Leswalt Primary School

We are delighted to announce that the North Rhins Partnership of Leswalt, Kirkcolm and Portpatrick Primary schools have been awarded national recognition in Education Scotland’s annual Learning for Sustainability awards.

Having been shortlisted, we achieved a Highly Commended accolade within the Sustainability Learning Community Award category. This is an outstanding achievement, having competed against early learning, childcare, and school settings across the whole of Scotland.

The awards recognise the commitment, professionalism and leadership that underpins Scotland’s success in innovating for Learning for Sustainability within educational settings.  Within Scotland’s curriculum, Learning for Sustainability (LfS) is recognised as an entitlement for all learners and a recent international study showed that our learners are world-leading global citizens.  The award is timely with the upcoming COP26 summit taking place in Glasgow in November.

The aim is to help us all recognise the amazing achievements of Scotland’s people and the settings, schools and communities that have demonstrated passion and commitment to building a socially-just, sustainable and equitable world.

The North Rhins Partnership was required to demonstrate our whole school/partnership approach that encourages individual and collective action to promote Learning for Sustainability.  This incorporated many factors such as supporting Global Goals, the UNCRC Rights of the Child, Rights Respecting Schools, Eco Schools and our strong pupil voice,; both within our school settings and as part of contributing to our wider community.  We are doing our bit to develop independent learners, effective contributors, confident individual and responsible citizens for the future!

The official results will be announced in the Daily Record within the next week.

 

Today the boys and girls of Leswalt primary gathered to wish a very special man and janitor a very happy retirement.

Dougie and his wife Denise were invited in for some memories, gifts and songs.

The boys and girls had all written their special memories of Mr Brawls in a scrapbook.  We all watched a video montage to remind Mr Brawls of the fun times he had with us at school.  Aidan and Faye brought in some “special juice” for him to enjoy.  Mark and Rachael brought a big cake for all to enjoy, from Simpsons the bakers. A well known Proclaimers and Abba song was re-written specially for our guest of honour.  

Everyone had generously donated money – the Parent Council, parents and staff. This money was combined to get specially commissioned garden chair and table made for him – built out of whisky barrels.  This was made by “Wee dram barrel creations” and was engraved with his name and a message from us all at school.

The afternoon finished with all enjoying a wee pice of cake and having some banter with Mr Brawls.

We all would like to wish him a long, happy and healthy retirement.

He has been a star!

Click on the links below to see our tributes

Bye bye Doogi – YouTube

Mr Brawls is leaving us today – YouTube

Super Trouper – YouTube

For Maths Week Scotland 2021, P1 – 4 got busy applying their numeracy and maths skills. As well as participating in our Fun Maths Roadshow, the children created portraits using only number shapes.  We are sure you will agree their portraits would grace any art gallery.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 4 of Maths Week Scotland and today we had fun completing LOADS of maths challenges at the visiting Maths Roadshow!

We worked in pairs and moved round lots of activities – completing them and marking them off on our record sheet as we worked our way around the room. There was a huge variety of tasks on offer: angles to multiplication, tangrams to magic squares, data handling to number bonds. All set to make us really think! We LOVED the challenges set.

Many thanks to the D&G STEM Team for visiting us and delivering a maths-tastic morning!

 

Today’s maths was active, fun and tasty! What more could you ask for?

In small groups, we used a recipe for flapjacks to produce a delicious filling snack whilst using our ratio, weighing, time and fraction skills.

Anne-Marie in the kitchen kindly popped our baking in the school oven and, in the afternoon, we cracked on with creating our box to package up our yummy treats.

Mrs F had prepared a 2D net of a cuboid – large enough to hold two pieces of flapjack. Squared paper was available to anyone who was up for drawing their own 2D net – Alexander was up for this challenge! We then cut these out, scored along the folds and assembled our cuboid boxes.

As an extra challenge, Mrs F told us about the costs of the ingredients used. We calculated how many individual pieces of flapjack we had baked, the basic cost of ingredients and what we could perhaps charge if we were looking to make these to sell. We needed to think about the profit margin as well as cost of supplies needed – businesses must make sure they aren’t pricing items too cheaply or too expensive! The ingredients cost £7.98 and we made 52 slices which works out 15p a flapjack to make. We think we could sell these for a bit more than that though! This is how a business makes a profit; by considering how much a customer will pay for a product whilst ensuring your costs are being met.

Loads of maths skills being exercised today – plus we had a bite to eat!

