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Climate Smarter Sustainability Success for P4-7🥈⭐

The results are in.. drumroll please…🥁
Leswalt Primary are RUNNERS UP!🥈
 
Primary 4-7 wowed the judges with their creation of their ‘Sustainable School’ which we are super proud of! The project has encouraged us to think about ways we could make Leswalt Primary a more sustainable building. We worked with sustainability experts McTaggart Construction and D&G councils ‘Environmental Safety Officer’ Cailtin (AKA Beathan’s Mummy) to really think about what ‘sustainability’ means and things we could do to improve our school!😃 The judges loved how everyone came together to contribute to the model and also how much we learned from meeting with local people who work in STEM careers! Our model stood out to the judges because of our super ‘Estate Agents’ marketing pitch video clip, explaining the sustainable features of our school, filmed by our fabulous Hannah, Eilidh, Keira and Lily!⭐
UNCRC Articles 
Article 28 – Quality Education 
Meta Skills
Critical Thinking Chris
Communicating Cate
Collaborating Cora 
Focusing Fergus 
Initiative Ivy 
Sense Making Samira 

A Tree-mendous trip to Logan Botanic Gardens🌲☀️

The true sign of summer – a trip to Logan Botanic Gardens! A what wonderful weather for it!😊☀️This morning we joined our friends from Kirkcolm for a super fun morning of outdoor learning, exploring the lovely local landscape. When we arrived at the gardens, we enjoyed a little snack and chat with out friends out on the grass before splitting up into two groups for our workshops. 
Primary 1-4, ventured off to take part in the ‘Our Senses in the Garden’ workshops. Which encouraged us to think about how we use our sense to experience and enjoy the world around us😃We loved looking at all the beautiful plants up close with our special spying tube. Afterwards, it was smelly potion making – we foraged around the gardens for any leaves or flower petals on the floor to make up our own sweet smelling concoction. Afterwards, we picked up some cool looking leaves and plants on the floor to make our very own art-work!👨‍🎨
Primary 5-7’s workshop focused on the ‘Life of Plants’🪴. We started off with a very hands on drama experience, where children took on the role of parts of the plant (stem, stamen, pollen, stigma) and we reenacted pollination, with Cameron the bee!🐝 Afterwards, we ventured into the greenhouse to have a little look at some more exotic plants, Kate the ranger gave us special red and blue glasses. She explained that the red glasses allow us to see plants as a bird would, and the blue glasses allowed us to see plants as an insect would – How cool!👓 We then had a look at some outdoor plants using a small special magnifying glass! Afterwards, we practised the process of seed dispersal with a game of dizzy dollies, which was lots of fun! 🌱
A huge thank you to the staff at Logan Botanic Gardens for another super trip! We are so lucky to have such super experiences to develop our understanding of the beauty and importance of getting outside and enjoying nature!🌻🪴🌳
Meta Skills
Sense Making Samira 
Focusing Fergus
Leading Li 
Creativity Cassidy 
Collaborating Cora 
UNCRC Articles
Article 31 – Right to Relax, Play and Culture
Article 29 – Right to Education
Article 24 – Health, Water, Food & Environment 

PC MacGregor and PC Jack visit Leswalt!👮‍♀️🐕‍🦺

PC MacGregor and PC Jack joined P5-7 this morning to talk to us about the dangers of substance misuse. She explained that drugs are substances that alter our brain chemistry. She told us that some drugs are bad for us and others are good, we were very surprised to learn that chocolate is actually a drug?! (A delicious one of course)🍫

 

We spoke about the dangers of smoking and peer pressure, and all agreed that smoking is terrible! PC MacGregor showed us a very sad and serious video about a girl called Amy, who made a terrible mistake and taking a drug and the sad consequences of that.. We had a bit of fun trying on the ‘drunk goggles’ and having a wander around the classroom. After a couple of near collisions, we decided that it was a horrible feeling.👓

 

PC MacGregor and PC Jack, were joined by 2 very cute, fluffy and intelligent colleagues with them, Nancy and Poppy, the sniffer dogs.🐕‍🦺🐕‍🦺 Who, work and live with PC Baird and PC Thomson. The dogs were tasked with finding a small empty tin, which had once contained drugs. We were very impressed to see just how strong their sense of smell was!🐕

A big thank you to Stranraer Police Officers for visiting us in school and delivering such an important message to us!👮👮‍♀️

 

Eco Ideas with Caitlin♻️🌳

We absolutely love when parents come in to school to share their ideas and experiences with us.😍 This afternoon Environmental Safety Officer, Caitlin Wilson (AKA Beathan’s Mummy) visited P4-7 to talk to us about ‘sustainability’ and help us with our project; to design and build a sustainable school.💧🏫♻️
 
When it comes to ‘Sustainability’, Caitlin told us that the word can mean lots of different things to different people and for kids, it can be a tricky concept to understand.🤔 She explained that ‘sustainability’ should be best thought of in 3 ways; protect the environment, make it nice and make it resilient. We loved this definition!😍
Caitlin was just the perfect person to come in and help with our ‘sustainable school’ project because, as part of her University degree, she focussed on making Leswalt School more sustainable, and what practices and renewables could be installed. She gave us some super recommendations and sparked some new ideas!💡
Simple, yet effective, she suggested that our sustainable school should have lots of trees. Trees are of course important for producing oxygen, but also to help with wildlife and give home to animals. Caitlin also recommended that a ‘micro hydro’ would be a super renewable source for Leswalt School to make use of the burn, which runs along the back of the school. She showed us a super cool website, called Neso, which shows us the main sources of energy production in our local area.
We saw that today’s lovely sunny weather meant that it was the perfect day for solar panels!☀️She also suggested that if we were to install a windmill, up on a hill, wind power would be another option to power our school too!🌬️
The P4-7’s had some super questions for Caitlin and were very keen to find out more about her job and her interests in the environment. A HUGE big thank you to Caitlin for coming to visit us this afternoon and giving us some great ideas for our project! 🏫🙂
UNCRC Articles 
Article 12 – Respect for children’s views
Article 12 – Health and Health Services
Article 28 – Right to Education
Meta Skills
Curiosity Carlos
Sense-making  Samira
Focusing Fergus

