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As part of our British Science Week celebrations, the whole school headed out this morning into the glorious spring sunshine to the Aldouran Wetlands. The pupils worked in pairs to find, name and record various woodland mini beasts, aided by an identification key. We also had a peek at the bulbs we planted a few weeks ago to see if they had grown – and we were delighted to see some beautiful purple flowers blossoming!

In class, P4-7 pupils used our new iPads to explore different scientific stories currently in the news, and completed some experiments that they have been doing all week (including making eggs bounce!). P1-3 pupils started a very topical science experiment using bread to see how germs spread and whether hand-washing really is effective. They will continue to compare the bread over the next week to see how quickly the germs multiply.

In the afternoon, several parents joined us for some STEM activities. Pupils worked in mixed ability groups and rotated around a range of challenges and experiments on offer, including: creating soap bubble prints, invisible writing, rainbow paper towels, a challenge to build the tallest tower, designing a marble run, and coding.

Everyone had a super school day doing all things science!

Our 4 P7 pupils formed a fabulous team for the annual Curling’s Cool Bonspiel held at the North West Castle Hotel in Stranraer.

They enjoyed a full and busy day curling, working well as a team and meeting new people who they’ll move up to Stranraer Academy with.

Many thanks to Finlay’s mum, Mrs Scott for accompanying them.

Our Library monitors, Noah and Ellie, ran a competition for World Book Day, where pupils had to design a new front cover for their favourite book. Today, they had the difficult task of judging the entries and selecting 2 winners – one from P1-3 and one from P4-7. Ela was chosen as the winner in P1-3 with her eye-catching design for ‘The Enchanted Forest,’ and Auryn was the winner in P4-7 with her colourful ‘Billionaire Boy’ entry. Both girls had a selection of books to choose from and took 1 home each as their prize. Well done to all the boys and girls who entered the competition – it was great to see so many pupils having a go and sharing their favourite books.

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!