This term, Primary 4-7 have been learning about renewable energy sources and ways we can save energy and make eco-friendly choices! After the October break, we will be learning about Sustainability and what we can do day-to-day for a better future! To make this big topics seem relevant to us in little Leswalt we had asked to visit the new housing development to find out how they make sustainable choices in their new land development. 🏘
This morning, we buddied up with our friends from Kirkcolm as well as site manager Ross and his colleague Sophie from McTaggart Construction and made our way across to the building site in our snazzy hi-vis vests! We were given a tour of the plot, where Ross explained all the adaptations they make to their houses to ensure sustainable living; from foam insulations, to wood identification trails to make sure they know exactly where the timber frames were grown.🌲🏘 ♻️
Afterwards. we invited Ross and Sophie back to Leswalt to show us how the experts do it and build some houses of our own! 🏡 We used cardboard boxes and MakeDo kits to build a sustainable house of our own and absolutely loved using the bolts and tools to do it! So much so, that McTaggart Construction have kindly offered to purchase for us to use in school! 🎁📦
*Disclaimer, the Leswalt housing will be much sturdier, and will include roofs
We had an absolutely super morning, and love every opportunity for the upper classes to get together for fun projects! A big thank you to Sophie and Ross from McTaggart Construction for taking the time to show us around the housing development and their very generous donation of the MakeDo kits for us to keep working on our building skills in school 🙂!
This term, the Primary 4-7 class have been working hard to save up their “class cash”. This week the managed to secure £1000 in savings and decided the only logical thing to do would be spend in on having a “Fondue Party!🤑 We enjoyed a selection of fruit and chocolatey goodies dipped into some delicious melted chocolate🍫. A super end to a super term! Well done Team P4-7! 😋
On Thursday afternoon, the boys are girls made the wet and wild journey over to Leswalt Church with their tatties, beans and carrots to celebrate Harvest. Reverend Marlene led a fantastic service, we loved sharing with her our crisps and sandwich picks! The boys and girls performed some beautiful songs; “Thank you for Almost Everything” was sang P4-7 and the little class gave a very cute rendition of “Big Red Combine Harvester” before everyone came together to sing “5 a day” We finished off with another sing of The Big Red Combine from 1-3 (it was too cute not to!) 😊
On Friday morning, Mrs Kyle, Mrs Baillie and our brave P6’s and 7’s headed around the village to delivery some bags filled with our lovely harvesty foods to Leswalt’s community member! We thoroughly enjoyed our door hopping! The perfect way to brighten up a wet and wild weekend with some wholesome foods 🙂🍲
Thank you to everyone who joined our celebrations at Leswalt Church and the kind food donations. A big shout-out to the Baxters and their hens for the very generous egg donation, Papa John and his committed green fingered gardening club (Leo) for their (giant!!) carrots and onions!🥕🥔🌽
As James said ” The Leswalt community is so nice!” We definitely agree! 💕
Meta Skills
Creative Cassidy Communicating Cate
Collaborating Cora
Article 14 – I have the right to have my own thoughts and beliefs and to choose my religion, with help from my parents
On Monday, we welcomed Richard Patchett back into school to do some outdoor maths with us! Richard had kindly collected some branches for us and we made sling-shots using elastic! Using the conkers we collected on Friday afternoon from the Wetlands and some kind conker donations, we (safely) launched conkers using our slingshots (Risk assessment assured😏). The aim was to launch the conkers to hit the target and use their adding strategies to tally up their scores! Such a fun, hands on opportunity for children to use their maths skills!
