Miss Douglas – Leswalt Primary School

Physiotherapy – a job that keeps us on our feet, literally! Lauren’s careers in the community assembly

This afternoon we were very fortunate indeed to have the lovely Lauren in to visit us at Leswalt to talk to us about her career as a physiotherapist.

Armed with lots of fun things for our wanna-be physio, nurses and doctors to play with Lauren spoke to us about her career as a Physiotherapist in Stranraer and her journey in becoming one. She explained that she went to university to learn how to do the job and during this time enjoyed her placements!

She spoke about how interesting her job is and the many different things she gets up to as no day looks quite the same as another. She said she loves worked with people in their houses and in care homes to make sure everyone keeps active and healthy to make sure their bones and muscles can move the way they are supposed to!💀🏃‍♀️

She was able to tell us how she uses her Meta Skills as part of her job:

Creativity Cassidy – As Lauren works with children she has to make sure that she makes their appointments as interesting and fun as she can so often has to make up fun games and activities to convince them to do the exercises she wants them to!

Communicating Cate – Lauren works with lots of different people, especially older people who love to tell stories, this is one of her favourite parts of her job!

Collaborating Cora – while working with the NHS Lauren explained that there is a lot of overlap and multi agency working to make sure everyone gets the best possible care, she explained that her job requires her to work with various health care workers including doctors, care workers and nurses!

Focussing Fergus – As well as working with people, Lauren also has to to do some paperwork to make sure that everyone has the right information that they need. 📝

A huge thank you to Lauren for her time this afternoon again, the boys and girls thoroughly enjoyed her visit and has plenty of interesting questions!

Looking after the Tracks in his Glenwilly Shack – Rhuri Paton’s Careers in the Community Assembly

On Friday afternoon we were very excited to have Rhuri Paton (Jorgie’s Daddy) join us in school for our careers in the community assembly! At our last assembly we had Lauren, Jorgie’s mummy in so Rhuri had a tough act to follow! 🙂

Rhuri explained that since leaving university he has been through more jobs than he could even count, but this time he thinks he has finally found his forever job as a signaller with Network Rail. He has recently qualified after a lengthy period of training in Glasgow and now works in the Glenwilly box on the Stranraer line. Unfortunately, on our recent jaunt from Ayr to Stranraer we didn’t see him but now understand what goes on in his little box and what’s inside! 🚂🛤🚝🚆

We have been learning all about the 12 meta skills as part of our assembly focus and Rhuri explained the key skills he needs to do his job including:

Adapting Aleksander – He explained that weather can interfere with the tarins, especially in the remote little area we live so you don’t know what problems you will have to deal with on the railway line so being adaptive is a skill that every signaller needs.

Collaborating Cora – Rhuri told us that usually he works alone, and often on his shifts is just him inside his little box but he has got to be good at teamwork when working with members of the public to help them to cross the track. He also must work with the train drivers, passing tokens to them during their journey when they pass the Glenwilly box.

Communicating Cate – One of the many interesting things Rhuri told us during his visit was the various ways that signaller and railway workers communicate with each other using bells and radios. Any miscommunications may lead to delays and safety incidents so it is important that he listens well to hear the sounds and be able to reply!🔔

The boys and girls also had a great time listening Jorgie’s Daddy explains his job as a signaller – Rhuri is a busy man and also works as a football coach on the weekends as well where he would use lot of different and perhaps some of the same Meta Skills!⚽

RRS Article 13 (freedom of expression) Every child must be free to express their thoughts and opinions and to access all kinds of information

From Chills to Pills and Meta Skills; Lauren’s Nursing Careers in the Community Assembly

Today we were very excited to have Lauren, Jorgie’s mummy in to speak to the boys and girls about her job as a nurse! Armed with bandages, syringes and her glamorous assistant Ralphie she arrived to tell us all about her job as a nurse! 👩‍⚕️

Lauren explained how she got into nursing and the skills and qualities needed prior to her training, including compassion, kindness and good communication skills. She explained that there were lots of different types of nurses and she is a community nurse who travels all around Stranraer to look after people in their homes. She explained that changing bandages, administering medication and doing routine check ups on patients were the usual goings on in her everyday life, but said that because of the nature of the job every day is different and you must be prepared to deal with all emergencies! :💉🤕

Focussing Fergus – For obvious reasons. for a vet concentration is key! He has lots of technical and high pressure jobs on his hands from the moment he starts work to the moment he finishes so being able to focus and get the job done right is super important! 🐶🐱

Collaborating Cora – Working in the emergency services means that Lauren will work alongside lots of different people including; doctors, police officers, social work, school staff etc and will often make plans for patients to make sure they get better by working alongside others.

Communicating Cate – This one is absolutely key to being a top nurse, she has to make sure to pass on information and record paperwork properly to make sure that the best care is given to patients. She must also communicate with other members of her team, families, hospital staff as well as patients themselves to ensure that everyone knows the information they need.

Critical Thinking Chris – Often nurses have unexpected problems that they may not always know the answers or solutions to straight away! Lauren explained that sometimes she has to ask for help from others and take time to make sure she chooses the best option of how to help and the right tools and resources to do it!

