Leswalt Primary School

It was such a joy to be outside today for Fresh Air Friday, as we learnt about food chains, sustainability, recycling, eco-systems and the planting calendar  – whilst developing our teamwork, communication and listening skills in a real-life context which we can use outwith school too. A win:win situation! It has to be said, this could not be done without us having  Mrs Richardson working with us, as her knowledge about gardening far surpasses ours! We are extremely lucky!

As a group, we got chatting about what we would like to achieve in our playground and, collating the ideas of children and with some top tips of her own, Mrs Richardson was able to come up with an action plan! We’re ready, willing and, even more importantly, now have some guidance about what needs to be done to tidy up and prepare the soil for planting!

The pupils enthusiastically offered some suggestions and, working in a group of 8, set to work. Mrs Richardson will be working with us weekly – and will take groups of 8 pupils (a mix from P1-4 and P5-7) to help realise our plans.

Pupils will be encouraged to bring old clothes to school for their gardening stint – which will be on a Friday afternoon unless the weather forecast suggests another afternoon might be better! We will keep an eye on weather reports to see what suits best each week. We might also be looking for some assistance from the community, as our plans unfurl, in the form of cuttings, seeds, planters and tyres. We’ll be in touch…

This afternoon really had the feel-good factor!

We were delighted today to get a good news telephone call to say that a Leswalt Primary pupil is a runner up in the annual Alister Jack MP Christmas card competition.

This competition is open to all schools in Dumfries and Galloway.  Hundreds of pupils took part in it. And, our very own Chloe Kennedy is a runner up!  Chloe’s design will go inside the card, which will be sent out from Westminster.

As a prize, Chloe will receive a certificate and Amazon gift voucher to spend online.

Well done Chloe – we are all very proud of you!

Today was Outdoor Classroom Day, so the pupils and staff of Leswalt Primary headed out into the fresh November air. We weren’t quite expecting the great Scottish midges to be out in force – but they most definitely were!

Still, we all had a lot of fun!

P1-4 started with a morning walk up to the Wetlands. Along the way we said “Hi!” to Mr McHallum who is working hard replacing the walkway there. We gathered a selection of different coloured Autumn leaves for an art project later in the day, and twigs/sticks for out maths tasks. We managed to fit in a few games of ‘Scatter’ in the woods before returning back to school for break.

We used the twigs to solve some maths problems involving triangles. Isla and Ela were victorious, closely followed by Kaiden and Cara. We then had to work in teams to see who could build the biggest twig tower. The P3 group were worthy winners. They communicated well and everyone joined in. Top Team!

In the afternoon we used the leaves, twigs, berries and rashes we had gathered to make firework patterns. We think they look great! We then used out twigs and clay to build our own Guy Fawkes for the bonfire. A Stickman Guy Fawkes!

P5-7 headed out to do a village percentages quiz before returning to the playground and recapping their prior knowledge about the 4 and 8 point compass. They then used sticks and wool to create spider webs – using the 8 pt compass as inspiration. They look really cool! Some pupils even used protractors to check their angles were correct: was N- NE 45 degrees as it should be? This will now lead onto our angles and bearings work which we will be doing in class next week.

After break, the pupils headed to the Wetlands where they heard the historical tale of Guy Fawkes. Clues were hidden for the pupils to find and photograph with their ipads. They then used these to collate facts about the story surrounding the Gunpowder Plot and even used sticks and leaves to ‘ilustrate’ a bonfire on their piece of work too!

In the afternoon, they set up their rainfall collection experiment (which links to this term’s Science topic) and enjoyed P.E. brushing up on their basketball skills!

 

Zombies, witches and scary skeletons – there were all sorts of spooky goings-on at Leswalt Primary today! Our school of usually fresh-faced, smiling children were transformed for the day into a terrifying bunch of Halloween characters! Aaargh!

The morning started with the judging of the Fancy dress competition.

P1/2 – Colin (with a special prize for Lily!)

P3 – Ellie

P4 – Kaiden

P5 – Rose

P6 – Malcolm

P7 – Joshua

Our two House Captains Gregor and Andrew had organised Halloween afternoon fun in the hall for each class which involved some zombie dancing, creepy corners game, pumpkin race and musical spooky chairs.

p1-4 had great fun both pumpkin AND neep carving. Safe to say the neep required all their strength. There was even a broken knife to show for it! In the afternoon, after their Halloween party fun, the boys and girls created a delightful concoction to make their pumpkin and neep carvings puke – yes it was as yucky as it sounds! STEM fun at its finest!

P5-7 created some stunning spooky silhouettes and then planned and designed their very own paper bat to participate on the Bat Track – which bat design flew the furthest I wonder? And to top the afternoon off, the pupils designed catapults. The challenge? Plan, design and build a catapult to launch your mini chocolate pumpkin through the air – could they land in the pumpkin patch?  Lots of fun – but hidden in there was plenty of engineering and problem-solving too. Check out the photos below!

On Thursday the 8th of October the boys and girls of Leswalt Primary gave their wonderful janitor Mr Brawls a handmade birthday card and something very nice to drink as a special gift – he has a big birthday coming up in the October holidays!

