Category Archives: citizenship

Future Museum Collaborative Writing

Today, the whole school from P1 to P7 took part in a collaborative writing activity.  For the last hour of the day, the pupils moved around to be in mixed age groups. Each group was then assigned a piece of plastic, found on a  recent beach clean at Rockcliffe. The groups worked as teams to describe what the object looked like before moving on to the more imaginative part of the task – the children were asked to pretend they were  archaeologists living in the future, 200 years from now; they were to pretend they lived in times when plastic no longer is in use and also that they did not know what the object actually was.  This was a challenging task but there were some great ideas. For example, one group, who were given a purple bottle lid, decided that it could be a tiny bowl for a very small pet which had chewed its rim!  Another group described a polythene bag, with a ringed opening, as a moveable toilet for a pet on dog walks! A large traffic cone was imagined as a hat for special occasions, worn by a Giant called Big Foot. And, the pink felt lining from a training shoe was imagined as the tongue from a teddy bear….There were lots more ideas like this and folks will be able to see them all in our Future Museum event, to be held towards the end of term.  Watch this space for more information about this soon.

Not only was today’s activity a great opportunity for the children to work with new people of different ages, collaboratively, but it also gave our learners a new context in which to apply their prior learning and skills.  One teacher commented how impressed she was with how the pupils demonstrated such confidence with using the descriptive bubbles, as  taught through the Stephen Graham approach to writing. Well done all! And, of course, this activity built awareness about how much plastic ends up in our oceans and how long it can stay there, posing a real danger to wildlife.  An important environmental message was delivered to the whole school today, thanks to this partnership venture by Rotakids and the School Eco Group.

Kippford Lifeboat Poster Competition

2024 is the 200th anniversary of the existence of the RNLI. In recognition of this milestone event, Kippford Lifeboat Station will be running a competition for children to design a poster celebrating 200 years of saving lives at sea.

The competition will run until June. All completed entries must be received by Friday 28th June. The competition is open to any child. There will be three age categories with prizes for first, second and third in each category as follows – 3-4 years, 5-7 years and 8-11 years.

All entries must be A4 size. RNLI and 200 must appear somewhere on the design. Any medium can be used, e.g. pen, pencil, crayon, paint, collage as desired. The child’s name, age, school attended and parental contact number must be clearly displayed on the rear of the poster. Completed entries can be handed into the RNLI shop in Kippford or Dalbeattie Learning Campus for the attention of Mrs Howie.

The posters will be judged by members of the lifeboat crew and winners announced in early July. It is hoped that prizes can be presented to the winning entrants at the Kippford Station Open Day on 6th July.

 

Beach Clean at Rockcliffe Success

 

Thank you all who turned up to take part in our voluntary beach clean at Rockcliffe today.  The event was organised by the Rotakids Club in partnership with the Eco Group.  Thank you Dalbeattie Community Initiative for helping supply the equipment and to Mr and Mrs Cathro, our Rotakids coordinators. It was lovely to see so many of our pupils and their families come along in addition to Mrs Duncan and Mrs Stores, HT of Colvend and Kirkgunzeon. We now have quite a large box of varied plastic waste which will form the inspirations for some creative work for our ‘Future Museum’ later this term.

Global Goal 13 Climate Action

Global Goal 14 Life below water

Beach Clean this Sunday 21st April

 

This is a little reminder about the voluntary beach clean this Sunday 21st April 1pm-3pm at Rockcliffe. The event is organised by the Rotakids in partnership with the Eco Group. Thank you Dalbeattie Community Initiative for letting us borrow extra litter picking equipment. Any pupils attending should be accompanied by an adult. It is recommended that people park in the top car park and walk down to the beach because parking can be limited in the bay. No one needs to stay the entire event time. Folks can pop along for a short visit only and help us find some plastic. This will not only help the environment but will also help us in The Eco Group’s Future Museum idea, to be held later in the term,  which we will tell you more about later.

