Kirkcolm Primary School

Today we had Robert in from the Scottish fire brigade to talk to the boys and girls from the older class about bonfire safety. The boys and girls learned about how to keep safe around fireworks and sparklers.Robert also talked about how dangerous it is to throw a firework and what to if you caught fire these are the three steps, STOP, DROP AND ROLL! He advised not to be in a big group of teenagers because you could end up getting a five thousand pound fine for throwing a firework and it injuring someone and then further into trouble, possibly could get a criminal conviction. Which means if you want a job such as a teacher even if you got good grades you can’t get the fob due to having a criminal conviction he said even the littlest things can get you in big trouble or worse. Next and lastly he mentioned about holding sparklers apparently a sparkler is fifteen times hotter than a kettle which normally can reach as hot as one hundred degrees.

By Ross & Paige – Digital leader Extraordinaires

In school we have been doing a lot of learning about sustainability. This term we have looked at the different forms of energy and what renewable energy sources we can use, as well as how to be more eco-friendly in our energy usage. After the holidays we will be focusing on learning for Sustainability and changes we can make now to ensure a greener future. 💚

A huge part of this is thinking of ways we can make our homes more sustainable and it just so happens that our lovely partnership village – Leswalt – is getting some lovely new sustainable houses built! 

McTaggart, the company in change of the site, were kind enough to invite us along to see all the ways they make the building of these homes more sustainable and WOW there are so many changes they have made to ensure this! 🏡

This ranged from the insulation used (not far away from polystyrene!) to the insulation fabric, to promoting biodiversity by building ponds to help water drainage… 🚿 The list goes on! It was remarkable for the pupils to see all the ways they site used recycled materials, in addition to the ways they made sure their own waste was properly recycled. ♻

Pupils then came back to Leswalt school to partake in some building of their own. Using make Do kits and recycled cardboard, some truly stunning home visions were created. There was quite the variety of interesting features… (missing roofs in some cases – great chances to allow natural light in!?) But overall, given the time constraints, the results were very impressive! 

This was a great opportunity to see their learning in a real life context, but also to bond with their peers at our partnership schools. A bit of social mixing before the upper primaries take on Edinburgh together! Here are some photos of the fun today… 

Meta Skills 

Curiosity carlos

Creativity Cassidy

Communicating cate

Collaborating Cora 

Focusing Fergus 

Articles

Article 6 – Life, Survival and Development

Article 17 – Access to Information 

Article 24 – Health, Water, Food & Environment 

Article 29 – Aims of Education 

Today P5-7 took part in the Restart a Heart ❤ Live lesson as part of the campaign for save A Life in Scotland! This was an opportunity for pupils to get some basic training in life saving CPR. Boys and girls learned about DR. ABC – the chain for saving a life in an emergency situation if someone collapses. 🩺

D – DANGER. Check your area for any dangers and make sure you’re safe. 

R – RESPONSE. Check your casualty for a response! 

A – AIRWAY. Make sure their airway is nice and clear by tilting their head backwards.

B – BREATHING. Use 3 senses, sound, sight and feeling, to see if they’re breathing normally.

C – CPR! If they aren’t breathing then it is time to deliver CPR to help save a life! 

Pupils practiced CPR with the cushions in the classroom, trying to make sure they had the correct form: hands clamped over one and other; shoulders and straight arms; on their knees. 

We are very proud of the boys and girls for how well they focused and engaged with this live lesson in developing these key life saving skills! 

Rory – “I learned CPR”

Cameron – ‘I know you need 120 beats to save them’ 

Fallon – “I figured what a defibrillator is and how to use one” 

Meta Skills 

Sense-Making Samira 

Leading Li 

Integrity Imani 

Initiative Ivy

Articles

Article 17 – Access to Information 

Article 24 – Health, Water, Food & Environment 

Article 29 – Aims of Education 

Article 39 – Recovery and Reintegration 

Today saw the start of a new Breakfast club at Kirkcolm Primary. 

This has been funded after a grant application to Bright starts.

It was the chance to start the day off with a snack, chat and play.  Continental breakfast was offered to all pupils, as well as some new board games to keep all occupied.

On the menu was toast, fruit, yoghurts, cereal and even a sneaky croissant to start us off. 🥐🥣🍌

Yum!

Meta Skills – Collaborating Cora, Communicating Cate
Article 27 – The right for children and young people should be able to have the food and housing they need to reach their full potential.

Wowowow – what a week we have had! This past week has been the annual Maths Week Scotland, so we have been celebrating all this MATHS related! The theme this year has been WILD MATHS so we have certainly tried to live up to it!

