Leswalt Primary School

Ready for Take- Off! 🎧🛩

This morning P4-7 , armed with snacks and carboard headed over to Kirkcolm for a morning of flight with Visible Fictions’ “The Impossible” Project!✈️

Over the course of the term the boys and girls have been learning about the 4 forces of flight, famous aeronauts from the past and what exactly is in a flight deck of a plane!? They put this knowledge to work by creating their very own flight decks to take part in the audio drama, this gave them a space to experience the story from which helped to immerse them in the experience.

When we arrived, we teamed up with Kirkcolm’s upper class for a game of ‘Guess What’s in the Box’. The three volunteers used adjectives to describe the textures of the unknown objects and using their clues, we identified a pilot’s hat, a yellow plane and a globe which led us to think about famous pilot Amelia Earheart and her plane, ‘the Canary.’👩‍✈️ Afterwards, we wired up our headsets, and immersed ourself in our cardboard flight decks and enjoyed an audio drama of a plane journey and crash!

We had a fantastic morning learning about the history of flight and having fun with our Kirkcolm friends! 👩‍✈️ 👨‍✈️

UNCRC Articles

Article 29 -Aims of Education

Meta Skills

Focussing Fergus

Sense Making Samira

Creativity Cassidy

Curiosity Carlos

Chasing Shadows🌞

A warm sunny day in September… unheard of! Primary 1-3 made the most of the great weather today by heading outside for some fun shadow science 🌞! This term, they have been learning about the sun, moon and stars. Today’s mission was to explore the movement of the sun throughout the day, by measuring their shadows at different times. With the help of their P4-7 buddies, they headed out early this morning to measure their shadows in the morning sun – afterwards, they predicted what would happen later in the day, would they move? would they get bigger or smaller? ☀️

Later on, they tested out their predictions by re-measuring their shadows, before and after lunchtime. They were amazed to see that their shadows were not the same length as in the morning, and some were pointing in a different direction too.

It was a wonderful day of hands-on learning , making the most of the sunshine! 🙂

Meta Skills

Curiosity Carlos

Focusing Fergus

Collaborating Cora

Sense Making Samira

UNCRC ArticlesArticle 29 – Aims of Education

Article 31 – Rest, Arts, Play & Culture

P4-7 Photoshop Pros 📸

Today, Primary 4–7 pupils armed with iPads explored the beautiful landscapes of the Wetlands and Village, capturing everything from still waters to winding paths, rowed up fields and autumnal trees.🍂🌳🌿 The trip followed a special visit from a local photographer, Chris Smith who shared expert tips on how to frame a shot, look for interesting angles, and use light creatively. We put his top-tips into practice outdoors, taking some lovely landscape photos.

Back at school, the pupils worked hard to edit their photographs using the iPads ‘edit’ function, we experimented with colour, contrast, and cropping to make their images stand out. The results were fantastic – We are very proud of the effort and enthusiasm shown by everyone, and we look forward to displaying some of the pupils’ favourite shots around school!

Check out the photo library to see our work! 😄 📸

Not so fruity Friday!🙈

According to Gregor, today has been the “best Friday ever!”. This judgement was based on all the sweet treats provided in school today.

At breaktime the boys and girls of Leswalt were treated to some birthday cake from Noah, in Primary 1. Noah is only 4 today, but tomorrow he will turn into a big 5 year old! Happy birthday to Noah ! 🎂

After lunch, the boys and girls of P1-3 enjoyed some jelly, cream and sprinkles from Mrs Mc Knight. Yesterday, they had all made the jelly in school as part of their writing and writing the procedure on how to make jelly. 🍹

Then, to end the day the younger children enjoyed some Oreo biscuits – this time as part of their Science learning and teaching. They enjoyed taking bites out of the biscuits to demonstrate the different phases of the moon. 🥮

So, fruity Friday was replaced for one week only with some sugar. By the smiles on their faces, I do not think they minded!

Normal service shall resume next week…..

Our Pupil Voice Reps

At the beginning of the school year all pupils were given the opportunity to take on a bit more responsibility around our school by applying for various positions including; Pupil Council, Eco Committee, House Captains, Digital Leaders and Monitor jobs. These jobs ensure that pupils’ voices are heard in everything that we do and allow them to take ownership over our fab wee school! ❤️💬

Having looked through the applications , we have now selected our reps for the current session – these effective contributors will be working together to help our school continue to be the happy place it is and make it shine even more🌟

Pupil Council
Jack (P1), Betty (P2), Cameron and James H(p3), Eilidh (P4), Olivia (P6) James McD (p7)

Eco Committee
Leo (P1),Gregor (P2), Jorgie (p3), Emma (p4), Murray and Rebecca (P7)

Digital Leaders
Rachael and Ben (p7)

House Captains
Rachael (Corsewall) and Colin (Lochnaw)

Monitors:
Playground – Jorgie (p2) and Lily (P5)
Meta Manager – Eilidh (P4) James McD (P7)
Dinner Hall – Beathan (p3)
Cloakroom – – Erin (P2) Keira (p4)
Library – Hannah (P4) Jessica (P2)

From Snapshots to Selfies 😍🤳

Today we welcomed local photographer and Kirkcolm Parent Chris Smith into P4-7 to talk all things photography – our art focus this term. Having explored what photography means and looked at some Macro photography in the playground. This week our focus has been on portraits.🖼

Chris was able to show us some of the breathtaking landscapes he’s photographed and his camera kit and discussed with us how he goes about taking his photos and the effort that goes in to taking a good landscape photo.🏔 He even showed The times you have to get up at in the morning, to drive to the ideal location, to then climb where you need to be, to get the perfect shot at the perfect time… and it’s still not guaranteed! The pupils had many many(!) questions for Chris, all of which he patiently answered, and we are all left feeling fairly inspired to dig out our cameras from the back of the cupboard and have a go ourselves!

