Category: Uncategorized

Laura McClymont got the class together today to work on their organisation and leadership skills – the Playmakers’ Award.

Working in small groups, the pupils used  teamwork to plan and deliver a sporty activity to the rest of the class. The children thought about the personalities and skills within their group and how to ensure everyone was involved in the activity. Fabulous life skills to have! Laura was on hand to offer any nuggets of advice to the children too.

The children enjoyed their session and are already looking forward to their next two sessions.

The whole school received a safety talk from a member of the Scottish Fire & Rescue Service team, Mr Clark. Mr Clark gave pupils some tips to ensure they have a safe Bonfire Night on 5^th November.

He explained to pupils that fireworks travel at 150mph, so only adults over the age of 18 should be lighting them. Pupils were amazed to find out that the temperature of a sparkler can be 15 times hotter than boiling water – Mr Clark said it’s really important to wear gloves when handling them, and to have a metal bucket of water or sand ready to dispose of it afterwards. Pupils also learned which materials are safe to put on a bonfire – plastic and rubber give off toxic fumes so shouldn’t be burned, neither should glass or metal.

Mr Clark suggested attending an organised display if possible. All pupils are now armed with the knowledge to have a fun but safe Bonfire Night!

Today P4-7 were lucky enough to welcome John from Computer Xplorers. He spent a whole day with the class jam-packed with fun hands-on activities to investigate energy and renewable energy sources.

We started by looking at the transfer of energy through thermal imaging. Maisie left her hand print on the desk transferring the heat from her hand to the desk, Phoebe left her toasty footprints on the floor – we couldn’t see the handprints of footprints with our eyes but we could with the thermal imaging camera! Cool!

Throughout the day, the children worked in 2s and 3s to build Lego Educational models. John organised a competition – to design and create a model which could produce the most voltage. The small groups tested out their designs and then tried to improve on the voltage they could produce by altering their design slightly. Chloe and Euan won having produced a voltage of 14.94v!

The boys and girls also built wind or water turbines and tested these out. Then found out more about solar energy by building (and racing!) solar cell cars.

John spoke to the class about the desperate need for renewable energy sources for the future of planet Earth. The boys and girls had already done some work on fossil fuels; how they were created and the finality of their supply and so were aware of the importance of renewable energy sources.

The second challenge faced by the pupils was to build a wind or water turbine. John talked to them about wind and water power first and how this would work on a grand scale.All groups worked together so well on this. I overhead snippets of chat, “this is well cool!” and “I’m getting the hang of this” to “you want a shot doing the next bit” – so good to observe children working in this way.

In the afternoon, the children were set the task of building a solar panel car which they powered with a lamp (unfortunately weather was against us today).

So – three renewable energy sources covered in a day and awareness raised within our adults of the future and all whilst having lots of fun! Win win!

 

Today Lisa from NHS D&G Quit your Way popped in to chat to us all about the negative , and very yucky, effects of smoking on your health. The pupils were involved in lots of experiments; from Dr Finlay and Dr Joshua investigating just some of the chemical concoctions that make up a cigarette ( in actual fact there are over 4000 chemicals!), to our fresh-faced and gorgeous Charlotte and Robin being transferred (by the powers of technology) to being ‘not so fresh faced looking ‘ after many years of smoking – you wouldn’t have recognised them!

The boys and girls tried out some fitness tests too. Not too healthy if you were a smoker and the cost?! So expensive – who would want to waste their money on something which is bad for you, affect your health and appearance? Crazy!

The class also considered the dangers involved in passive smoking – second-hand smoke. NHS Scotland has a bid to be smoke-free by 2034! Let’s work together to do this!!

P4-7 were lucky enough to meet Prof Lockhart from the University of the West of Scotland yesterday and hear all about COPD (and its links to smoking) in our area. This presentation is designed to teach primary pupils about the dangers associated with smoking and hopefully, completely put them off trying it out in the future!

