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Earlier this year, our P5-7 pupils were set the challenge of designing their own app for a mobile phone, by the company “Make it Happen”.  There were lots of wonderful suggestions.  Runners up at Leswalt were all give certificates – 

Murray Reid – car game

Daisy Doyle – book reader for dyslexics

Hamish Mc Gregor – Cooking app

Rose Santangeli – Dog training app.

Five overall winners were chosen for the whole of Dumfries and Galloway.  The lucky winners all received a Coding book, water bottle and brand new Kindle Fire tablet!  The winners also get their app made for real!

At Leswalt we are delighted and excited to have one winner. Drum roll please……

Alexander Clark has created “Name your stock” – an app that is designed to allow you to identify different breeds of sheep and cows you may spot in the fields.  Alexander will work in conjunction with the company to add further breeds and information to this app.  One key breed he will be adding soon is his beloved Texel sheep!

You can download the app on to your own phone – Mrs Baillie already has it on her phone and was able to show the school this morning 🙂

Click on this link –   https://name-your-stock.glideapp.io/dl/6471c6        and you too can download the app made by Alexander

Well done Alexander!

The Literacy and Expressive Arts focus since the turn of the year has been all things Scots at Leswalt Primary – from song lyrics to poetry; presentation to artwork; traditional dance to music artists past and present; significant Scottish individuals to research to designing own tartans; the learning has been centred around our homeland.

What better day to celebrate the culmination of this learning than today – 25th January the birthday of Rabbie Burns himself!

Mr McCracken had the tricky task of judging the artwork, handwriting and recitations of all pupils – as well as some very talented singers too.

Following this, the school gathered together in the hall for our annual mini Burns Supper complete with a P7 top table, Hannah in P1 carrying in the haggis, the Selkirk Grace, Address to the Haggis, Toasts tae the Lads, Lassies and School, a busy compere, recitations from pupils from P1 through to P7, singing from both classes and the fabulous trio of Faye, Hamish and Daisy, dancing from Faye and of course a plate of delicious haggis, neeps and tatties!

Our Scots Showcase Assembly will be held this Friday 27th January at 2pm when the pupils will find out who the winners are! Come along and enjoy an afternoon of Scottish entertainment Leswalt Style at 2pm. It’ll be a treat indeed!

 

January sees the return of the RSPB’s Big Birdwatch campaign. So we decided to make the most of the beautifully crisp Winter’s day with a walk in the beautiful surroundings of the Aldouran Wetlands to carry out our survey.

Buddying up younger pupils with older ones, we headed through the village armed with our bird-spotting sheets on clipboards. We missed the Wetlands very much while we were ‘living’ at Kirkcolm during school refurbishment so it was so good to get back – and to enjoy it in the snow was an added bonus. We also spotted the commemorative stone for our local Olympic curlers!

Reminding the pupils of the need to be quiet for fearing of scaring the birds away, each pair found a spot to base themselves in and watched and listened. It is a joy to take the time to stop and just take in your surroundings and the pupils were encouraged to do exactly that.

Our results were noted down using tally marks – the bird feeder stations at the Wetlands were doing a roaring trade! An average was taken of our findings and passed to Ms Whorlow who co-ordinates our Eco work. Safe to say we have a very healthy bird population in our local area. After all, who wouldn’t want to live here?!

As part of our Scots focus month, we invited Mrs Henry, who founded and teaches the Fearon Scottish Country Dancers , to come and teach us a thing or two about set dances!

We are extremely lucky in that, when Mrs Henry isn’t dancing she is working at Portpatrick Primary supporting learners and keeping the administration side ticking over, and so we were able simply to lift the phone and ask her to spend a session with us!

Before Christmas, the pupils had learnt a few popular Scottish dances such as the Gay Gordons, Military Two Step and Canadian Barn Dance but Mrs Henry taught them all something quite a different: three dances called Rabbie’s Reel, A Reel for Jeanie and the Virginia Reel.

