Kirkcolm Primary School

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! 

Today we were happy to welcome Owain back into the upper school class for another installation of Christmas Unwrapped! This is a fab wee input for the pupils that looks into the Nativity story and explores all the information that might have been misconstrued over the years! 

This was a great hands on session for the pupils. They explored the Christmas story through a lot of active games and quizzes which has them working together and using their critical thinking skills. It culminated with a lovely art task in which pupils design their own Christmas tiles. 

We are very much loving being able to call the expert back in to help the pupils with their learning, and this has been yet another great example of it!

We were also very luck to have had our Christmas lunch today to get into the spirit of things but unfortunately through the insane haste of cracker pulling and turkey cutting, we didn’t manage to get any photos! Please forgive us – we will be better! 😳 We cannot thank Michelle enough for cooking up such a tasty feast and parents for the donations of crackers to pull – I am sure you will enjoy hearing those top jokes over the weekend!

The nursery pupils took to the stage this afternoon for their first Christmas performance to parents and family members since 2019, pre-covid! After taking to the stage and waving (and shouting!) at all the familiar faces in the audience, Nursery pupils sang some Christmas songs that they have been working hard to learn, aided by P5-7 pupils who narrated the Christmas story.

P1-4 and P5-7 then took turns to entertain everyone with their Christmas songs, with the performance culminating in a Christmas medley that the Nursery pupils joined in with.

It was a lovely afternoon and so nice to see everyone back in the building, sharing in the children’s achievements!

Pupils completed their final Sound Trap input of this session and wow – what a fantastic digital learning time it has been! Pupils have been developing their sound engineering skills with the guidance and help from Mr John Dinning and I, for one, am truly in awe of what they have produced. 

From music to this final sessions Podcast input – they have excelled themselves. They have learnt great teamworking skills and leadership qualities over these past few sessions and it was put to great use today! 

We cannot thank Mr Dinning enough for everything he has done with us over this past 4 weeks. We will certainly ensure to make as much use of these free accounts as we can and keep your eyes (and ears) peeled for our sessions making their way onto Spotify!  

Just  sneak peek of the pupils excellent Christmas Jumper efforts on Friday! 

While we didn’t use this as a fundraising opportunity in school this year since it was following on from the kindness already exhibited at the Coffee Morning – we thought you’d like to se a picture of them all sporting their Christmas cheer! 

Not long now! 

It’s back and it’s as amazing as ever! 

What a joy to welcome back our school fundraiser – The Kirkcolm Primary Christmas Coffee Morning. It has been 3 years since we have been able to host this event and finally we can fully open our doors back up to the wider community. What a roaring success it was too! 

There was amazing baking donated by the wonderful parents of the school, a wide variety of sweet treats up for grabs to whoever stopped in, along with a hot drink. Not to mention all the wonderful baking at the side that was up for sale for anyone to take home. 

We had our STEM room kitted out with numerous craft stalls from local sellers all over the community – it was amazing to see how a small village can have so much to offer and what a fab opportunity to support businesses that simply can’t get any more local. 

A new addition this year also seen a Santa’s Grotto being raised in the Library, with some of our own former pupils playing the roles of Santa’s helper elves. A great opportunity to get a family photo with he little ones. 

The school pupils worked hard in the run up to this. Both classes completed their enterprise projects, devising the crafts they were going to sell, going through the hard work of making them in the lead up and finally they got step up and sell their items to try and raise school funds. 

Pupils learned Christmas songs to perform, as is tradition, at the Coffee Morning so we had a fab rendition of Christmas Tunes from both classes as well as a medley of Christmas songs. We are very grateful to Gillian Wilson for her accompaniment on the keyboard for this – it gave that extra touch of sparkle! 

Finally, the day came to a close with a Christmas Raffle! Pupils and parents had done an excellent job selling things in preparation for this and finding prize donations! 

Overall, it was a wholly successful day, everybody was smiling, enjoying the home baked treats and enjoying being altogether again in one space. Hat’s off to the parent council for bringing this event back with a bang! Their hard work is amazing and so worth it when it pays off so well – with well over £1110 being raised at this one event!

Did you get a flyer through the post? Did you see a burgundy clad bunch trooping up your street this afternoon? Did you hear the laughter of pupils as they excitedly approach letter boxes?? 

Yes, that was indeed us! As part of our enterprise topic and with the upcoming Christmas Coffee Morning on Saturday, we decided we needed to make sure the word was out as much as possible and we raised awareness of our cute little fundraising event on Saturday!

Armed with leaflets designed by the class, we posted through the doors of the Kirkcolm locals in the hopes of try to inspire them to come along on Saturday morning from 10am-12pm to enjoy some Christmas cheer with us! 

So, if you are at a loss of something fun to fill your time and you’d like to hear the sound of Christmas spirit in carols, buy some cute handmade decor or simply indulge in some lovely baking? Please pop down to Kirkcolm primary on Saturday the 3rd of December! 

Our digital leaders from across our partnership held an online meeting via Teams today.  We came together to create a Christmas trivia quiz for pupils to enjoy.  This provided a theme for us to learn how to use Microsoft Forms.

Our leaders used our Higher Order Thinking Skills to work collaboratively on a shared ‘form’ online.  The children had to remember and understand how to access and design questions using the software. They also used their applying and creativity skills to select and insert appropriate images and themes to present the quiz in an appealing way for the user.  In addition, they had to analyse and evaluate the functionality of the quiz.  For example, they had to set up the software to automatically mark the quiz to give the user feedback and a game score for their results.

Why not click or scan here to play the quiz for yourself!

Danny commented, “I really liked doing that making a Christmas quiz. I would love to do more on it.  Havana said she enjoyed working with the leaders from Leswalt and Portpatrick.

Thank you to Alexander, Hamish, Danny, Havana, Cameron and Conor for working hard on this.

# Successful Learners