The children learnt some shocking facts and got to work around 4 activity stations; the peak flow meter, identifying the healthy model lung, COPD keywords word search and re-creating a model lung using a bottle and balloons. Time was a little against us, but I know all would agree it was a fun afternoon tackling a very serious subject. The pupils will continue to do some work on the ‘No Smoking’ message this week.

 

On Monday the 24^th of September P4-7 went on a bus with Kirkcolm to Wigtown Book Festival. We went to see an Author called Gareth P.Jones who sang us songs about Death or Ice-cream and The twins who kept on trying to kill each other! He also talked about his new book-The Daily Joker. The Daily Joker has a joke for every single day of the entire year! He also had some of his other books on sale like Class of the Robot, Beards from Outer Space and the Ninja Meerkat series. Everyone laughed very much at his jokes and songs – and we’re more than sure to say that everyone enjoyed their trip to Wigtown Book Festival!

 

Reporters – Millie and Eva

 

 

Last week primary 4/7 had Miss Creighton in to show them how to use the green screen.

Miss Creighton taught us how to use Serif Movie Plus a computer program and the green screen kit the school had received. We learnt how to build up the green screen then used Serif Movie Plus to do our slide show. The slide show was like magic because you were at the school but on the computer it looked as if you in Scotland somewhere else! We took each other’s photos, uploaded them to the computer and imported them into the program. Miss Creighton is a Stem advisor. A big thank you to Miss Creighton for coming in to show us how to use this cool piece of equipment!

Reporter – Kirstie P7

As part of Maths Week Scotland, the Clark, Millar, McHallum, Adam, Drummond and Agnew families created these amazing collages! Look at the work that went into these. From farming matters to baking, maths around the world to maths and our toys and in our homes – the boys and girls (and their helpful families) had thought of so many examples of maths being everywhere around us!

#effective contributors    #successful learners    #maths is indeed everywhere!

Today kicked off our ‘Maths Week Scotland’ fun – Leswalt style! The boys and girls had a get-together this morning and chatted about the fact that Maths really is Everywhere – from Mrs F’s morning routine of the buzzing alarm clock to how many spoons of coffee and sugar she needed, to the shapes, time and numbers they could spot all around them in school.

Maths in Art was our first theme; with the infants looking at the shapes and patterns of the artist Paul Klee and P4-7 investigating parabolic curves and hearing about the free-hand line work of Dutch artist Piet Mondrian.

Maths in Computing had the P1-3 pupils using online sites Sum Dog and Education City (use those Sum dog log-ins at home as part of the national competition too!) The P4-7 class were busy coding using Scratch . Their challenge was to try and write a program to spell the word LESWALT. They used the sheets with the instructions as a starter but we’re hoping to try and code our own instructions as a next step.

Maths Outside had P4-7 heading off to tackle Mrs Ferguson’s Maths Challenge. Working in pairs the pupils needed to identify lots of examples of shapes, angles, measuring and number tasks. It was good fun!

Family members were invited in for some baking fun! Yum yum – using our counting and weighing skills we enjoyed making some delicious tray bakes with our classmates and family. P1-3 made ‘Fifteens’ and P4-7 made Rocky Road!

Don’t forget our optional Maths Homework Challenge of creating a collage on the theme ‘Maths is Everywhere’.

. Keep your eye on our blog to find out what we’ve been up to – photos of P1-3 have been added too!

 

 

What a wonderful musical experience P4-7 enjoyed today with a visit from Sean and Paul from Feis Rois. They will be joining us every Tuesday for most of term 1 and 2. The pupils loved listening to them playing Scottish music on their guitar and whistle/flute. Lots of foot-tapping! We then joined in singing a Gaelic name song together and a Matt McGinn song ‘Coorie Doon’. We talked about the meanings of the Scots words and learnt the song melody as Paul accompanied us on his guitar. What great fun – it certainly put a smile on all of our faces! Happy Tuesday – roll on next week!