Getting to the Root of It – Taking Maths Outside!☀️🌳

This afternoon, P4-7 visited the Wetlands to measure the height of some trees. As part of their angles work in maths this term, we have been learning how to use a protractor to measure angles. This afternoon, we created our own tree measuring protractors, which we were able to use to measure the height of a tree. 🙂

We used half a paper plate, a straw and string to build our own special protractors and marked on  0°, +45° and -45°, and there we had it a protractor fit to measure the height of any tree! 🌳

In the Wetlands, each pair chose one of the many super tall trees to measure, person 1 looked at the top of the tree through their straw and slowly took steps backwards until their string dangled in front of the 45° line. Person 2, then measured the length from where their friend was standing to the tree trunk. This told us the height that the tree is! Cool right?! 📏

A lovely way to end a week of sunshine and fun outside!☀️🕶️

 

Meta Skills

Sense-making Samira,

Collaborating Cora

Communicating Cate

Focusing Fergus

 

UNCRC Rights

Article 28 – Right to a good education

Article 21 – Right to rest, play and culture

 

CPR – Cardiac Care with Lydia!❤️🚑

This afternoon, P4-7 welcomed a very special visitor into our classroom; Lydia Downie, the ambulance technician. We were all very excited when she drove into the playground in her ambulance!🚑
As part of our ‘body systems’ science topic, Lydia had very kindly offered to come in for a CPR workshop. With her, she brought the armless, legless Frank, the CPR dummy. Lydia started off by explaining how she responds to an emergency using the DR ABC technique. This involved firstly checking for ‘Danger,’ secondly checking for a ‘Response’. Afterwards, it was time for action, she showed us how to check a patients ‘Airways’  and the patients ‘Breathing’ and pulse by touching their neck. If the patients breathing, that’s when we would look at ‘circulation’ and the heart.❤️
Lydia showed us how to give Frank some beats with our hands to support his heart. We learned that the song ‘Staying Alive’ helps us with the rhythm of our beats. 🎶
Afterwards, she impressed us by showing us the AED, or the ‘defibrillator’ which would be used to shock the heart and help it to get back to its usual rhythm and where to place the shock pads on a patients body.
Then, of course, it wouldn’t be a visit from the emergency service without a trip into their vehicle- always a super crowd pleaser 🙂. We ventured out into the sunshine to have a look inside Lydia’s ambulance. We really enjoyed playing patient and paramedic and sitting inside the driver’s seat. Lydia showed us where the medicine is stored in the ambulance and what medication would be required when in different emergencies. We were challenged to put a bandage on our friend the quickest – we had lots of fun! And, I’m sure everyone’s had fun with these at home too.
We thought it would be nice if the P1-3’s could take a wee peek inside the ambulance too, which ties in nicely with their topic ‘medicine’.😷
A HUGE big thank you to Lydia for giving up her time this afternoon to visit us at Leswalt! We learned so much about the heart and the circulatory and raspatory body systems. Aria commented that ‘this afternoon has been so cool’ which we all agreed with too!😍

Leswalt’s Super 3’s Superstars⭐

This afternoon Alison Murray from Active Schools visited Leswalt to hand out some certificates to our super sporty runners!🏃👟

Rachael and Murray both took part in Alison’s 3 week running club to prepare them for the Cross Country at Greenvalley. Rachael and Murray joined Alison each of the 3 weeks and so were awarded ‘Gold’ for their fantastic commitment and effort! 🥇

It was great to see this hard work pay off last week at the Cross Country event where Rachael was 1st and Murray 2nd in their races. Great work team, you should be super proud of yourselves, I know we are! ⭐🤩

Meta Skills
Adapting Aleksander
Focusing Fergus 

UNCRC Rights
Article 31 – The Right to Rest, Relax and Play

World Earth Day 🌍🥰

To celebrate World Earth Day, we got together this afternoon for an assembly with Mrs Adams. We started off by having a think about what ‘World Earth Day’ might celebrate. Gregor wondered if it could be about ‘looking after the world’ and Cameron impressed us with his suggestion that it’s all about ‘stopping climate change’. 🌏
Colin was able to take Cameron’s idea even further, explaining that Climate change is when the world gets warmer – which effects ice and the ozone layer. WOW, we are a bright bunch!💡Afterwards, we watched a BBC live lesson and experiment which demonstrated the impact that Climate Change is having on our planet😧.
To finish off, we met in our assembly groups to decide which UNCRC children’s rights are involved in World Earth Day!🧒

Rugby Fun!🏈

Yesterday, we welcomed Niamh from Wigtownshire Rugby back for our final session of rugby this term. We warmed up with a fan favourite – capture the flag 🙂. Afterwards, pupils paired up with a peer of similar height for some contact practice. Niamh reminded us of the rules, foot in the hoop, eye to thigh, cheek to cheek, bands of steel, shoulder boulder knock them over.. and they did exactly that! It’s been so super watching everybody’s confidence build over the 4 sessions with Niamh 😄.
We finished off with a game of contact bull dogs, where pupils were able to combine their movement skills with their contact skills. 🏃‍♂️🏈
We have absolutely loved our rugby sessions with Niamh this term!🏉
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