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Leswalt Primary pupils enjoyed celebrating World Book Day today! The Great Big Book Swap Shop took place with everyone heading home with something new to read! Noah and Ellie, the library monitors, had created a Front Cover competition (this will be judged on Monday) and also took charge of the Swap Shop with a little help from the P7 pupils.

P1-3 enjoyed a book hunt in the library and watching author Chae Strathie as part of the Scottish Book trust author events. P4-7 were busy using the Book Creator app to design their own books linked to their RME topic of Sikhism and completing their own podcast stories using Soundtrap. They also enjoyed listening the prologue of an audio book through the World Book Day website and sketching freeze-frames of story scenes as they listened.

Pupils have all headed home armed with their pre-loved book (or perhaps quite a few pre-loved books!), a World Book Day sticker and a book token which can be exchanged for any £1 book in WHSmith or used to reduce the price of another book they like the look of!

This afternoon we all travelled to Kirkcolm to enjoy a theatre production by a very talented foursome known as 4front Theatre!  The show had been written and produced by one of the members and retold the story of Jesus through the eyes of four disciples James, John, Andrew and Simon Peter. The production was full of music, dancing, acting and fun… and the audience loved it! From the fishermen on the shores of Lake Galilee to a non-stop run through the many parables; this was a fabulous RME lesson on Christianity for our pupils. This production was supported in our schools by The Scripture Union and Stranraer Baptist Church – who very kindly gave every child a pencil. Brochures outlining Scripture Union Camps for any interested P5-7 pupils are available too.

Do take a look at 4front Theatre’s website. You can check them out at https://4front-theatre.com/

 

Today we enjoyed session 2 of our rugby input with Mr McGregor. A beautiful, sunny Spring morning to be outside working on warm-up drills and passing techniques. Great fun!

Looking forward to next week already!

As part of this week’s World Book Day celebrations, our whole school joined an Author’s Live Event this morning. This was the 10th birthday for the Author’s Live Events – bringing authors to our pupils. This Glasgow-hosted event featured Michael Rosen who shared lots of rhythms and rhymes with us and encouraged audience participation from everyone! His rhymes ranged from baby buggies to chocolate cake, Stone Age school to speaking Yiddish! We tried a tongue-twister too about a sticker and a ticket. It wasn’t an easy one to say! Michael had been part of the very first Author Live event back in 2010. He answered lots of questions and shared some very funny stories with us – he was hilarious! He had lots of suggestions and ideas for us to try; freeze-frame and hot-seating as well as illustrating particular scenes; creating a tableau of a scene. We will definitely be trying this out!

Tanya Roberts, who is a Scottish comic illustrator, was on-hand to sketch characters as Michael entertained us all.

The Author’s Live event introduced us to Cressida Cowell who is this year’s Waterstone’s Children’s Laureate as well as being the fabulous author of the How to Train Your Dragon series.

We have lots more World Book Day fun planned this week – keep an eye on our blog. Why not google BBC Author’s Live to catch up on previous events?

 

Huge thank you to the boys and girls of P4-7 for helping to make my Grandad Fred’s 100th birthday super special today by entertaining him, and other residents, of Thorneycroft in Stranraer!

This meant a great deal to him – and to me! For his 99th last year, we phoned him to sing Happy Birthday but this year, to celebrate his centenary, we decided to take the bus in to pay him a visit.

We had done some research into the year 1920 in the morning; marvelling at the fashions and music, and finding out about new inventions of the time and the reign of King George V. Things have changed quite a bit in the last century!

The children sang Happy Birthday, gave him a card from them and then regaled the room with their Scots songs Caledonia and the fun Daphne Cochrane! In addition,  Alexander. Breagh, Gregor and Phoebe recited their Scots poems. All very much enjoyed by our audience.

Grandad Fred then showed us a very special card he had received in the post this morning; from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.

Happy 100th birthday Grandad Fred!

 

This morning we welcomed Mr Cameron back to support us in the development of our very own podcasts. Working in pairs or individually, we have used our fabulous imaginative writing skills to pen stories with the title ‘Enchanted Lands’. Doing this pulled together all of our VCOP techniques to make our stories sparkle, then peer evaluation helped us to edit our stories to make them even better!

Next stage was to record our stories onto the Soundtrap website, then use sound effects and music beats, rhythm and phrases to created the finished podcast piece. Everyone is loving using this technology!