Now, I won’t lie and say everything went smoothly first time – there were a number of wrong turns, miscounting of steps and dance steps not quite happening in the correct order as you might expect! But under the expert tuition of Mrs Henry (such patience!), the pupils of Leswalt Primary were soon dancing fairly successfully and having lots of fun! There were quite a few looking rather puffed-out as dancing is a great way to exercise.

I am quite sure the pupils will be amongst the first to take to the dancefloor at future ceilidhs now! Wedding receptions, 18th and 21st birthday parties…you name it, this lot have the required dancing skills.

Thank you to Mrs Henry for giving up her time to lead us in such a fun morning!

And if anyone fancies doing some more dancing, Mrs Henry’s weekly classes are open to all ages and are held every Monday at the Millennium Centre between 5-6pm. She’d love to welcome new members along!

 

 

What a fantastic morning of music production we had on Tuesday! John Dinning came to deliver the first of four Soundtrap sessions with an initial focus on creating music.

The class listened carefully to the instructions from John then, armed with a laptop between two and headphones each, they set off to start creating some music.

All genres were investigated – and there are literally hundreds of beats, instruments and music categories to choose from. They can even access their work from home, or work on more than one project at a time! And, if they want some expert feedback, they can share their work with John who will use his extensive knowledge (he is a Sound Engineer who often works with bands at gigs and festivals) to add that extra sparkle!

John will also be working on podcasting with the class too over the coming sessions.

Such is the interest in technology in school that our fabulous Digital Leaders Alexander and Hamish have decided to start at lunchtime club to support their fellow classmates in P1-4 and P5-7 with various computer projects! Good for you boys! They might even explore Soundtrap too!

Thanks to Ms Whorlow, P6/7 pupils from across the North Rhins trio enjoyed an action-packed day of film-making today! Lights, Camera, Action..

Scott Mackay and Belle Doyle (representing Into Film and the Scottish Youth Film Foundation) led the pupils through this exciting workshop giving them an insight into movie production.

Initially the children discussed movie genres and the many, many jobs linked to the film industry; producer, director, editor, screenwriter, choreographer, makeup, costume design, animator, actors and more…

To make a film, Scott explained that 3 S’s and 3 C’s are followed:

Story                                Character

Setting                            Camera

Sound                              Colour

We then tried some film analysis. Rather than just saying I like a film just because…..!

We listened to a film clip (no visuals) and thought about what we could hear, what is made us think of, what might be happening, why was the music building up….

We discussed this as a class and then… watched the visuals to see if our ideas from sounds matched the reality! John led the pupils in ‘drilling down’ into the details of film production; the precision, the fleeting moments which together create the visuals/sounds for a scene.. All very interesting 🙂

We then watched a Star Wars clip thinking about the 3Cs and the 3Ss and making notes under each heading – a really useful tip for developing out story-writing too!

Differing camera shots are crucial to film-making so the children found out more about establishing, wide, long, mid-shot, close-up, high or low angle camera use.

The afternoon session called on our budding film-makers to work in small groups to shoot a mini-movie. This called for actors, cameraman and director working together to create a short film on a given topic using the knowledge they had gleaned from the morning.

A brilliant opportunity for our children to add new skills to their repertoire, discover more about careers within film-making and develop those technology techniques! Many thanks to Scott and Belle for leading our learning today and to Ms Whorlow for organising this!

Look out for those future film credits for any names you might recognise from the North Rhins Trio!

 

 

Show performances done? Tick! Christmas cards written? Tick! It must be time for the Christmas party!!

So, with their glad rags on, the pupils of Leswalt Primary partied all Thursday afternoon. Organised and led by their House Captains Rose and Thomas, the children enjoyed Musical Arms, the Christmas Shopping List game, Do you want to build a Snowman and a tasty half-time snack of juice, crisps and chocolate crispies made by the P5-7 bunch -before it was time to raise the roof with a rousing rendition of Jingle Bells! Sure enough, soon a bell chiming could be heard and the door opened to reveal the man in red himself!

Thankfully, every pupil had made the ‘nice’ list and so Santa gave a present to all. After waiting excitedly for everyone to get their gift, the pupils all opened theirs and there were smiles all round! Santa just knows doesn’t he?!