Beach Clean Sunday 21st April at Rockcliffe

Last week the Eco Committee gave a super presentation about their recent litter survey in the playground. They also highlighted an event this coming Sunday 21st April: Rotakids, in partnership with the school Eco group,  are organising a beach clean at Rockcliffe between 1pm and 3pm. Please do come along. No  one needs to stay for the entire two hours. Just pop along for however long you can stay, with an adult accompanying you, and help pick up some plastic. It is planned to bring the plastic finds back into school as a stimulus for some creative writing, later, for our Future Museum. This is an idea the Eco Committee had some time ago. Well done to those people  who undertook this activity in their own time. The plan is now to create some more exhibits for our ‘Future Museum’  with some collaborative writing in groups back in school using the bits of plastic we find on Sunday. More information on this is to follow later. Thank you Rotakids and Mr and Mrs Cathro for organising the event on Sunday. Thank you Dalbeattie Community Initiative for lending us extra litter pickers. Activities like this also help the Eco group to carry out their work and to complete activities towards their next 9th green flag application. It is recommended that people use the top car park at Rockcliffe and walk down to the beach where we will have equipment ready.

Fair Achiever School Award

Dalbeattie Primary is delighted to have been awarded, once more, Fair Achiever Status on 17th November. Over the last two years the School eco group has been involved in activities during Fairtrade Fortnight. This has included class learning and making chocolate and banana muffins with donations of ingredients from local shops (Castle Douglas Tesco, Dalbeattie Co-op and Spar) which helped us to fundraise for the Fairtrade Foundation. In 2023, we also had a successful community challenge which involved pupils searching for Fairtrade products in local shops. We were praised for this in our feedback to our recent application. Thanks go to Dalbeattie Co-op, Londis and Spar for facilitating this activity and to CD Tesco for donating prizes.  Being a Fair Achiever School, means we can attach the logo, being held here by the Eco Group in our photo, to our school headed paper. Going forward, The Eco group has now been tasked with going away to think about ways to do a similar community challenge, to talk about at our next meeting, so that we can plan for Fairtrade Fortnight 2024!

Children in Need

At Dalbeattie Primary we have raised approximately £380 for Children in Need and a further £150 for sponsoring a young person’s education in Malawi as our yearly pledge to the Janice Jamieson Memorial Foundation. Through the week
 we have been raising money with our spotty ball pit lucky dip and through having a non uniform day. 11 lucky winners won Pudsey prizes because their lucky ball numbers were picked from the hat. Well done the School Pupil Council  for organising this and working hard to co-ordinate the drawing of the ball numbers. Thank you all for your terrific support for these charities.

Children In Need Next Week

Children in Need

Next week is Children in Need Day (on Friday 17th)

The School Pupil Council would like to re-run the spotty ball lucky dip again for the chance to win one of an array of Pudsey prizes: a colour photo will also be uploaded on school blog page and on Facebook.

Please note this is this is a voluntary activity. There is no expectation for all children to participate as we are mindful of cost to families. (Last year the children brought in £1 per ball which they drew out of the ball pit to reveal their lucky numbers. Many children brought in money for multiple balls.)

Two separate activities are detailed further below*.

*LUCKY BALL PIT  DIP

This year, we would like to keep it a little more manageable. It will be £2 per ball and is limited to ONE ball only per child.   Please note, it is optional to participate.

Because we shall be carrying out ball pit lucky dips at lunchtimes, we really need your child to bring his/her donation in an envelope clearly labelled with name and class. Envelopes will be collected in first thing on each of the three mornings. We want to avoid money getting lost between 9am and lunchtime.

Ball pit lucky dips will be on set days as follows:

P7, P6/7, P6 and P5 classes will be on Wednesday 15th November at lunchtime

P4/5, P4, P3 and P2/3 will be on Thursday 16th November at lunchtime

P1/2 and P1 will be on Friday 17th November at lunchtime

Please can your child only bring his/her £2 ball lucky dip money on the correct day. Numbers will be drawn from the hat at Friday’s assembly to decide the winners. Thank you!

*NON UNIFORM DAY FRIDAY 17TH

On Friday 17th November it is actual Children in Need Day. On this day, we shall not be doing any extra activities but the children would like to have a non uniform day (wearing something bright or yellow or spotty if possible.) Suggested donations of £1 per child can be brought in on this day. Any money collected for the non uniform event will be shared equally between Children in Need and The Janice Jamieson Foundation Trust to sponsor a young person’s education in Malawi. Thank you for your support!