Kirkcolm Primary School

It’s been a whole week back already – can’t quite believe it! 

We are all missing the faces of the kids dearly but it’s been great to see what they have been up through all the photos pupils and parents are sending in – we love seeing all the happy faces hard at work and sharing their learning with us. 

Part of the online learning that was sent out was an art task by the lovely Mrs Copeland – she challenged pupils to get creative and make some Rainbows using any kind of medium they could find around the home and all of them have been absolutely fantastic. There has been such a wide variety and you could tell that every pupil has put their best effort in and I am delighted to share with you the fruit of their labours. 

Well done Boys and Girls – these Rainbows keep us all smiling! 

Stay Safe and look after each other!

So for the past 2 weeks we have all been on quite the journey! Teachers had to cope with not having their pupils in front of them, pupils had to cope with not coming into school and parents had to cope with under taking a new profession in a matter of minutes – Teaching! 

It’s been a bit of a crazy journey for us all but we here at Kirkcolm have been doing what we always do, taking it on the chin and getting on with it! There has been some exceptional hard work done by all these past 2 weeks and it really shows that in times of crisis we can all come together and do our best and even though we are all still finding our feet with this remote learning business, the results so far have been tremendous. 

This is just a wee blog post to show all of those part of the Kirkcolm School community and friends and families the hard work we have been achieving in some select photos and videos our pupils and parents have kindly shared with us. 

Hope you enjoy having a peek and all fingers crossed we will all be reunited and back to our original jobs and routines sooner rather than later. 

Hope everyone is staying safe and well!

-Your Kirkcolm Teacher Team 

Given everything going on in the world at the moment and the anticipated closure of schools, we here at Kirkcolm were very sad to be closing our doors to the wonderful students who make us laugh, smile, confuse us and every other emotion you can imagine on a daily basis!

We thought it only fitting we should go out for a bang and the pupils and teachers banded together determined that, despite factors outwith our control, we WOULD be putting on our school show – we had worked far too hard for too long to let it amount to nothing. So a couple weeks short of some practises, a whole lot of last minute costume decisions (Can’t thank Jemima Johnstone enough for managing to get everything from the drama club for us!) some panic moments and some ‘die laughing’ moments… We. Got. There.

So on Friday the 20th of March all of us Kirkcolm pupils, teachers and parents banded together to go out with a BANG  for the untimely end this term came to! I think we can all agree whole-heartedly that every single pupil gave it their best, tried their hardest to memorise all these lines and songs and put on a fantastic show for us all to enjoy!

I am so proud of the work our school has put in and the pupils really are the gems of it all. It was a fantastic end to this terms and I think we are all very excited for the day we get to come together again.

Thank you once again for all the help from parents during these hectic times and for coming it to see our kids shine! If you couldn’t make it to the performance – here are some shots of the day which I hope show you how special it was;

Here is a handy and easy to follow guide to allow pupils to access their GLOW Accounts and Microsoft Teams at home.

Pupils just need to search ‘Glow Scotland’ in their search engine to find the right login page which should look something like this;

Older pupils are aware of how to login and have done this repeatedly – passwords are well known and those who struggle have made note of them in their homework diary. Younger pupils may be more unfamiliar but have their GLOW username and passwords noted in their homework diaries.

Once in GLOW older pupils do have a Microsoft Teams account set up and this can be accessed using the tile on their GLOW homepage which looks like this;

Pupils can then go on to select the appropriate team. P5-7’s team tile looks like this;

Once in teams there are a variety of different options;

You can;

View messages from myself in the general forum – these could lead be to links and will be a primary form of communication with pupils.  

View any files uploaded by me.

View any assignments. 

Hope this helps – do not hesitate to contact the school or myself through the Class Dojo messenger if you have any questions about how this works! 🙂

Our library monitors, Taylor and Lydia, worked very hard to organise a real life ‘Where’s Wally Treasure Hunt’ around the school as part of our World Book Day celebrations. All pupils who got the answers correct were put into a prize draw. Two names were picked out, one for each class, and the winners were…. Alfie in P1-4 and Scott in P5-7!! Both boys received extra World Book Day tokens so they can purchase some free books (or put the tokens towards a more expensive book in WHSmith) and got to choose a book to take home as a prize. Have a peek below at our worthy winners who were very chuffed with themselves!

