A great night at the P7-S2 Halloween Disco. Some great costumes, games and dancing. A fantastic transition opportunity. Thank you S6 and Mrs Whalen for organising this event.
We would like to remind you about this idea which was posted before the summer holidays. It has been extended through the October holidays and on to Friday November 24th in order to include three more weekends. While it does require a trip to a beach, it is however a great activity for not only demonstrating some citizenship through doing some beach cleaning but is also great for literacy and creative skills because the follow up activity encourages quite a bit of imagination to to be used!
Basically, the idea is to find an interesting piece of plastic and pretend you don’t know what it actually is. Imagine you are an archaeologist in the future who finds it and has to use guess work for what it might be!
Below is the original information sheet about the activity. Also provided below is a blank pro forma which can be downloaded and edited or printed off to be handwritten on. Mrs Howie has also had a go a trying a couple of examples herself for this- see pdfs below. However, the level of literacy in completed work by pupils will, of course, vary greatly depending on the level the young person is currently working at. Entries from Early level and beginning First Level will use understandably less complex vocabulary and language. Completed pieces can be sent into school whenever they are finished but by Friday 24th November at the very latest. If we have a good response, the School Parent Council has kindly agreed to help organise an after school event to display entries and plastic items in our very own Museum of the Future! It is hoped we can run this event in Term 3. So please do visit a beach and start your search!
P.S If you are on holiday in Cornwall you might even find a piece of lego! (check out the story on BBC Sounds ‘Lego Overboard.’)
We had two after school clubs today. Miss Aitchison and Mrs Cox were running netball for P4 and P5. They group were working on foot positioning, pivoting and spacing during a game.
Gladys from Dumfries hockey club also joined us with P6 and P7 today to develop some hockey skills. The children thoroughly enjoyed their session and can’t wait to play more games next week.
At our Ancient History After School Club on Tuesday 5th November, we welcomed along Andrew Nicholson, Archaeologist from Dumfries and Galloway Council. He explained, to the group, about the type of work he did and his role in advising when new planning applications come in, in case they affect any site history. He then showed the members of the club how to access three main websites which he uses every day in his work. We learned about how to search old maps, scheduled monuments and recorded historical artefacts and finds from particular places. It was really interesting. This meeting was the first after our visit to Tongland Abbey. Next week’s meeting will be with Erica Johnson who will talk to us about the Moyle Hill Fort.
Today, the breakfast club started, thanks to the super organisation of Mrs Dunlop. The club runs on Tuesdays and Wednesdays before school. The young people loved the range of food on offer (toast, cereal, fruit, yoghurts) and drinks (fruit juice.) The cost is 50p a day and takes place in the spare classroom- entry through the playground gate. Earliest arrival is 8.15 and latest is 8.30am. There were also games on offer so that the children could enjoy some social interaction too. Great fun! Mrs Dunlop is very grateful to all the helpers too.
On Saturday 28th September, the history club visited Tongland Abbey Excavation site. We learned lots of interesting things about the founding of the abbey by Alan, Lord of Galloway and his links to the Magna Carta signing in 1215. We now understand much more about how archaeological investigations take place. We are very grateful to Dr David Devereux and Mr Donald Henry for giving us tours of both the excavation site and the two later built parish churches. More detail about what we learned will be included in our published findings at the end of the year!
Well done to our Code Clubbers who applied their coding skills when exploring the BBC Micro:bit! Mrs Dyson loved the creativity demonstrated when Code Clubbers were creating their own programs.
On Monday 11th of March, 4 teams of P7 pupils from Dalbeattie Cluster participated in this years Rotary Quiz cluster heat. The teams all worked well together to answer questions about Literacy, Maths and Numeracy, Expressive Arts,Science and Technology,Scotland and Pot Luck. Teams were supported by members of Dalbeattie Rotary Club with Mr Cathro acting as Quiz Master for the event. The winning team from the cluster this year was Dalbeattie Primary who will now progress through to the next round within Dumfries and Galloway. Thank you to Dalbeattie Rotary Club.
Welcome to our returning Code Clubbers! Mrs Dyson was very impressed with the enthusiasm, perseverance, teamwork and coding skills demonstrated during our Code Club session on using the BBC micro:bit. Well done everyone! Already, Code Clubbers have had great success programming this handheld micro-computer. They have learned how to use the LEDs to make their own flashing heart badge. They have coded buttons on the micro:bit to show that it’s happy or sad. Mrs Dyson loved the creativity then shown by the group as they created their own codes and shared these. During the next session, Code Clubbers turned their micro:bits into dice and had great fun in our interactive game to catch Mrs Dyson with the highest roller moving one stride closer to her each time. They used their debugging skills when creating code for their game of ‘Rock Paper Scissors’. Attaching the micro:bit to a battery pack meant that Code Clubbers could shake their micro:bit and play this interactive game in another Code Club Challenge. Fantastic effort everyone!
On Thursday 24th January, our gymnasts took part in after school competition.
Recently, many of our gymnasts, who have been working hard all year, attending after school gymnastics clubs, took part in a regional competition (see previous blog post) so it was great to see all of our gymnasts compete in a school competition to which family were invited to watch. There were prizes awarded for regional level, school competition level and special awards for those showing most improvement.
Our thanks go to Mrs Duncan, Mrs Bradbury and Abigail Simpson who have given so much of their time to develop our young people’s gymnastic skills. We are also grateful to Mrs Bradbury, Abigail and Mr Drennan for being judges for the completion held in school and to Davie Stitt for presenting the awards.
