Primary 1/2 have been learning about our school in the present and past. As part of our topic work, we have been on a walk to look at the old school which we moved out of, just over one year ago. If any the of the pupils have old photographs at home which show family members at school in recent years or even further back in time, we would be delighted to see them.
Dalbeattie Learning Campus has been the venue for two very special events to commemorate the 100 year anniversary of the end of WW1.
The first event, in partnership with the Dalbeattie Branch of the Royal British Legion Scotland, took place on Thursday 8th November at 7.00pm. This was an evening community concert held in Dalbeattie Learning Campus’ Heughan Hall, which was started off with Marching The Colours (carried out by Mr Dingwall and Mr McNay) followed by contributions from The Stewartry Wind Band, Galloway Pipes and Drums, The NYCOS Choir, The Heughan Choir and three dramatic sketches performed by students from Dalbeattie High School Drama Department, the producer and director being Mrs Inga Blamire. These sketches were very moving and included: a ‘Train Station Scene’ as the wives waved their husbands goodbye as they went off to war; the soldiers in the ‘WW1 Trench’ waiting for the signal to go over the top; and ‘Hospital and Home’ as sad news came back from the front. All three scenes were enhanced with items borrowed from Dalbeattie Museum. Also significant, was the presence of two ‘Ghost WW1 Soldiers’ and two ‘Ghost WW1 Sailors’ who stood in silence throughout. This, together with the placing of ‘There But Not There’ silhouettes placed randomly amongst the audience, was a very thought provoking touch, organised by The Royal British Legion Dalbeattie Branch. Outside the school, to greet people was a reconstruction of a WW1 tank, created by Mr Stott. The evening was rounded off with some excellent refreshments prepared by Dalbeattie High School’s Mrs Houston and Hospitality Department, sponsored by Dalbeattie Museum.
On Friday 9th November, during the school day, there was a very special dedication service for the return of the school’s WW1 Memorial Plaque from Dalbeattie Museum (where it was temporarily housed while our new school was being built and which has recently been restored by Dalbeattie’s Men Shed.) At this service, 105 long stemmed poppies, each labelled with the names of the 105 former pupils who lost their lives in WW1, were placed in front of the brass plaque by pupils and staff of both schools, prior to its being mounted on wall. Pupils who are members of Sea Cadets, Army Cadets, Scouts, Guides, Brownies and Cubs wore their uniforms in school for the ceremony. We are grateful to Dalbeattie Royal British Legion for organising the long stemmed poppies, the laying of which has been a fitting way to re-dedicate our school’s WW1 memorial plaque. The personal stories of some of the 105 names on the plaque were also highlighted in a slide show while the 105 names were read out. Pupils Katie Mein and Ruari Webster also read some moving poems. Drama sketches by Dalbeattie High School Drama students and singing by the Heughan Choir were also repeated.
Both events were attended by Mark Smith of Dalbeattie and Kirkgunzeon Parish Church who also contributed to proceedings. The school has also been delighted to display a beautiful poppy fall, in the main reception area, during this important period of Remembrance. The fall of knitted poppies was created by volunteers from the Church.
Interspersed throughout the drama, the High School’s senior Reps and House Captains informed us all about the history of WW1 and its relevance to the pupils of Dalbeattie Learning Campus symbolised by the return of the school’s WW1 Memorial Plaque. Mrs Duncan and Mrs Chambers, the Primary and Secondary Head Teachers co-ordinated events at both ceremonies, which have been praised by all for being so moving and special.
At a separate Remembrance Assembly, Mrs Duncan shared a beautiful book from Poppy Scotland with pupils in Primary 1,2 and 3. The poppy fall has now been removed ready for display in Colliston Park for the Remembrance Service at 11am (all people to be assembled at 10.50am) and the 105 named poppies are now on display in Dalbeattie Museum window.
Having moved into their new campus around a year ago Dalbeattie Primary Eco Group is keen to keep it looking clean & tidy. To keep up the standards they have relaunched their litter awareness topic.
Last week the Community Safety Team were out and about on one of their engagement days and visited the primary school.
The Eco Group learned about litter and it effect on their local community. They surveyed their school grounds for litter and found some: mostly sweets and crisp packets. It was actually quiet tidy. However, the process was good for the children to understand the type of survey sheets which can be used to grade the appearance of an area in terms of litter.
These type of surveys are carried out three times a year by Keep Scotland Beautiful and determines how clean our roads and streets are compared to other local authority areas in Scotland.
The children learned that litter, especially those plastic in nature often finds its way into a watercourse and end up in the sea, often having a devastating effect on sea creatures.
At their old school, they were often plagued by dog fouling, but with having a secure playground now, they no longer have this issue.
The Eco Group believe that we all need to work together to keep our area clean & tidy.
This week saw lots of busy diggers in the grounds of Dalbeattie Primary School thanks to a bunch of hardworking volunteers who helped complete the final part of a project which was started in the spring. Dalbeattie Primary has fantastic areas for outdoor learning but the task of filling our 11 very large planters with plant stock for the first time was no little task. As the school also has a large allotment area with raised beds and a polytunnel for growing vegetables, it was decided to stock the 11 class planters with herbaceous plants which the children can weed and tend to over the years to come. However, such plants can be expensive so Dalbeattie Rotary Club of Dalbeattie came to the rescue with a fund of £750 to finance an initial order after the club was contacted by the school’s Eco Group. Also crucial to the project’s success has been the generous help and advice of Dumfries and Galloway Grounds staff Caroline McLachlan and Brian McAvennie. Brian very kindly offered to take delivery of our plants back in April and, with his dedicated team, has potted them up and cared for them all summer so that they would be better established for us to plant out in the autumn. Last Monday, the plants arrived back. It was amazing to see the size they had grown to; we are so grateful because with the summer we had, we would surely have lost the majority of the young plants without Brian’s help. Meanwhile, parent volunteers carried out the heavy work of weeding and digging over the planters before progressing to planting out. We are also very grateful to Wilkos in Castle Douglas for 10 bags of free compost and to BSW Timber who will be supplying us with bark. It’s been a busy week but the school is so grateful to our team of trusty volunteers: Andy Kalotka, Mr McMorran, Alison Houston, Simon Mein, Susan Robertson, Fiona Anderson, Ruaridh Benson, Laura Dickie, John Boynton, Fran Drummond, Lee Maxwell, Emma McGuire, Pamela Caldow, Victoria Cameron and Gayle Cooper. Thank you all!