We sang Happy Birthday to him outside and Lily and Ewan handed over his handmade birthday card and gift to him!

We hope he has a lovely day!

Report by Malcolm

Media by Tristan

 

Shape fun

We had lots of fun exploring the properties of 2D shapes with Mrs Copeland and using these to create group pictures.

Symmetry

In pairs we used chalk to create a symmetrical pattern/picture by working across a line in the school hall.  We then searched outside for examples of symmetry in nature.  We collected symmetrical leaves, cut them in half and stuck the halves onto paper.  We then had to draw the other half of the leaf as accurately as possible along the line of symmetry.  This was tricky!

 

Measure/Estimation

We were asked to draw a line on the ground as close to 1m as we could without measuring .  We used a metre stick to check how close we were           (Ruby, Mark, Brandon and Holly were closest! – see photo 5040).  We then drew a squiggly line as close to 1m as we could.  This proved tricky to measure using a metre stick.  We had to use our problem solving skills and decided to use string to track our squiggly line and then used the metre stick to measure the string.

Check out our happy wee faces loving Maths!

We have had a MEGA Maths Week!

On Monday-

P7- we were learning about scale and we were building a Lego HOUSE and measured what scale it had we also made a bird with glue stick lids, calculators and rubber dinosaurs.

P6-they were doing measuring in millimetres so they measured small things like ;glue sticks, scissors and water bottles stuff like that.

P5-we were learning about width and height we went through with a metre stick in pairs of 2 and measured stuff like the door or computer cabinet then we had to get skipping ropes and made a snake in a certain way then we had to put blocks in it to decorate it.

On Tuesday-

Today we all went outside to do some negative numbers work. We used a skipping rope and our whiteboards to write our numbers then peg them in order. We worked as a group, estimated the positions of numbers on our number lines and set Mrs F a number sequence challenge to solve.

We also had some compass work to do which linked to our map work. We used the ipads and Google maps to find North.

On Wednesday –

It was Riddle Wednesday today – with a Maths twist!

Why not challenge your family to the tasks! There is a photo of them below in case you’re needing a reminder!

We also watched a STEM Ambassador video clip. Alex works for Scottish Water and explained what her job entailed and how it linked to the wonderful world of Maths!

Some number digit puzzles got us scratching our heads too! We needed to reset the numbers but could only move on place left, right, up or down at a time. It wasn’t easy!

And of course, we had the every popular, super competitive BIG MATHS to do too!

On Thursday-

Well this was a busy day as we were visiting a film-set at Dunskey (as you do!) but we did enjoy High 5 Thursday with a distinctly maths flavour and cracked on with some collaborative problem solving – two brains really are better then one!

On Friday –

It was a MUST to get outside and enjoy the Autumn sunshine again!This time we had a measure and STEM challenge. Firstly, we measured the height and arm span of each other and then had to draw a ‘mini-me’ to a measurement of 10% or to a set scale of our actual height. – we did this in the school hall. Then we then headed to the Wetlands and had a timed challenge to build a ‘mini den’ with three walls and a roof to cover our mini-me! Great fun!

Check out our photos of the great week we’ve had…

 

Not your average Thursday morning for the lucky pupils of P4-7 at Leswalt Primary – as today they got to visit a real film-set and chat to the cast and crew of upcoming movie Kingslayer!

This film is being shot at Dunskey – home of the Orr-Ewing family who very kindly invited our trio of schools to visit and absorb the film-set experience!

Malcolm and Noah wrote up this blog report once we got back to class!

On Thursday the 1^st of October P4-7 had an amazing experience visiting the cast and crew of a film called Kingslayer. Each pupil got to meet Paul Boyce the Head of Makeup and Prosthetics, Jessica who was a member of the production crew and Stuart Brennan who played King Richard and wrote and directed the film! The Head of Makeup and Prosthetics had previously worked on Captain America and spent two years on the Harry Potter set – amazing!

The pupils each got a signed part of the script and got to see a scene of the movie being filmed and they got to say 3, 2, 1 Action! It was a lot of fun seeing the props and costumes.  We also got to see the main character King Richard Lionheart. He is called King Lion Heart because he fought like a lion in war. The children asked questions like: When will the movie be out? Or like what’s the difference between a Producer and a Director? The answer is that a Producer gets all the right characters and all the right props ready for the film and then the Director tells them where to aim the camera and what to do. P1-3 will have this amazing experience too on Wednesday the 7^th of October for their own eyes. The movie will hopefully be released in Spring 2021.

We had a great morning learning lots about the film-world!

Report by Noah and Malcolm

In a bid to make the most of the late Summer and early Autumn sunshine, P5-7 have been enjoying their Fresh Air Friday sessions.

It’s a chance for us to be outside and learn together; using our playground and village surroundings as a real-life context for our activities.

From mini den-building to circuit training, storytime sessions to whole school rounders, place value maths game to chalk symmetry, village quiz walk  to number games – it’s been a fabulous way to enjoy outside learning!

Fun, fresh air and learning – what’s not to love!

And next week marks the start of Maths Week Scotland – keep your eyes peeled for more outdoor activities featuring on this blog!