Kirkcolm Primary School

A huge congratulations and well done to Paige Neill and Arran Farquhar who both managed to secure second place in the Active Schools Badminton competition! Paige and Arran have regularly been attending the club with Alison and have been training up their skills in the sport to smash it this week! 

A huge well done to all pupils who went and took part – it is a fab sport and a great opportunity to meet pupils from other schools! Paige came second in the P6 girls on Tuesday and Arran came second in the P7 boys on Wednesday. Here are the sporty bunch with their medals! 🏸🥈🥈

Meta Skills 

Integrity Imani 

Focusing Fergus

Articles

Article 31 – Rest, Play & Culture 

Today we welcomed the lovely gentlemen from The Rotary Club to do some gardening with us! The Rotary Club has been working their way around all the schools in the local area to plant some purple crocuses in the playgrounds to bloom come March! This initiative has come about due to polio rates rising in warn torn countries and see a re-emersion of the illness which we have done so well in the past to wipe out.

Pupils had a wonderful time planting with the gentlemen all around the front of the school to help brighten up the grounds come Summer! This raises awareness for others and symbolises the global mission to eradicate polio by promoting vaccinations! We also learned that when vaccinations were given out, boys and girls got toys for their participation, so they used to get them to dip their fingers into purple dye to avoid double vaccinations! 💉

A fab way to spend an afternoon for a fab cause and some great chat (and sweeties…) Huge thank you to the Rotary Club to allowing us to participate with them and guiding the planting! 🌺🪻🌷

Meta Skills 

Collaborating Cora 

Integrity Imani 

Focusing Fergus

Articles

Article 13 – Freedom of Expression

Article 15 – Freedom of Association 

Article 24 – Health and Environment 

Article 31 – Rest, Play & Culture 

Today we were lucky enough to invite Frances Ross in, a clay artist, who is experienced in working with clay to deliver the FLOCK workshop to the upper class. 

This is the second year the Flock workshop has run, it is an opportunity for pupils to learn about the art of clay! Frances was able to tell the pupils all about the origins of clay and the many wide uses it has in today (e.g. our straighteners, our brakes on our cars…) 

Pupils had the chance to have a practice run with the clay making their first ‘pinch pot’ and turning it into strange looking monsters that they were able to take home (unfortunately the schools supplies do not extend to a Kiln and nobodies oven can reach 1000 degrees plus so these were not set for life and would dissolve back to nature eventually…) 

We then moved onto putting the skills to use to form a bird shell which took shape of a beak and tail feathers at either end. Pupils did a fantastic job at this – they listened so well and were able to apply their skills with ease! 

Finally, after establishing their bird shapes, they added some colour to their birds to finish them off! Frances then took these away with her to fire in a Kiln and all the bird sculptures from pupils collected over both this school year and previous were going to form an exhibition in Dumfries and Galloway where they can be viewed by many people! 

This was a great opportunity for pupils to explore a new skill and they seemed to really enjoy it! 

Meta Skills 

Creativity Cassidy

Curiosity Carlos

Focusing Fergus

Articles

Article 13 – Freedom of Expression

Article 24 – Food, Environment and Water 

Article 31 – Rest, Play & Culture 

This morning all of Kirkcolm Primary school once again boarded a bus (we have been busy wee bees this week! 🐝) and headed into town to the Millenium Centre! 

We were invited along to participate in a Pantomime put on by a Glasgow Company with their rendition of The Wizard of Oz! It was a fantastic modern take on the Wizard of Oz with musical numbers and a cracking modernised cast of Dorothy, the tin man, the cowardly lion and scarecrow! 🦁

Pupils really enjoyed themselves – and so did the staff – we were all particularly amused by Glinda the good witch with a very sassy edge! 🩷

A lovely treat to end the week with!

‘It was very funny!’ – Bryleigh 

Meta Skills 

Focusing Fergus

Articles

Article 31 – Rest, Play & Culture 

Today all the Primary 3-5’s were invited to Sheuchan Primary to attend an author event from David C Flanagan as part of the Big DoG Schools tour organised by Wigtown Festival Company and supported by The Foyle Foundation.

David is a Scottish author, raised in Edinburgh and living in Orkney, who made the special trip down to Dumfries and Galloway to introduce himself and his books. He is both an adult and children’s author, best known for his ‘Captain Pete’ series of children’s stories. Today David introduced us to his book ‘Captain Pete and the Undersea Adventure’; a story of Pete and his mouse TM. 🐭 We loved listening to David’s hilarious accents as he read us Chapter 1 of his book.📖🦉

A great session which really got the creative juices flowing – some freshly inspired authors -to-be after today!? Who knows!✏️

Meta Skills 

Today has not been the average Wednesday for the Kirkcolm primary bunch – we’ve been a busy wee bunch today! The day kicked off as normal with some learning in the morning but then at 10:30, we boarded a bus into town with our friends from Leswalt to start the adventure! 🚌