Afterwards, Chris even let us have a go at taking some portraits using his professional camera. He showed us the different lenses he uses to capture the perfect shot. We even managed so squeeze in some quick selfies! I’m sure Chris’ camera roll will have some beautiful and interesting photos of Primary 4-7 this afternoon! 😍🤳

A big thank you to Chris for taking the time to visit our class this afternoon and for his inspiring chat on photography. We can’t wait to put his top tips and feedback into practice as we continue our photography in the following weeks! 📸

Meta Skills

Critical Thinking Chris

Creativity Cassidy

Collaborating Cora

Focussing Fergus

UNCRC Articles

Article 13 – Freedom of Expression

Article 31 – Rest, Arts, Play & Culture

A Visit from PC McGregor👮‍♀️

This afternoon P4-7 welcomed police officer, PC Amy McGregor into our classroom to talk to use about harmful substances and keeping ourselves safe and healthy, to support our HWB learning – substance misuse. 👮‍♀️🚨🚓

She spoke to us about the dangers linked to smoking and vaping, alcohol and drugs and warned us about the effects that these substances can have on our bodies and choices and most importantly the importance of making safe, healthy choices. PC Amy encouraged us to think about peer pressure and the importance of looking out for each other and encouraging our friends to make positive choices.

It wasn’t all serious, though – PC McGregor had a warm and friendly way of explaining things and made sure that everyone felt comfortable joining in the discussion.

Thank-you to PC McGregor for taking the time to visit us!😃

Meta Skills

Collaborating Cora

Curiosity Carlos

UNCRC

Article 13 – Share what you think, unless it harms others

Article 29 – Aims of education

A Morning Full of Stories! 📚

This morning our P3-7’s traded their usual classroom seats for a bus journey to Stranraer Academy to meet a real-life author. Excitement levels were high as we prepared ourselves to meet the likes of Julie Donaldson, Roald Dahl or Michael Murpurgo… When we arrived we met the one and only Martin Stewart, a talented Scottish book author and former teacher from Troon!🌟 ✍

Martin has written amazing stories like Riverkeep and The Sacrifice Box, and he told us all about how he dreams up his ideas. He shared funny tales from his own writing journey, gave us top tips for creating characters and plots, and even showed us some pictures of his pets who feature as characters in his books.📚

We were fascinated – and more than a little impressed. Turns out, being an author is equal parts imagination, determination, and a dash of madness! Pupils asked some brilliant questions, and Martin gave honest and inspiring answers.

The bus ride home was filled with chatter about new story ideas and how maybe one day, a Leswalt pupil’s book will be on the shelves too. A huge thank you to Martin Stewart for sparking our imaginations, and to Stranraer Academy for hosting such a fab morning. 🚌

Meta Skills

Creativity Cassidy

Collaborating Cora

Curiosity Carlos

Focussing Fergus

Articles

Article 13 – Freedom of Expression

Article 31 – Rest, Arts, Play & Culture

Live, Laugh, Love

This afternoon we had Rev Marlene in to join us during our assembly. In keeping with the infant classes’ RME topic she came to spoke about the creation story and how God created life and love. She firstly spoke about how inventions have changed the way we live and how our lives have changed as a result of them over time. She asked us what we think the most important invention of all time was and we spent a while discussing how important some materialistic objects are to us and how we simply couldn’t do without them! She then went on to explain that without God creating the world none of us would have life or love – two of the most important things that make the rest of the inventions well and truly worthless! ❤️🌎🧔

A very important and thought-provoking message indeed! Thanks again to Rev Marlene for her wise words and her time. ⛪✝

Meta Skills – Curiosity Carlos, Focussing Fergus

Article 14 – The right o have my own thoughts and beliefs and to choose my religion, with help from my parents

No Flaggin’ for us on Day 2!

What a fabulous Fri-YAY we had! This morning our super Primary 7’s buddied up with our new Primary 1’s to create their ‘all about me’ flags. We loved hearing about your hobbies, pets and families. We look forward to decorating our school hallway with these!🖍🚩

In keeping with this flag theme, we buddied back up and toddled along to the park for a fun in the sunshine and play a new game; ‘Capture the Flag.’ 🏴🏳We split into two teams, hid our flags, marked out a jails and enjoyed running around as attackers and defenders with the aim of capturing the opposing team’s flag. We finished off our FRESH AIR FRIDAY afternoon with an obligatory swing on the swings, slide on the slide and whirl on the roundabout. 😄

We hope that everyone comes home tonight having had a great first couple of days back at school – albeit a little tired and dishevelled – and that’s just the teachers!😏

Meta Skills – Creativity Carols, Collaborating Cate, Feeling Felix, Curiosity Carlos

UNCRC – Articles 13 The Right to Share Thoughts Freely

31 The Right to Rest, Play, Culture and Arts

8 The Right to have an Identity