Tomorrow’s maths fun involves a Numeracy Roadshow! Look out for Thursday’s blog instalment…

P5-7 used their maths learning in context today when they popped outside of their portacabin to put their angles and measuring knowledge into action!

First up, the class watched and chatted about a STEM Ambassador’s video clip which talked about ways in which maths is used in the workplace – today’s clip concerned the Renewable Energy job market.

Mrs F had organised some photographs of examples of angles in the environment for pupils, in their Talk Partners, to locate and measure using their protractors. So we all headed out to complete the Angles Hunt. Using the protractor correctly can be a challenge but we’re doing lots of practising!

Following this, the class got together to recap some angles vocabulary (acute, obtuse, straight, reflex, degrees, perpendicular lines) and then individually each had angles to identify and measure as appropriate to their age and stage. Some were investigating angles in a triangle, some angles within a right angle, straight angle or round a point and some working out the supplement or complement of an angle.

As an aside, we also used rather retro looking trundle wheel and checked its measurements against a metre stick. It was pretty accurate!

All good fun and a different way of taking our learning forward.

Next up – Wednesday’s fun  will involve weight calculations, ratio, time, fractions and the net of a cuboid to do a spot of  baking and then to package up the finished product!

Keep your eyes peeled for tomorrow’s photos…

 

As part of our Local and National Government topic, today we welcomed Aimee Dobie, the UK Parliament Outreach Education Officer.

This built on the visits from Emma Currie, who spoke about her experiences with the Scottish Youth Parliament, Caroline Schofield who delivered a session form the Scottish Parliament and the work we have done in class this term.  We have had a very busy and informative term!

Aimee had created a fun, informative PowerPoint to tell us more about the role of the UK Parliament and she also had a video message (created just for us!) from Alister Jack who is the MP for Dumfries and Galloway and the Secretary of State for Scotland.

We chatted about the skills required to be an MP (linking these to Employability Skills) , the importance of Parliament – why it is important- and what we can do to help our class and community now and in the future. We also talked about how this linked to our very own Pupil Council and Eco Committee. The children learned how this is a process where the UNCRC Rights of the Child 12 & 13 are put into action, where children’s’ views are respected and they are able to share their thoughts freely.  Democracy at Primary School level!

Many thanks to Aimee for an informative afternoon!

Today P5-7 enjoyed a fun rugby taster session with Campbell McGregor from Wigtownshire Rugby Club. This was part of Scottish Rugby Schools Week.

The pupils participated in some cool warm-up games – Octopus Tig and Turtle Tig to get the blood pumping, then a couple of team games which involved throwing and catching. Finally, they played 4v4 passing games whereby they needed to have 10 clean passes between their team members to score a point. Great fun!

Several pupils in our class are regular attendees at Wigtownshire Rugby Club’s Junior sessions on a Sunday morning. But Mr McGregor handed out invites at the end of today’s rugby to encourage new faces to come along to the club’s taster session on Sunday 3rd October. They would be warmly welcomed!

 

 

Check out our Super Responsible Citizens who have been appointed as pupil representatives on Leswalt Primary’s Pupil Council or Eco Committee.

First meetings either have already taken place, or are scheduled to take place very soon and we are looking forward to a successful year with these newly elected teams!

Pupil Council

Eco Committee

It was a big day this week as we set about electing our House Captains for the year. This is quite a responsibility as these are the individuals in charge of our two school houses: Soleburn and Lochnaw.

The upper class were over the moon that we could put to use all the skills and knowledge we have learnt studying our new class topic on Democracy and how the Government works. What better way to start that forming the government and choosing the leaders of our own school!

House Captains have the challenge ahead of them of planning the big events throughout the year (especially as we can now have some events in schools!) and promoting good behaviour in their houses. All this adds up to Dojos which turn into Merits which turn into prizes for each house. Exciting stuff!

Our candidates had good time to prepare and were each ready to deliver a speech stating their case on why they felt they were the best person for the job to the rest of the school before our secret ballots were cast! All pupils delivered fantastic speeches and really showed how much they care about the school and everyone in it.  It proved a very tough vote for the pupils. We were very proud of all the P7’s for putting their best foot forward and, regardless what the result, we are sure all of them would make excellent House Captain and leaders.

Congratulations go to:

Soleburn – Breagh Kirkpatrick

Lochnaw – Malcolm McGregor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This active process of democracy helps support our learning as part of our curriculum and as part of a wider context; helping develop the Skills for Life, Learning and Work.  It also drives forwards our Rights Respecting Schools & applies UNICEF’s Rights of The Child (articles 4, 12, 15, & 25)