Monday

Kicking things off strong on Monday, the entire school went out this morning with Richard Patchett (our outdoor learning expert!) to make some catapults! After pupils worked diligently all weekend to collect some conkers (shout out to Ruby & Sally for the giant bag they brought it – our conker collecting queens!) we made some catapults and use these to launch some conkers onto our targets. We used our measure estimations to guess how far they went, as well as tallying up our scores! ☀

Tuesday

In the morning, P1-4 went outside once again for their numeracy work, they went outside and worked on their positional language and compass points! 🧭 P5-7 got stuck into some numeracy programming by taking on the maths Week Weather Monitoring challenge so we programmed our Microbits to measure various weather phenomenon! In the afternoon we got mums and dads involved in the maths fun! We had a parent open afternoon where mums and dads could come in and participate in some BIG Maths with their little ones, to see just what the pupils are up against! I think the boys and girls thoroughly loved seeing their loved ones undertake the timed Learn Its tests, as well as all the problems on their CLIC! 👨‍👨‍👦‍👦

Wednesday

Wednesday had P1-4 embarking outside once ore for their maths. They used the sunshine to help them link their math work with their science topic – looking at shadows! 🌞 They measure their shadows to compare them later to see how the sun moved across the sky! P5-7 spent their morning looking at sheep sales by exploring math ion the farm through RHET! 🐑 This was an intense morning trying to keep with very fast speaking sheep sales – wow! A new found appreciation for the amount of maths the farmers have to do! We finished it by linking numeracy with our RME and art topics and looking at Islamic patterns! 

Thursday

Another sunny day meant another day of taking our numeracy work outside for the day! P1-4 were working on capacity so went outside with Mrs Adams to do some measuring (in a safe environment where no carpets can get soaked!) while P5-7 looked at evidence of symmetry in nature before collecting loose parts to create their own symmetrical models on the floor! 🌊🍀🌿🍃

Friday

For fabulous Friday, we rounded off our Maths Week fun to a close. P1-4 did a capacity scavenger hunt outside with Miss Farquhar, searching for items which matched different weights! ⚖ P5-7, joined by their Leswalt friends, took part in the Save the Rhino Live Lesson which explored using numeracy with AI to stop poachers from attacking rhinos! 🦏

Meta Skills 

All of them! 

Articles

Article 28 – Access to Education 

Today, the Leswalt upper class popped over with Miss Douglas to join us for a morning of audio drama!? 🎧 Pupils in the upper classes across both schools had been signed up to take part in ‘The Impossible’ – an audio drama which focuses on resilience and flight, creating a vivid story using the pupils own imagination! 👩🏻‍✈️👨🏻‍✈️

Over the course of the term the boys and girls have been learning about the 4 forces of flight, famous aeronauts from the past and what exactly is in a flight deck of a plane!? They put this knowledge to work by creating their very own flight decks to take part in the audio drama, this gave them a space to experience the story from which helped to immerse them in the experience. 🧭 

They began the session using their senses of touch to explore some objects associated with flight and Amelia Earhart before letting their imagination run wild! The story taught them about the forces of flight and how a heroic girl overcame her own anxiety with coping mechanisms to conquer her fears! I am sure adults at home are going to be so impressed with the pupils hard work on their flight decks when they bring them home today and hear all about the story – The Impossible!

Meta Skills 

Creativity Cassidy

Collaborating Cora

Articles

Article 17 – Access to Information 

Article 29 – Aims of Education 

Article 31 – Rest, Arts, Play & Culture 

As part of our Eco plan, this week we participated in a live lesson based on Climate Action Week! During this lesson we learned when we actually found out that climate change existed! A mere 201 years ago – just before the industrial revolution started! We built on our knowledge and understanding on what greenhouse gases are and how they are linked with our planet getting hotter and hotter! 🥵

Upper class did their lesson on Tuesday and the younger class followed with theirs on Wednesday! Both classes did a couple of follow up activities on the changes we can make for a more climate friendly world! 🌍

Meta Skills 

Leading Li 

Curiosity Carlos 

Sense Making Samira 

Adapting Aleksander

Articles

Article 6 – Life, Survival and Development 

Article 24 – Health, Food, Water and Environment 

After a long day of travelling by car and train, I get to Edinburgh.   From the train station  Jack (someone who works at Children’s Parliament)  and I walked from Waverley train station to Edinburgh art college.

Once we get there, we waited for the rest of Children’s parliament to arrive. Once everyone arrived, we all went inside the college. We meet James (a worker from Edinburgh art college) and Bob and Roberta Smith or just Bob – the artist that I met.

We went in and did some introductions and then we began to paint. We all got a set of paint brushes, and we had to pick a partner (I partnered with Amber) and painted them. This was easy –  apart from the fact that we had to paint the base green.

After that we started to make our placards – big canvas sometimes put on sticks and used in protests. We all had to paint three and each one had to line up with one of the Children’s parliament issues – mental health,  bullying, vaping and climate crises education.

· The first placard had to have a background with lots of colours.

· The second placard had to have a scene; this could be a sunset, a storm or a mountain.

· The third placard had to have no background and just words and details on the front.

After three days of working on our placards, I came up with this.

· For the first placard I did a background that looked like the northern lights, with a slogan that said VAPES ARE VILE I added a vape with smoke and put a cross through the middle of it.

· For the second placard I did a mountain range with some light and dark clouds. I added snow to the top and the sun behind a cloud. Then my slogan was WE ALL MUST GROW.

· For my third placard I wrote THE 1 THE ONLY EARTH I added lots of detail and colour, and made it look wonderful.

I very much enjoyed my trip to Edinburgh and it was so fun to meet a professional artist.

Fallon P6