Feeling Felix – Nurses are kind, caring people who want to help others through difficult times. To do this Lauren has to be empathetic, supportive and help to calm people down when they are distressed ❤️

A huge thank you to Lauren for coming in to speak to us this morning, the smiles on not just Jorgie’s face but the rest of the class said it all! We specially loved being hands on with all of the different bits and bobs in her nurses bag. Looking forward to having Jorgie’s daddy in at the next Careers Assembly, he’s got big boots to fill!😄

RRS Links

Article 13 (freedom of expression) Every child must be free to express their thoughts and opinions and to access all kinds of information.

Focusing FUR-gus, Sense-Making LAMB-ira and Feeling FeLICKS – Ian McDonalds Careers Assembly

Today we were very excited to have Cameron’s daddy in to speak to us about his job as a Vet, especially given the number of aspiring vets we have in the school!🐾

Ian told our about his background and how he first became interested in becoming a vet and his love for animals and very many pets that he has at home! He explained that in order to be a vet you must have a kind and caring personality as what he does day-to-day is help animals to feel better. To do this he visits farms around the Stranraer area, assisting with calving, lambing, vaccinations and performing surgeries! He said that one of his favourite parts of his job is the fact that everyday is visit and when out on a job or in the surgery he just can’t predict what problems will arise! 🤔🔬💭

Ian spoke about his role and the skills and qualities needed to be a good vet. We have been learning all about the 12 Meta Skills so it was great to hear how these can be used out with school in the world of work

Collaborating Cora – As a vet you often need to work alongside other vets/farmers so being able to work as part of a team is crucial. there is absolutely no way vets could do what they do alone! 🐄

Communicating Cate –Ian explained that working with animals was always something he was very comfortable with and by the sounds of it something he is naturally very talented in! Of course the does not speak the language of ‘dog’ or ‘cat’ but managed to work well with animals all the same! What people maybe don’t realise as much is that vets always need to be good at communicating with human-beings as every pet has an owner! 🐇🦔

Critical Thinking Chris – Often vets have big problems that they may not always know the answers or solutions to straight away! Ian explained that he once had a horse whose skin had been ripped on a barbed wire fence (yes we did see the photos to prove it!) and this means that they have to take time to consider all of the different options and possibilities before deciding to proceed with the best one! 🏇

A huge thank you to Ian for his time, the boys and girls really enjoyed his visit – they were well and truly captivated with every words Ian spoke as well as the cute but equally as interesting pictures he shared – and I have no doubt we will have a few keen to follow in his footsteps after this afternoon!

RRS Links

Article 13 (freedom of expression) Every child must be free to express their thoughts and opinions and to access all kinds of information.

Our Amazing Brains

This morning we welcomed the lovely Kelsey McWhirter from Alzheimer’s Scotland in to speak to the P6/7s about brain health!

She showed us a programme called STARS; each letter representing a way to keep our brains performing to the best of their ability ⭐🧠

Spend time with friends and family – having conversations and making connections about different parts of your day and learning helps the brain to develop

Tuck In – Our brain uses 1/5th of energy from the food that we eat. It is so important to make sure we are earing a healthy, balanced diet to ensure our brain has all of the nutrients it needs! 🍌🍉

Active and Healthy – Moving our bodies helps the blood pump to our brain, giving it a boost!🏃‍♀️

Rest and Relax – It is so important tat children get 10 hours of sleep per night! While we are sleeping our brains are processing all of the important information learned throughout the day!😴💤🌙

Safety – try to keep our heads and brains safe by keeping away from danger, especially head injuries!

We learned a lot of useful information to help us to keep our brains working hard and some fun facts that I am sure you might be amazed by over the dinner table tonight!

Thanks again to Kelsey from Alzheimer’s Scotland for her session today, we thoroughly enjoyed her visit!

Meta Skills

Feeling Felix

Focusing Fergus

Sense Making Samira

RRS

Article 24 – Access to Health Care

Article 28 – The right to an Education

Sun, Run and Lots of Fun at Leswalt Sports Day!

After being scheduled, rescheduled and then rescheduled again Leswalt’s annual Sports Day finally took place and what glorious, sunny weather we got! 😎☀🌞

The races of the day were as follows:
The Sprint
The Skipping Race
The Sack Race
Egg and Spoon Race
Obstacle Race
Long Distance

The races ran very smoothly and Mrs Baillie managed to get them done in record time before the highly anticipated Relay Race. A team from Lochnaw and Soleburn after days (maybe even weeks) of practise were finally ready to go head-to-head! It was extremely close throughout the race but during the final leg Murray just pipped Daisy to the post! 🏆

The sportsmanship that the boys and girls showed today was just fantastic – they cheered one another on and had plenty of laughs, we are so incredibly proud of them all!♥🥇🥈🥉

A huge big thank you to Gordon and Kim from Leswalt shop to very kindly bought ice-lollies, sweets and bottles of water for the boys and girls the enjoy after their races (some of them ran just as fast for these as they did in their races haha!)

