Kirkcolm Primary School

After a quick stop at Leswalt to collect their P4-7 pupils, Kirkcolm P5-7 boys and girls headed into town on Friday morning to visit the Community Reuse Shop. This links nicely with our continued Eco Schools work, to help achieve our next Green Flag!

We were met by Wilma and Cathy from the Reuse Shop, who explained about the purpose of the shop and showed us around the building. After donning our stylish hi-vis vests, we explored outside and saw where the drop-off point is for donating items; the new shop which only opened in July this year and sells unwanted garden and DIY items; and where the vans come and go to either drop off large items, or pick up large items to deliver them to people’s houses. Next, we went to see inside the warehouse where items are sorted after being dropped off – Rory spied a playstation controller and spent the next 10 minutes scanning the room to see if there was a playstation for sale!! Unfortunately for him, there wasn’t! Pupils were surprised by the mountain of clothes and books being sorted by the workers and volunteers. We learned that the shop gets money for books and clothes that can’t be resold but are recycled.

Finally, we had a look around the main Reuse Shop and saw the various items that are sold – from beds and wardrobes, to irons and TVs, to clothing and books. There was loads on offer! Mrs Kyle from Leswalt even bagged herself a nice wee basket!

The ladies were very kind and allowed each of our pupils to select 1 book from the shop to take home with them – which pupils were delighted with! The Teachers all found a maths textbook each to take back to school to pad out our learning resources!

Huge thanks to Cathy and Wilma for their time today! We are excited to welcome Cathy to Kirkcolm Primary after the October break, for a craft session using recycled materials. Have a keek below to see some pictures from the morning –

Our upper class have been exploring the colour wheel and different artistic mediums this term as part of their art topic. We’ve already experimented with colour collages and watercolours, but this week we called in a local artist and colour expert, Diana and her assistant Tia from Stranraer Millenium Centre Our colourful creations are destined for a much bigger stage than the classroom! 🎨 🖌️🏳️‍🌈

Diana introduced us to the work of famous artist Wassily Kandinsky and his famous expressive circles. We talked about the different colours and tones he used and how colours can make us feel different emotions – by this point the room was completely full of excitement! Equipped with a sheet of black plastic and plenty of acrylic paint we were tasked with the job of creating a piece of art that represented us! While some of us went down the more abstract route with different shapes and even a camel others went more literal with a portrait, once we had finished were all pleased with the masterpieces in front os us! (P.S. apologies to parents if any child went home looking more colourful than usual)💥🌈

Since our colourful creations are destined for a much bigger audience our artwork will join a community-art project at the Millennium Centre car park, where it will be displayed for everyone to enjoy.  

A huge thank you to both Diana and Tia for this time and all the fun had this afternoon – please have a wee keek at their poster detailing things that they do! 

Meta Skills
Creativity Cassidy
Collaborating Cora
Feeling Felix 

UNCRC Articles:
Article 31 – Right to rest, play and take part in cultural and artistic activities
Article 13 – Freedom of expression

Today the whole school got stuck into an important (and potentially life-saving) lesson as we took part in ‘Restart a Heart’, aimed at encouraging as many people as possible to learn the basics of CPR.

With our bags and cushioned in front of us we got to grips with the all-important 3 Cs:
Check, Call and CPR.  ❤️📞

First up was CHECK: make sure the area is safe, then gently shake the person’s shoulders and check whether they respond.

Next comes CALL: dial 999, put the phone on speaker and get help on the way, we all kmow that there will always be someone available to take our call!

Then it’s time for CPR. We learned how to check whether someone is breathing by watching their chest and feeling for their breath. If they aren’t breathing normally, it’s time to start chest compressions. We practised placing our hands in the centre of the chest and pushing down firmly and quickly. And how did we know how fast to push? With the help of an unlikely medical instructor… Baby Shark! 🦈 The song gave us a catchy rhythm to follow and helped us practise keeping the correct pace. Who knew a song about a baby shark could be so useful? We’ll not forget that anytime soon!! 

We learned about the defibrillator , and although nobody could say such a tongue twisting word we all know that these are safe pieces of medical equipment that can be used by anyone in case of emergency!  Our closest defibrillator is located at Kirkcolm Hub. 

Meta Skills:
Initiative Ivy
Focusing Fergus
Adapting SAleksander
Sense Making Samira

UNCRC Articles:

Article 6 – Life, survival and development: Every child has the right to life and to develop to their full potential. 

Article 24 – Health: Children have the right to the best possible health and to access health care. 