Mrs Adams, as part of Book Week Scotland, arranged for a visit to the local library. The library were kind enough to accommodate us for an hour and a half during a very VERY rainy day where we took part in book related scavenger hunts but really it was just an excellent opportunity to see everything the library had on offer! Pupils enjoyed the comfy chairs, the Lego sets and connect four as well as just cosying up with some of the books of offer! 📖 📚

This was fantastic as it really seemed to inspire some of the boys and girls to make better use of the library system that’s on offer! Many of the boys and girls (…and myself…) did not realise what cosy and welcoming space it was! A great win and hopefully as increased use of our local facilities. 🙌🏼

We enjoyed our packed lunches then braved the wet and wild walk to the Ryan Centre cinema to watch ‘The Wild Robot,’ a movie about Roz, a shipwrecked robot who ends up stranded on a remote island🤖.

A super way to spend a rainy day! ☔️😁

Meta Skills

Curiosity Carlos

Communicating Cate

UNCRC Articles

Article 31 – Rest, play, culture and arts

Article 29 – Aims of education

Article 17 – Access to information

Today the upper class form Leswalt popped over for the morning to engage in some learning! Together the schools banded together to take part in a Smart Stem learning about how we can use technology to enhance and help dairy farming. 🐮🥛

Pupils learned a variety of different facts about cows and dairy farming (some of them already very knowledgeable in these matters…) as well as learning how technology is already being used to help farmers complete their job more efficiently with less stress. 

Once this was done, they split off into individuals, pairs or small groups to design their own Smart Stem to be used on a farm – which will then be entered into a competition to have them STEM dream come to life in a 3D printed model! 

Huge thank you to Donna for coming out to see us this morning all the way from Glasgow – it was a great input and always such a wonderful experience to unite the schools! ❤️

We had time to fill at the end so we participated in a Book Week Scotland Quiz made by the very talented Miss Douglas – which even had the adults (me!) raking our brains. 📚🧠

Meta Skills 

Leading Li 

Creativity Cassidy 

Curiosity Carlos 

Collaborating Cora

Communicating Cate 

Focusing Fergus

Articles

Article 24 – Food, Environment and Water 

Article 31 – Rest, Play & Culture 

Today the whole school joined together in a celebration of Book Week Scotland this week to partake in some paired reading. P1-4 pupils preselected their books and read a long with the upper school pupils. This was a great opportunity to link the classes and have them all working together, but also to promote the joy of reading to all the pupils. 📚

The older ones were able to revisit some old favourites of theirs from many moons ago, while the younger pupils got support and the joy of being read to! Everyone was very focussed on the literature at hand and they all worked together beautifully!

Next week – as a continued celebration of Book Week – we will be popping along to the local library in Stranraer on Wednesday to engage in some activities and explore all the books on offer to them! On Thursday, P3-5 will be going to the Sheuchan for a BIG DOG Author visit… 

Meta Skills 

Collaborating Cora

Communicating Cate 

Focusing Fergus

Articles

Article 31 – Rest, Play & Culture 

The first day I spent travelling to join all the others in Edinburgh. I arrived in Edinburgh after my train from Glasgow Queen street and we got to the house. We unpacked and had dinner then went to bed.

The second day was a prep day. We went to a workplace and began to prepare. Eva and I were working on Climate Crisis Education, and we prepped for a while. We made a life cycle and practised our speech.  Later in the day we changed it a bit.

Then we went back to the house and had dinner. We then had a few more run throughs with the presentation and questions a few times and finished for the night and went to bed.

The third day we got up early and packed up all the resources and our bags into four big taxis – Kati Katie and I were in one. We drove to Saint Andrews house and unpacked and went into our room and set up.

We went to meet the Scottish Youth Parliament and played a dice game where we rolled the dice and whatever number it landed on, we had to answer the question corresponding to the number.

Once we finished that the Scottish Government ministers started to arrive.  John Swinney the first minister was there.  I had the job of greeting them all and giving them an agenda. Then we went through to our room for one final practise while the Scottish Youth Parliament said their presentation to the ministers.

Then they all  came through to see us, and we said our presentations and had our discussion with our ministers – Angus Robinson and Fiona Hyslop to name a few.  I thought it went really well.

 We took some pictures and had lunch and then we got to the train station and got on the train to head back home.

Fallon Farquhar Primary 6

On Wednesday our digital leaders went to Leswalt to learn some skills they may need for their role as digital leader they learned how to use  websites and how to use AI safely  and appropriately, Ross said this was a good idea because it can help us make worksheets and make a good planner. The Kirkcolm digital leaders expressed that there ICT club was going well and that they are about to change it to P4. Ross & Paige also learned about tools on there emails checking recipients carefully within glow, they also looked at the glow library and learned how to add apps, The digital leaders are now contributors to the school blog so they learned how to use that too!