creating backgrounds, sprites as their main character and coding instructions to design projectiles to be fired at in their game! They also set up a number of lives for their sprite and the ability for it to ‘fight back’ and destroy the projectile!

All good fun but learning too as the class were reading, listening, using their numeracy and maths positional skills to name just a few – I just don’t think they realised they were actually working! Computing Science week has been a huge hit at Leswalt Primary!

@mywowscotland

 

 

Well, just take a look at those photographs… what a fabulous day! Huge thanks to Ms Whorlow, Fiona Herron Stranraer Campus manager, Susan Boland  Early Education and Childcare Lecturer and Mrs Hall and Miss Creighton from DG STEM Team for organising this fantastic DYW/STEM day at Dumfries and Galloway College Stranraer Campus.

The pupils enjoyed an action-packed day of activities from Childcare games and art and craft activities to Technology Sphero coding (mini robots controlled using instructions coded by the pupils) to Construction work planning, designing and creating a marble run in small groups by measuring and sawing wood. Phew!

Whether the pupils believe it or not, they were actually using SO many employability, Literacy and Numeracy skills today – co-operating, negotiating, measuring, working within deadlines, problem-solving, communicating, listening and respecting to name just a few!

Furthermore, by enjoying these wonderful new experiences, we were also using our North Rhins Partnership school values – Norah Nurture, Ronnie Respect and Percy Perseverance as well as ensuring the children were experiencing UNCRC Article 4,13 and 28 (Making Rights Real, Sharing Thoughts Freely and Access to Education). Brilliant!

Many thanks must also go to Kaiden’s mum Natasha for coming along with us and, of course, thanks to DGC Stranraer Campus for having us! The pupils thoroughly enjoyed their day with exclamations of…

” That was brilliant!”    “Can we do that every Thursday?”

“It wasn’t like school work at all!”

” I really love going to the campus to learn”

…to paraphrase just a few pupils!

A jam-packed day of fun learning!

 

 

Where had all the smiling, fresh-faced children of Leswalt Primary gone? The bell rang at 9am and staff opened the door to be faced with…. a frightening array of Halloween characters!
After a busy morning’s work (ever witnessed a zombie doing their subtraction task?!) – the House Captains and Vice House Captain put their party plans into action for an afternoon of frighteningly fabulous fun!
The action kicked off with a Petrifying Parade to judge the most creative costumes for each year group, Creepy Corners followed this with much excitement! The Really Scary Relay saw groups working together and having a blast as they dodged the cone markers. Hamish supervised the traditional ‘Dooking for apples’ whilst Carys and Faye judged ‘Pin the Wart on the Witch’! The party finished with a Best Dancer competition. Such a lot of spooky shenanigans and freakishly fabulous fun for a Happy Halloween!

Looking forward to seeing our usual smiley Leswalt Primary crew back tomorrow though!