Tuesday – Big Maths with our Big People ✖️➕➖➗
On Tuesday afternoon, both classes welcomed their families into school to show off our Big Maths! Whether you’re Primary 2 or Primary 7, Big Maths is a big deal! We had a fantastic afternoon showing off our Clic Tests and the strategies we use to reinforce number operations and facts. We then tested our quick number fact recall with our Learn In Tests, with the added fun of our families joining in with the Primary 6-7 test! 😆Primary 1’s had fun with their big people in the hall, playing some fun games and showing off how we use Numicon to reinforce number recognition.🔢👨👩👧👦
Photoshop Filter Fun 🔣🖼
On Tuesday afternoon, Primary 4-7’s captured some of Leswalt’s beautiful landscapes; from still waters to winding paths, rowed up fields and autumnal trees at the Wetlands🍂🌳🌿 Back at school, the pupils worked hard to edit their photographs using the iPads ‘edit’ function. We looked at percentages and how the increase and decrease in saturation, vibrancy or sharpness percentages can really alter the shot. We experimented with the percentage combinations on our own shots and feel very proud of the Instagram worthy shots we have created!
James and Murray
Eilidh and Keira
Hannah and Lily
Colin and Ben
Rachel and Rebecca
Wednesday – On Wednesday both classes played some fun maths games indoors, Primary 4-7 played an all-time favourite – SPLAT! to practise their tables and number fact fluency! Miss Douglas had created a fun Kahoot Quiz to compete against each-other to solve maths word problems!✖️➕➖➗
Thursday – Chasing Shadows: Maths Measurement 🌞
This term, P1-3 have been learning about the sun, moon and stars. Today’s mission was to explore the movement of the sun throughout the day, by measuring their shadows at different times. With the help of their P4-7 buddies, they headed out early this morning to measure their shadows in the morning sun – afterwards, they predicted what would happen later in the day, would they move? would they get bigger or smaller? ☀️
Later on, they tested out their predictions by re-measuring their shadows, before and after lunchtime. 📏They were amazed to see that their shadows were not the same length as in the morning, and some were pointing in a different direction too. Some fun hands-on maths fun in the sunshine!
Friday – Mandala Maths in the Mud! 🍂🌳⚪
This afternoon Primary 4-7 ventured up the Wetlands to create some Mandala Pattern Art, practising some of the symmetry and rotation we have been learning as part of our shape focus in Maths! We collected sticks, stones, conkers and feathers and used these to create unique mandala patterns!
Phew! We’ve had a fantastic week and luckily some fantastic weather to celebrate Maths in Nature as Part of Scotland’s National Maths Week! 😆
This morning P4-7 , armed with snacks and carboard headed over to Kirkcolm for a morning of flight with Visible Fictions’ “The Impossible” Project!✈️
Over the course of the term the boys and girls have been learning about the 4 forces of flight, famous aeronauts from the past and what exactly is in a flight deck of a plane!? They put this knowledge to work by creating their very own flight decks to take part in the audio drama, this gave them a space to experience the story from which helped to immerse them in the experience.
When we arrived, we teamed up with Kirkcolm’s upper class for a game of ‘Guess What’s in the Box’. The three volunteers used adjectives to describe the textures of the unknown objects and using their clues, we identified a pilot’s hat, a yellow plane and a globe which led us to think about famous pilot Amelia Earheart and her plane, ‘the Canary.’👩✈️ Afterwards, we wired up our headsets, and immersed ourself in our cardboard flight decks and enjoyed an audio drama of a plane journey and crash!
We had a fantastic morning learning about the history of flight and having fun with our Kirkcolm friends! 👩✈️ 👨✈️
A warm sunny day in September… unheard of! Primary 1-3 made the most of the great weather today by heading outside for some fun shadow science 🌞! This term, they have been learning about the sun, moon and stars. Today’s mission was to explore the movement of the sun throughout the day, by measuring their shadows at different times. With the help of their P4-7 buddies, they headed out early this morning to measure their shadows in the morning sun – afterwards, they predicted what would happen later in the day, would they move? would they get bigger or smaller? ☀️
Later on, they tested out their predictions by re-measuring their shadows, before and after lunchtime. They were amazed to see that their shadows were not the same length as in the morning, and some were pointing in a different direction too.