Mr Cameron will be with us for one more session in a fortnight’s time.

Then our next stop will be Moat Brae in Dumfries where our podcasts will be available for all to listen to at the National Centre for Children’s Literature and Storytelling! Check us out – podcasters of the future!

This term, P4-7 have tried to make it their mission to go outside and enjoy Fresh Air Friday outdoor learning! They have managed this almost every week (Storm Ciara put a spanner in the works!) and they have enjoyed lots of activities. Traditional playground games, gardening, finding area and perimeter, circuits and story sessions to name just a few. Lots more fun is planned for the second half of the term with spring planting, making bird cakes, a trip to the shop to find out about money in the real-life situations, using a bus timetable and creating natural maths equations!

Pupils headed up to the village hall on Thursday afternoon to entertain the members of the Thursday Club. They recited their Scots poems and sang some Scots songs – the audience loved Leswalt’s version of ‘Ye Cannae Shove yer Grannie off a Bus,’ there was great laughter at the ‘slevery kisses’ and ‘cheeky wee gin’ verses!! They also enjoyed Daphne Cochrane and joined in with some of the actions describing her ‘reekin’ oxters’ and ‘badly heed’!!!

The Eco committee went on to explain what we have done to gain our first green flag, and our plans for hopefully achieving our next one. Finally, P4-7 took to the stage to perform 2 songs on the tin whistle that they have been learning with Feis Ros.

The Thursday Club thoroughly enjoyed our entertainment and commended the pupils and the school on their work.

Today we had the privilege of welcoming Mr Alan Cameron to work with us for an introductory session on podcasting.

The pupils of our North Rhins primaries have been given the fabulous opportunity of being invited to create their own ‘Enchanted Land’ story to produce as a podcast; with accompanying music and sound effects!

These podcasts will then be on show in Moat Brae Dumfries – a National Centre for Children’s Literature and Story-telling and the adventure garden enjoyed by J.M Barrie author of Peter Pan!

These will be shared at a very special launch this Summer – which we are hoping to attend!

Today was session 1 – with two more to follow. The pupils absorbed the information given and worked fabulously! We have started on our story-writing and are raring to go.

Watch this space…

 

Our celebration of all things Scots this week culminated with family and friends joining us for our Scots Showcase Assembly. The handwriting, artwork and recitation winners received their certificates, the winners recited their poems and both classes entertained with Scots songs; P1-3 had some great adaptations to ‘Ye Cannae Shove Yer Granny Aff a Bus!’ and P4-7 sang Caledonia and ‘Daphne Cochrane’ – a great action song!

The winners were:

P1 – ‘Ode tae a spider’ – Recitation winners : 1. Colin McGregor; 2. Roman Haver; 3. Rachael Drummond:

Illustration winner – Ruby McMillan : Handwriting winner – Roman Haver

P2 – ‘Twa legged mice’ – Recitation winners : 1.Ela Chang; 2. Ewan Clark; 3. Ellie Bennewith :

Illustration winner –Ewan Clark : Handwriting winner – Ela Chang

P3 – ‘Sair finger’ – Recitation winners : 1.Hamish McGregor; 2.Cara Jamieson; 3.Carys McHallum:

Illustration winner –Mark Drummond : Handwriting winner – Faye Adams

P4 – ‘The Bogle’ – Recitation winners : 1. Alexander Clark; 2. Struan Scott; 3. Fraser Reid :

Illustration winner – Fraser Reid : Handwriting winner – Noah Gaw

P5 – ‘Wee Kirk moose’ – Recitation winners : 1. Breagh Kirkpatrick; 2. Aidan Adams; 3. Malcolm McGregor & Murray Williams:

Illustration winner – Murray Williams : Handwriting winner – Malcolm McGregor

P6 – ‘Wullie wastle’ – Recitation winners : 1.Gregor Reid; 2. Jack Cloy; 3. Joshua Obonyo:

Illustration winner –Luke McHallum : Handwriting winner – Chloe Kennedy

P7 – ‘Address to the haggis’ – Recitation winners : 1.Phoebe Gaw; 2.Auryn Kirkpatrick; 3. Erin Jamieson & Finlay Scott : Illustration winner – Finlay Scott : Handwriting winner – Erin Jamieson.

We’ve all had a richt guid time! And we hope you’ve enjoyed it too!