After a break of quite sometime, during which we were ‘living’ at Kirkcolm whilst refurbishments took place, we have returned to school!
We took the opportunity to get out and about in the community as we headed up to Leswalt’s war memorial today to observe the 11am silence.
The last couple of days have involved in pupils learning about the significance of the poppy, how it came to be the Remembrance symbol, how charity money is used to help veterans and their families and the importance of showing respect to those who have served their countries.
The children enjoyed finding out more by watching and discussing a short animation from Poppyscotland, making their own poppy wreaths and designing posters, leaflets, PowerPoints to explain more about the story behind the poppy. Some pupils even made iMovies.
It is great to be back in our wee village and to be able to observe Remembrance Day in our community.
Leswalt P1-4 were joined with Kirkcolm and Portpatrick infants class on for a trip to “Kitchen Coos and Ewes” owned by the Neale and Janet McQuistin at New Luce . Over 50 pupils and staff bundled onto the trailer and headed to the hills where we quickly caught the eye of 30 Highland ‘coos’ 🐮. This trip allowed the children to experience a different type of farming, as part of their learning and teaching in class.
The friendly bunch of coos followed us up through the hillside while Janet explained to us how the coos are fed, how their coats and horns grow and how she managed to remember all of their names – including Madonna, Rihanna and Britney. 🎤
Thje 3 schools couldn’t take a trip to New Luce without a visit to their amazing village park, so all enjoyed a little snack and a play before heading back to school on the bus after a fun-filled and well enjoyed farming trip 🙂
We are delighted to announce that the North Rhins Partnership primary schools in the Rhins has achieved a Silver Rights Respecting School Award by UNICEF UK. Leswalt, Kirkcolm and Portpatrick primaries have worked collaboratively to meet the standards for this UNICEF prestigious accreditation.
UNICEF is the world’s leading organisation working for children and their rights. The Rights Respecting Schools Award is granted to schools that show commitment to promoting and realising children’s rights and encouraging adults, children and young people to respect the rights of others in school. Silver is given to schools that make excellent progress towards embedding the principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into its ethos and curriculum.
Mrs Baillie, said, “Having achieved our Bronze award in 2021, we are all very proud to have now to celebrate achieving our Silver award. Our school community has worked very hard to embed children’s rights in everything we do. We can see the positive impact of the Award on pupils and the school as a whole. Thank you to our responsible pupils, staff and families for working together to make this achievement possible.”
The Award recognises achievement in putting the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child at the heart of a school’s planning, policies and practice. A Rights Respecting School is a community where children’s rights are learned, taught, practised, respected, protected and promoted.
The UNICEF UK Rights Respecting Schools initiative is aimed at schools across the UK. Schools have reported a positive impact on pupil behaviour, relationships and well-being by enhancing pupils’ self-esteem, leading to less truancy and bullying, better learning and improved academic standards.
As part of learning where our food comes from, P1 – 4 donned their wellies and headed off to a farm visit courtesy of Jacqui, Scott and Gregor Service. We enjoyed a lovely sunny morning at Balgreggan Farm meeting some cute calves and trying out a Massey Fergusson tractor for size!
Our hosts Jacqui, Scott and Gregor showed us around explaining how they care for their calves, what breed they are and what they feed them. We also got to see a new calf having its ear tags attached. We named her ‘Mrs Slevers’ as she was looking for some milk and decided to try and eat some of our hands!
We then got to see the cattle crush which weighed us all. We were a heavier group than Portpatrick P1-4!
Getting a seat inside the Massey Fergusson tractor and on the motorbike was also a highlight and we ended our trip with a walk up to the farm’s wind turbines. The energy created helps to power all of the farm equipment. What a great resource on top of a very windy hill!
The children were full of enthusiasm and chatter. Thank you so much to the Service Family and RHET for a great learning experience as part of the Food and Farming topic.
Shape Hunts, scavenger trails and some STEMazing kicked off our celebration of Maths Week Scotland!
P1-4 held their very own shape hunt in school with Mrs Warwick. They went on a 2D shape hunt around the school, armed with an ipad and a tally mark sheet. Lots of circles and squares, the odd rectangle and 1 hexagon! They also joined in with the Cuthbert Sees Double interactive story and activity. They listened to a story about Cuthbert the Crocodile finding he couldn’t double his numbers and was sad that he couldn’t join in with his friends game. His friends helped him learn ways to double so he could join in. The pupils then had a shot at playing our own doubling game using dice. They even tried to make it harder by using more dice!
STEMazing involved the whole school getting together for a live lesson which was led by Anne Okafor from Cruden Construction. She is a construction planner and talked about the maths involved in her job. From the three Cs: being curious, creative and courageous to designing prototypes and carrying out Tests to Destruction! Working in groups; using 8 sheets of scrap paper, some tape and books as a weight – the pupils investigated which shape could bear more weight; building triangular prisms or cylinders to be used supports. It was agreed that the cylinders worked better as they have no corners (weak points) and the circular face of the cylinder is equal the whole way round so allows for equal weight distribution.
