Kirkcolm Primary School

Our boys and girls put on their ornithologist hats this Friday to take part in this year’s Big School Bird Watch.  This fits with our Eco Schools action plan for biodiversity.

The children got stuck into some outdoor learning combined with data handling to monitor how many different birds visited our school grounds within an hour’s timeslot.  The children used tally charts to log the birds they saw.

This was a real exercise in the pupils abilities to be sneaky and silent as not to scare away the birds and I think we all came away really surprised at the variety we managed to spot on our own home turf! 

If you would like to take part in the Big Garden Watch 2023 which takes place between the  27- 29th of January, click on the link here to register.

Well as I am sure you all know, today is Burns Day! Pupils have been working hard since they came back to school and got their poems home to get memorising! Wow – some of them sure delivered. 

First we had our wave of beautiful handwritten poems with such diligent care and effort, and then the art was handed in and wow, once again I have been blown away by the artistic efforts of the pupils in this school! Finally, the poem recital came today as pupils said their poems to Burns expert, Mrs Buchanan and she made the final call on our winners! 

Winners are to be announced at the Burns Assembly at 2pm Friday afternoon so hope to see as many faces there as possible for some poetry efforts and singing!

The Burns lunch today was a roaring success once again, we had the wonderful Olivia as Master of Ceremonies and we all enjoyed our haggis, neeps and tatties as we enjoyed the wonderful toast the older pupils worked so hard on. Pupils from both classes got to practise their songs before their big debut on Friday to parents and family alike! 

Here are some photos of the events of the day: 

Today, after a couple of visits from Norval Dampney of Incredible Edible, the time finally came for the pupils to plant their fruit trees. Eco Committee with the help of Miss Whorlow have chosen the fruit trees they wish to plant in the orchard and chosen a fitting location for the orchard with the help and guidance of Mrs Richardson, and now they have successfully planted their fruit orchard!

They worked hard and got their graft on, they had a little help from Norval, Sue and Cliff from Incredible Edible and 2 kind gentlemen from the council, Chris and Kevin, came out to pre dig the wholes for them and lift the turf good to go! 

We learned all about the proper care of the fruit trees, how to plant them successfully so they will grow big and strong and the uses for the different fruits beyond helping to promote biodiversity in the school! It was a great hands on, muddy experience for the pupils and they loved every minute of it – from the caked shoes to the worms! 

We will see the Incredible Edible team again come Spring and they help us to learn how to care for our Orchard! 

Thanks to Miss Whorlow, we were very lucky to welcome in Scott and Belle in association with the Scottish Youth Film Festival, promoting all aspects of film making with the P6/7 pupils across all the schools in the trio!

We spent the first half of the day exploring the theory behind film making,. Pupils learned about different genres of films, the purpose of film in evoking different emotions in us and different roles in making a film! (editor, director, producer, film crew, animators, actors of course…) There are 3 core ‘C’s and ‘S’s in film;

Camera                                   Story

Characters                             Sound

Colour                                    Setting

The pupils had to put their senses to good use by listening to movie clip sounds and trying to place what could be happening – clues to the setting and explore the different emotions it made them feel. We also explored other film clips (famously Star Wars!) to see how these 6 aspects of film are put to use in this clip and their importance.

We look at character development, different shots you can get in film and put our knowledge to the test in a quiz at the end! This brought the theory part of the day to an end and then pupils proceeded to get stuck in…

Pupils split into different groups to undertake their own filming challenged. Using iMovie on the iPad’s, each group was given a word to try and evoke in their own short film. Pupils had to think of what kind of shot they would use for this and put together their film so others could guess their word! 

This gave them a great opportunity to get a bit more creative and hands on using iMovie to edit together different clips! Definitely something we will be using moving forward. 

We cannot thank Belle and Scott enough for making the long journey down to us to deliver this session with the pupils! Pupil’s already raved at the end about what a good time they had and it’s been a great chance to continue to develop their STEM skills and perhaps even promote a career in film making! We may have young Speilbergs with us yet…?!

Everyone dressed up in their festive finery this afternoon for our annual Christmas party. House Captains, James and Noah, had planned lots of fun games for everyone to enjoy including: musical arms, wrap the snowman, pass the present and Christmas corners. We had a wee pitstop half way through to refuel on juice and crisps, before we were off again!

A special visitor even made an appearance at the party – we didn’t know if he’d have time to stop by given how busy he is at Christmas, but our chorus of Jingle Bells seemed to catch his attention! Santa very kindly brought a present for everyone and chatted to the boys and girls about what they had asked him for, for Christmas.

We finished off our party with a best dancer competition, with Rory and Rebecca having the best moves!

As part of the schools ongoing promotion of transition and partnership working, the tiny tots of the nursery came down to visit P1-4 in class for a wee transition morning decorating cookies for Christmas.

Boys and girls got to see what is soon to become some of their new classroom next school year and spend some time with the lovely Miss Douglas and their peers! 

As you can see from the photos, it was a very successful afternoon with some excellent cookies to show for their efforts! Well done troops! 

How lucky were we to be invited along to get to see Leswalt’s Christmas performance in the Village Hall yesterday!

We all took the bus over, got to see their lovely new school and go along to their concert and WOW – what a spectacle of the hard work the staff and pupils have put in over there!

We thoroughly enjoyed ‘Who Took All the Loo Roll’ – the singing was top notch and the acting was fantastic! We are very much inspired now to take on the return of our own school show next term! 

What a roaring success our Reverse Advent Calendar was this year! Once again, the donations have been generous and the box got filled up very quickly ready to be collected today! 

Alison Graham who works for Apex, based in Stranraer, came in to speak to learners about all the good work Apex does in supporting people in these difficult times. Alison was able to highlight to pupils the importance that their generosity can bring to others and outline some of the other good work that Apex involve themselves in with supporting those of us in need. 

This was great as it really put it into context the entire reason we try to promote these things in school to the pupils and made them even prouder of their contributions! 

Here are some photos of Alison and our House Captains with a fairly heavy and very full box ready to go! 

The younger pupil’s Feis Ros input has come to an end (for this term anyway!)

Pupils have had 8 weeks of learning and singing songs in class, lead by the fab people of Feis Ros. Pupils got to have a bit of fun before we break up for Christmas by being treated to some live music and Ceilidh dancing! 

Thanks very much to Feis Ros for these inputs and we look forward to welcoming them back in the new term. 

A huge thank you to Stranraer Community Council for their generous gifts to the pupils here at Kirkcolm! Eyes lit up when they saw these giant chocolate bars and safe to say, there were no refusals! 

Thank you to Alan Jenkins for running these out to us!