Today we had a new set of Head Teacher Award winners. Not only did they receive their certificates but, for the first time, the pupils were also presented with prizes: Head Teacher’s award pencils! The previous winners at our first assembly were also presented with some. The decision to give prizes has resulted from consultation with all the school children about ways they would like to improve how achievements are celebrated. Here are this week’s winners:
Also at our assembly this week, 12 Primary 7 pupils were presented with their badges for volunteering to be librarians. Our new library monitors give up their lunch times, on a rota basis, to keep the school library organised and tidy.
Today in assembly the children were awarded their badges for Eco Schools Committee, School Pupil Council, Sports Captains and House Captains. Library Committee will be given their badges next week. Please see the Eco and School Pupil Council pages for photos. The Sports and house Captains are below.
Here are our first award winners of our new school year.
We held our first Primary 1-3 Sports on the re-scheduled day of Wednesday 27th June, which was a very hot day indeed! We had previously cancelled due to rain and wind and now we had the opposite extreme to contend with! The event took place on the 3G pitch. We are very grateful to the High School staff and pupils who so willingly came to our rescue to try to create some shade. The children did cope very well and we are very grateful to the support of our parents and carers for sending the children with sun-cream, water bottles and sun hats. We are always reviewing the way we do things and everything this year has been a ‘first’ in our new campus. This year, in addition to all the traditional races such as flat race and egg and spoon, we also had some new extra races. The Coach and Horses was a bit of extra fun to end a successful afternoon with.
Our end of term Assembly was held this year on Thursday 28th June. We were delighted to welcome Jenny and Malcolm Heughan who presented the Heughan Citizenship Awards for the first time. Also, we were pleased to have Sandy Jamieson, the husband of former Head Teacher Janice Jamieson, join us to present the new Award for Achievement and Effort in Reading. The new award is a beautiful rose-bowl, engraved with an image of books and lilies, which were Janice’s favourite flower. The trophy was funded by the money raised by the children shortly after Mrs Jamieson, who had been an inspirational Head Teacher, had sadly passed away. The children had taken part in a sponsored fun run, as part of the town’s half Marathon, in order to have a fitting memorial. As the design of the new school was very important to Janice, it was felt the money should be used for something meaningful in our new learning campus. As the library was something very close to Janice’s heart and because this year, we have introduced ‘Accelerated Reader’ to Primary 6 and Primary 7, it was felt a new award for Reading was an obvious and fitting memorial. This year’s winner is Millie Hird and the runners up were Amberly Wallace, Jamie o Mara and Sean Ellis who were also presented with small trophies.
There were many other trophies presented and all the prize winners are listed here:
Babsie Caig Trophy – best role model: Keira Murdock. Alistair Gourlay Trophy: joint winners Isabella Docherty and Cameron Hitchell. Runners Up: Ella Blaikie, Jessica Boynton, Lucas Tattersfield, Rory MCormick, Emmie Sanderson, Rebecca Hird. Jenny Corrie Trophy – Poetry: Reegan Finnigan. Alan Younger Trophy – Art & Craft: Jessica Bowden. Lions Club Citizenship: Winner-Alana Pickthall. Runners up: Ennio Murray-Sanchez, Grace McQuarrie, Aimee Ho. Police Citizenship: Gregor Davidson and Aaron Bryson. Maureen McShane Trophy – best effort: Kenzie Jolley and Luke Goodfellow. Heughan Trust Awards Overall Winners: Rory McCormick and Jessica Boynton. History Cup: Ewan McFegan and Blair Kalotka. Janice Jamieson Memorial Prize: Millie Hird. Runners up: Sean Ellis, Amberly Wallace, Jamie O’ Mara. Sports Awards 2018: Winning House : Dalmun. The boys’ champion was Joe Arnold with runner up Logan Clive. The girls’ Champion was Nicole Miller with runner up Keira Murdock. The winner of the 300m boys race was won by Joe Arnold with runner up Jack Palmer. The 300m girls race was won by Nicole Miller with runner up Grace McQuarrie. The potted Sports shield was won by Dalmun and the House points shield was won by Screel.
Many of the awards were presented by retiring class teacher Janet Burn, who also presented the Primary 7 leavers with their end of primary school gifts. The young people then left the hall and walked over to the High School where they posed for photo on the big box seating- on the High School side!
It’s that time of year again when we have to say goodbye, sadly to our Primary 7 leavers. This year, they haven’t far to travel to, in the next part of their journey through school. First, however, they have treated us all with their special memories of their years in the Nursery and Primary. Based on the ‘Gogglebox’ show, the children created a script which saw several TV programmes acting as the stimulus for lots of varied memories. And what great use they made of some of the school’s new soft seating! Well done Primary 7! We are sorry to see you go but you won’t be far away…..