Excited to see how this effects our already very close House Points and who manages to secure Sports Champion boy and girl this year!? All will be revealed at the Closing Ceremony. 🏆🤔

Results will be posted soon… Here are some cute action shots and some funny facials for now!

Rights of the Child
Article 31 of the UNCRC says that children and young people have the right to have fun in the way they want to.

Article 28 – The right to an education

Metaskills:
Focussing Fergus (as you can see from the action shots)

Leading Li (Thank you House Captains)

Collaborating Cora (Plenty of fantastic team work)

Communicating Cate (just in case you didn’t hear the cheers)

From Dunskey Green to the Crime Scene: Stuart Fisher’s Careers Assembly

On Friday afternoon we were very excited to have Stuart Fisher back in our school, we always love Stuart’s visits to help us with our golfing skills but this time he came not as a golfing coach but as a Police officer. ⛳🏌️‍♀️👮‍♂️

Stuart has recently undertaken his Police training and has very kindly come in to talk about his new job as part of our careers in the community assemblies. He spoke about all of the many things that he does as a police officer and how he makes sure he keeps everyone safe. As expected the boys and girls came armed with many questions and Stuart did very well to answer them.

We have been learning all about the 12 meta skills as part of our assembly focus and Stuart explained the key skills he needs to do his job including:

Adapting Aleksander – He explained that each and every day is different and most days you don’t know what problems you will have to deal with so being adaptive is a skill that every police officer needs.

Focussing Fergus – Stuart also explained that despite being out and about in Stranraer, on foot and in the police van he also spends a lot of time in the office doing paperwork so must be good at concentrating and staying focussed to help him get it done!🚓🚨🚔✏️📝

Collaborating Cora – As a police officer Stuart needs to work with lots of different people (not just criminals ), he also works with members of the public, doctors, nurses, families, schools to name just a few! He said he must have good people skills to help him with this.

Communicating Cate – Being a police officer can be a very high pressure job and many people find speaking to the police a little scary. Stuart explained that the police are there to help and will always speak calmly, fairly and respectfully.

Curiosity Carlos – One of the most obvious roles of a Police officer is to resolve problems and get to the bottom of crimes. He explained that he must ask the right questions to help him to do this.

A huge thank you to Stuart for his time, as always he made us smile and laugh and I am sure inspired a few of us to follow in his footsteps! 👮‍♂️

Article 13 (freedom of expression) Every child must be free to express their thoughts and opinions and to access all kinds of information.

Logan Gardens

What a glorious day for some fun in the sun at Logan Gardens! We jumped on the bus wearing our summer gear, sunglasses and carrying our lunch bags this morning and headed to Port Logan where we met our friends from Kirkcolm!

The boys and girls in the P1-4 class were delighted that a letter from Edward Bear landed in the teachers’ inbox inviting the boys and girls to Logan Gardens to take part in the teddy bear’s trail. Armed with their bears of various sizes, shapes and colours – they headed on the bus to the gardens to learn all about S.W.A.F. shelter, water, air and food – all the thing that teddy bears need to live in the wild. They walked about a looked for clues in the beautiful gardens before being tasked with creating a home- fit for their bear to live using materials from the beautiful gardens around them! At the end of their session they met the one and only Edward Bear!🐻💚

The older bunch began their session “Every Pictures Tells a Story” by looking at photographs and finding out what makes a high quality image before being given a frame and investigated how changing the angle, orientation and distance can alter the way that an image is captured. We finished the session with two fun activities that tested what they’d learned earlier in the session. Firstly, they using a real camera the boys and girls were asked to capture an image which makes them happy – which on a day like today in the place that we were, this was not a difficult mission! Secondly we were asked to spot some objects along a trail which did not belong i.e. a scarf camouflaged into a tree’s branch (this was a bit hit with everyone and also left Miss D questioning her eyesight haha!) 📸🔍

After the session we enjoyed our picnic lunch by the pond with the Kirkcolm boys and girls with the sun shining and had a good old blether together before jumping back on the bus to school!🍓🍈🥪🍊

A huge thank you to all at Logan Botanic Gardens for this fantastic experience!

Meta Skills

Initiative Ivy

Curiosity Carlos

Creativity Cassidy

Sense-Making Samira

Communicating Cate

Articles

Article 6 – Life, Survival & Development

Article 17 – Access to Information

Article 24 – Health, Food, Water & Environment

Finding our Inner Kung Fu Panda

This afternoon we were delighted to welcome Mark Pogson into school to do a session with the boys and girls on QiGong – a Chinese art of breathing, and meditation. They were taken through a mixture of movements and breathing techniques designed to make them feel super zen – perfect for this time in the school calendar when everything is so busy 🙈!

Both classes took part in a 30 minute session. They used their arms and legs to create different poses while imagining a ball in their arms, they used this ball to create body poses and help to control their breathing – making them very quite, concentrated and most importantly relaxed. The time just flew in and they were all surprised when the sessions ended as it felt like no time had passed ☺️🥋

A huge thank you to Mark for delivering this session, it was definitely a big hit at Leswalt Primary.

Meta Skills – Focussing Fergus

Rights – (Article 31) The right to play and relax · (Article 13) Freedom of expression