Just look at the happy party-goers below!

Can you believe it’s been 3 whole years since our pupils last took to the stage to perform at Christmas time?! Today they were back with a vengeance with their Christmas play ‘Who Took all the Loo Roll?’ The show tells the story of a group of aliens who have been watching us humans from a distant planet and are intrigued by our Christmas traditions, so they decide to visit to learn more.

They are baffled by: the gifting of loo roll (having panic-bought it during covid!); mistletoe (a feeling that is only enhanced when they see great-granny trying to land a smackeroonie on everyone – quite literally as Alexander Clark ran around the audience with some mistletoe!!!) and the most hated vegetable – brussel sprouts! The story culminates in the aliens finding out about why humans celebrate Christmas, with everyone learning that the real hero is actually the donkey – how else would Mary have got to Bethlehem?!

Pupils have been working really hard this term to learn their lines and lyrics and I think anyone who came to watch the show can agree, it definitely paid off! It was lovely to see everyone back together again sharing in the children’s achievements!

Christmas is a time for giving – and never was that more obvious than over the last few days at Leswalt Primary!

Friday saw the welcome return of Owain Evans from Scripture Union Scotland with ‘Christmas Unwrapped’ to P5-7. This session offered pupils to take part in quizzes, arts and crafts, group discussion and reflection all centred around the Nativity Story and ‘unwrapping’ the message of the birth of the Baby Jesus. Christmas is a time for love, family and friends.

Allan Jenkins from Stranraer Development Trust dropped by today with a delicious treat for every pupil – a bar of chocolate! As he said, it’s a nice gesture to give to others at this time of year, and the SDT decided to gift a yummy gift to every Nursery and Primary pupil in our area. Such a thoughtful thing to do. The children will take this home with them at the end of the week.

Alison Graham from Apex also popped by today to pick up our Reverse Advent Calendar. Over the last few weeks, the pupils have been bringing in various bits and bobs to fill up our ‘Advent Calendar’. But instead of our calendar giving a treat to us – we are giving the treat to the calendar! Alison explained to the children where their kind donations would go – to Wigtownshire Food Bank. Trussell Trust oversees this and offers suggestions as to how to create healthy and nutritional food packs for individuals and families in crisis – whatever their crisis may be. This is a vital service, as this year they have already supported over 700 people (double last year’s number!) Apex work with other agencies to provide support to those who need it (food, clothing, bedding, advice, counselling etc)  and local supermarkets help out  by having a food bank drop-off in their stores. Lidl has also helped out with a Toy bank this year to ensure families get treats too.  It’s all about a community working together to help each other in whatever way possible.

What could possibly illustrate the Christmas message better than these three events?

On Friday 9th December, Leswalt Community Council held their annual concert. They’d extended an invitation to us to coma along and enjoy the Christmas fun!

As is often the case at this busy time of year, some pupils who’d have loved to have come along had other family plans – and Hamish, Ela and Daisy were already performing in the Stranraer Drama Club panto! Such a wealth of talent in our wee school!

But…Hannah, Rachael, Mark, Colin, Isla, Rose, Holly, Evan, Alexander, Ewan, Tristan, Brandon, Cara, Ben, Faye and Thomas did give up their time to come along and sing two songs from our upcoming show! They sang beautifully of course. I am sure there’ll be several members of the audience who’ll be keen to come along to the show on the 21st to hear even more!

Ben (who has only been learning to play the drums for about 6 months!) also performed along with the adult ensemble! What a drummer – rock star of the future perhaps?!

Alexander and Tristan even accepted the invitation to take to the floor for a little dance!

It was a lovely evening of Christmas carols and old-favourites, enjoying performances from all ages of the community. Mulled wine, juice and shortbread were offered around the audience during the interval too. Such a feel-good evening.

Huge thanks to the pupils and their families for coming along to support our village’s concert. Thanks also to Alison Thomson for her photos to add to mine. And I’ve also got a great video of the pupils singing and Ben drumming which I will work on uploading to the blog too!

Well done all!