P5-7 headed off to DGC Stranraer Campus for a fabulous morning of maths/careers and further education awareness with their North Rhins friends. See the blog post especially dedicated to this for more details and some fabulous photos!
Back in class, pupils explored maths through science through maths with their data analyst hats on and the P5/6 team created an indoor maths trail for P1-4 to solve with a P7 buddy (Mrs F created a maths trail for P5/6 so they didn’t feel left out!)
This Friday afternoon fun maths activity rounded off a week of Maths Week Scotland!
By-passing secondary altogether, out intrepid team of maths superstars headed into the DGC Stranraer Campus today! On offer was an interactive morning of maths fun! And my oh my, it was a very a busy time with pupils involved in everything from (are you ready for quite a list…!)?
following a recipe to make play dough
reading instructions and measuring amounts to make up baby bottles
using logic to solve jigsaws and games
using directional language to play Twister
number knowledge for a game of bingo
measuring liquids to create fruit drink concoctions
thinking about fractions when slicing fruit to add to a healthy fruit salad!
Then, top all of that off with, some STEM construction work involving 3d shapes and straws and K’nex and you have what was summed up as “the best day of school…ever!”
Phew! What an action-packed session. Huge thanks to the lecturers and students for being so accommodating and to Ms Whorlow for organising the whole event! It was absolutely fabulous!
We successfully applied for funding from the Edinburgh Mathematical Society (EMS) School Enrichment Fund to pay for transportation costs for all three schools from our trio to attend this great event. Thank you also to this organisation for making today’s learning experience possible.
After almost 25 years working at Leswalt Primary school, Mrs Smith our fabulous learning assistant has called it a day.
Leswalt pupils were sad to see her go, but all were happy to have had that special Mrs Smith sparkle in their life. She has worked so hard, for so many over the years.
Sadly, she was off unwell on what should have been her final day on Friday – but the pupils did not forget about her! A special delivery of flowers was sent out to her house from the staff. And, on Friday we were all treated to a huge Simpsons sponge cake, thanks to a generous donation from Lorna Drummond. All the boys and girls were treated to a piece, before Mrs Baillie took the cake to Mrs Smith after school.
The Parent council and staff have all got generous gifts ready and waiting to hand over to Mrs Smith. It has been decided to hand these over when we all get into the new and improved Leswalt Primary school. Mrs Smith has suggested she would like a wee tea party there and we look forward to welcoming her back to pass on our appreciation.
In preparation for Maths Week Scotland next week, we all got to participate in a hands-on, fun maths workshop today led by Mrs Hall from the D&G STEM team and created by the Liverpool Mathematical Society. And it certainly lived up to its name – it was indeed MEGA!
The P1-4 crew enjoyed their maths fun first thing; whilst the older bunch got their thinking caps on after breaktime.
The pupils kicked off their session with some triangle problem solving – they talked about the different skills they were using to find the solution: trial and error, logical thinking, guess and check, look for a pattern and work backwards.
Pairing up with their Talk Partners, they then chose from the many challenges on offer…and my oh my were those brain cogs whirring!
Such a fun morning of maths challenges using oodles of skills!
‘Farm to Fork’ is the title for this term’s topic in P1-4, and what better way to learn than meeting some local farmers and finding out more about what they do.
We were lucky to have a nice sunny afternoon to welcome our visitors to Kirkcolm, and by kind permission of Jack Milroy, were able to use a field next to the school.
First up was Grant Hurcomb, aka The Sheep Shearing Expert! We got to watch him shear some sheep, discussed why he does this and then we got feel the wool and find out ways it is used. Grant was ably assisted by Jack who was able to give us an idea of the value of the wool. Turns out, not a lot!
Next was the turn of Stuart McCrindle and his sheepdog Zak. This winning partnership were last year’s Scottish Champions so we knew we had the best team to demonstate a sheepdog working with some sheep. Zak was a true professional and guided the sheep around the field with ease. Some of us even got the chance to give Zak some commands too. Stuart had also brought along the newest member of his team, an 8 week old collie pup. The children all got the chance to name the puppy, and the winning name chosen at the end of the day was ‘Jem’. The perfect choice!
The children then had the chance to meet local contractors Angus Brown and Steven Adams. Despite their busy schedule and the dry weather, they took time out from silage making to visit us with a chopper, tractor, mower and a rowing up machine. It was a chance to see these machines up close, find out what they do and have a seat inside…and toot the horn! Being a contractor also means you have to be a mechanic and engineer, fixing problems as you go. It’s a tough job!
We also had a local sheep farmer there, Ian McKnight, who talked us through rearing and caring for animals. We learned about the farming calendar, saw some tools and medicines he uses and got to see different feeds for the animals. He also had the quad bike he uses on the farm too with him.
Finally, we had our very own Alexander Clark (budding auctioneer) on hand to finish proceedings with an auction. He stood in at the last minute after a cancellation and he did an awesome job. We got to see him in action with groups competing to buy some calves and win an extra 5 minutes of breaktime!
What a lovely way to spend a sunny Friday afternoon. A big thank you to all of our visitors who have perhaps inspired a few young people towards a career in agriculture!
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