Today Kirkcolm Primary swung open its doors to invite in the lovely parents of our pupils to participate in our Science activities in celebration of British Science Week! This was a great opportunity to promote Science in the school and we did this through a variety of activities throughout the school – some had a STEM feel to them and encouraged the pupils (and parents) to think hard, problem solve and theorise. 

The activities available were; 

• The Code and Go Mouse (can you guild him through a maze you designed?)
• A look at www.sciencekids.co.nz – where the kids were able to explore some science based games that they could also access at home should they be so keen to expand their knowledge!
• An engineering challenge to build something creative using any of the materials laid out.
• The classic egg drop – who can protect their egg the best and save it from a fall!?
• Looking at sound and vibration using cups and string (I’m still amazed by this one!)

We all had a fantastic time rotating around the stations, we got to flex our science muscles as we thought hard about what we were doing and we even got to see how fantastically we all work together in our wee school

Many thanks to all the parents/grans etc. who came in to help out with the pupils and to those who weren’t able to make it I hope you get a good feel for the day and see what your little one was up to through the photos! 

Some of our p7 pupils from Kirkcolm welcomed Findlay from Portpatrick  to form a partnership curling team to take part in the inter school end of season tournament on Monday 6th March. 

 Scott from Kirkcolm has been going along to the after school curling club with Findlay in the North West Castle. 

In the first game they drew with Rephad and then went on to be beaten by Sheuchan.  Findlay played a great last stone in the final end to claw back a one.

It was  a great experience for them all and allowed the Primary 7 pupils to get to know each other a bit more, prior to moving on to Stranraer Academy.

Many thanks must go to Nancy Kirkpatrick for transporting and supervising the team, and sharing some photographs.

What a super busy day we’ve had celebrating World Book Day at Kirkcolm! Our library monitors, Lydia and Taylor, organised a real life ‘Where’s Wally’ treasure hunt around the school by hiding 5 characters in the building and pupils took it in turns to find them. All pupils who got the answers correct were entered into a prize draw and 1 name pulled out for each class – the winners will be announced at assembly next week. The library monitors also held a book sale in the hall, selling books for 20p each. Almost every pupil in the school went home with a new book to enjoy reading!

In class, pupils were given the challenge of logging into their new myON account to explore it, read a book and take a quiz. P5-7 pupils also brought in their favourite book and wrote a book review for it, trying to encourage other pupils to also read their book. Primary 7 pupils spent some of the morning with the Nursery boys and girls for a bit of paired reading in the library.

All pupils will come home tonight with a sticker and a £1 book token – they can use this to purchase a £1 book from WHSmith or put it towards the price of another book they wish to buy.

Today Kirkcolm primary was lucky enough to open its hall up to 4Front theatre in partnership with Scripture Union for a lively and engaging performance of The Fisherman’s Tail for all of our lovely pupils.

The boys and girls (joined both by nursery and all the partnership boys and girls from Leswalt) enjoyed a full hour of entertainment in the form of a lively play which told the story of Jesus of Nazareth from the perspective of his disciples who gave us their lives as fisherman to follow him. It went into detail of how Jesus gathered followers and performed miracles, all the way up to his crucification.

The story was told through a lot of very funny scenes with a lot of tongue in cheek humour and lively catchy songs that had all the kids clapping along and the toes tapping!

Today, as part of of a wider initiative to help young people become internet savvy and stay safe online. P5-7 took part in celebrating Internet Safety Day and engaging with tasks that make us think carefully about how we act online!

This years focus was on identity so we looked at what makes up our identity and how it can change and shift over time. We related this back to our internet identities and how the internet gives us the freedom to explore our identities and interests – but we have to make sure we do so safely!

We had a great time trying to guess peoples identities based on what they do online and had a good chat about how we can stay safe and what to do if we encounter other internet identities which may not be so nice!

Overall, P5-7 are pretty tech savvy and are positive they will be staying safe online!