At the start of the term, all pupils were given the opportunity to develop their skills for life, learning and work by filling in job applications for the various pupil voice groups that are on offer at school. We spent some time at assembly learning about the role of each of the different groups so that pupils could consider what they’d be interested in applying for – Pupil Council, Eco Committee, Monitor jobs, Digital Leaders or House Captains. The purpose of these groups is to promote pupil voice, so that pupils have a say in how to make our school even better and so that they know their ideas are listened to and can have an impact.

Having gone digital with all our applications this year – the turn out was superb! Nearly every pupil in the school applied for a post! It was a very difficult decision, but our new group reps have now been chosen. Have a keek below at all the smiley face who will make our school sparkle and shine even more!

House Captains – Paige (Loch Connell) & Callum (Corsewall)

Pupil Council – Blake (P2), Jamie (P3), Harlow (P4), Ewan (P5), Ross (P6), Harrison (P6) & Bryleigh (P7)

Eco Committee – Tom & Aila (P2), Parker (P4), Henry & Scott (P5), Rory (P6), Rebecca (P7)

Digital Leaders – Fallon & Emilie (and Ross as Digital ‘Club Leader’)

This Maths Week Scotland, we have been exploring the theme Maths Matters! We have been having lots of fun with maths through games, activities and even real life challenges! We have discovered how important maths is in our everyday lives and how we use it without even realising it It has been a fantastic week of learning, problem-solving and showing that Maths Matters in both classes! 🔢⏲️✏️📚📅📊

P2-4
In the infant class have enjoyed some fun outdoors this week working on their current ‘measure’ topic, we were using lots of different equipment to measure things in our playground like the length of the pitch, the height of the door and the diameter of the basket swing! We used trundle-wheels, metre sticks, measuring tapes and rulers to try and get our measurements as close to our estimations as possible! 

After working on measuring distance, the next step for us was to have a go at weighing, and what better way to learn to read scales and use baking equipment than with some baking! Together with Mrs MacPherson, we made delicious Fifteens, carefully measuring our ingredients and following the recipe step by step. There were lots of busy hands, big smiles and, of course, a little bit of sneaky taste-testing along the way! 🍰🥄

After our baking we hit up ASDA and Tesco (virtually) to calculate the cost of the ingredients! Mrs Baillie had order us some ingredients in the ASDA order while Mrs Adams had been shopping at Tesco. Just like Martin Lewis himself we did a price comparison, adding up the costs of the items before coming to the conclusion that Tesco was £1.24 cheaper overall! 💰

As well as this we have been exploring Scottish food through our farm to fork topic, we were exploring the price of foods produced in the UK compared to abroad. We worked out that most of the time foods produced in Scotland are cheaper for us in this country to buy (as well as the added bonus of supporting our local farmers!!)

P5-7 

The upper class kick started their maths week with a little live lesson on Monday morning which explained the importance of maths in our everyday lives and how it permeates in everything and anything that we do! 🖥️

The upper class have been busy week, getting their creative juices flowing while designing a mascot fit to enter into the Maths Week Scotland mascot competition! There were some amazing ideas including a cat (missed a trick if you didn’t call it a CATcuator), a dragon (whose maths was as hot as its fire breathing abilities) and many more imaginative designs that I am sure will wow the judges!

As budgeting is P5-7s current Maths topic Mrs Baillie challenged them to the task of doing the breakfast club order with a maximum spend of £60. With this tight budget they got to work trolling the ASDA website on the hunt for the best deals to test whether they really do live up to  the motto.. IT’S ASDA PRICE! With a quickly dwindling sum of money big decisions were made, shopping lists were brutally slashed of many of the more luxury brands and replaced with the Just Essentials range! Even after learning the importance of supporting fair trade farmers,  they learned that sometimes financial limitations mean this is simply not possible! 🥝🍌🍎🍞

On Thursday afternoon we welcomed in parents and family members to show off our fabulous maths skills and learn about how they use maths in the everyday lives. We started off in the hall with a little speed-dating rotation where the boys and girls asked some of their pre-prepared questions to highlight just how important maths is both in school and beyond, in later life! We then moved through to the classrooms to show off oir

On Tuesday the four digital leaders (Fallon and Emilie from Kirkcolm and Olivia and Hannah from Leswalt) met at Kirkcolm Primary to learn everything to be a wonderful digital leader. We learnt about emails, Microsoft functions and other digital applications!

So now Kirkcolm has two fully trained digital leaders!