It was a wonderful day of hands-on learning , making the most of the sunshine! 🙂
Today, Primary 4–7 pupils armed with iPads explored the beautiful landscapes of the Wetlands and Village, capturing everything from still waters to winding paths, rowed up fields and autumnal trees.🍂🌳🌿 The trip followed a special visit from a local photographer, Chris Smith who shared expert tips on how to frame a shot, look for interesting angles, and use light creatively. We put his top-tips into practice outdoors, taking some lovely landscape photos.
Back at school, the pupils worked hard to edit their photographs using the iPads ‘edit’ function, we experimented with colour, contrast, and cropping to make their images stand out. The results were fantastic – We are very proud of the effort and enthusiasm shown by everyone, and we look forward to displaying some of the pupils’ favourite shots around school!
Check out the photo library to see our work! 😄 📸
Eilidh and KeiraColin and BenHannah and LilyRachel and RebeccaJames and Murray
Today we welcomed local photographer and Kirkcolm Parent Chris Smith into P4-7 to talk all things photography – our art focus this term. Having explored what photography means and looked at some Macro photography in the playground. This week our focus has been on portraits.🖼
Chris was able to show us some of the breathtaking landscapes he’s photographed and his camera kit and discussed with us how he goes about taking his photos and the effort that goes in to taking a good landscape photo.🏔 He even showed The times you have to get up at in the morning, to drive to the ideal location, to then climb where you need to be, to get the perfect shot at the perfect time… and it’s still not guaranteed! The pupils had many many(!) questions for Chris, all of which he patiently answered, and we are all left feeling fairly inspired to dig out our cameras from the back of the cupboard and have a go ourselves!
Afterwards, Chris even let us have a go at taking some portraits using his professional camera. He showed us the different lenses he uses to capture the perfect shot. We even managed so squeeze in some quick selfies! I’m sure Chris’ camera roll will have some beautiful and interesting photos of Primary 4-7 this afternoon! 😍🤳
A big thank you to Chris for taking the time to visit our class this afternoon and for his inspiring chat on photography. We can’t wait to put his top tips and feedback into practice as we continue our photography in the following weeks! 📸
This afternoon P4-7 welcomed police officer, PC Amy McGregor into our classroom to talk to use about harmful substances and keeping ourselves safe and healthy, to support our HWB learning – substance misuse. 👮♀️🚨🚓
She spoke to us about the dangers linked to smoking and vaping, alcohol and drugs and warned us about the effects that these substances can have on our bodies and choices and most importantly the importance of making safe, healthy choices. PC Amy encouraged us to think about peer pressure and the importance of looking out for each other and encouraging our friends to make positive choices.
It wasn’t all serious, though – PC McGregor had a warm and friendly way of explaining things and made sure that everyone felt comfortable joining in the discussion.
Thank-you to PC McGregor for taking the time to visit us!😃
Meta Skills
Collaborating Cora
Curiosity Carlos
UNCRC
Article 13 – Share what you think, unless it harms others
This morning our P3-7’s traded their usual classroom seats for a bus journey to Stranraer Academy to meet a real-life author. Excitement levels were high as we prepared ourselves to meet the likes of Julie Donaldson, Roald Dahl or Michael Murpurgo… When we arrived we met the one and only Martin Stewart, a talented Scottish book author and former teacher from Troon!🌟 ✍
Martin has written amazing stories like Riverkeep and The Sacrifice Box, and he told us all about how he dreams up his ideas. He shared funny tales from his own writing journey, gave us top tips for creating characters and plots, and even showed us some pictures of his pets who feature as characters in his books.📚
We were fascinated – and more than a little impressed. Turns out, being an author is equal parts imagination, determination, and a dash of madness! Pupils asked some brilliant questions, and Martin gave honest and inspiring answers.
The bus ride home was filled with chatter about new story ideas and how maybe one day, a Leswalt pupil’s book will be on the shelves too. A huge thank you to Martin Stewart for sparking our imaginations, and to Stranraer Academy for hosting such a fab morning. 🚌
