Kirkcolm Primary School

Wowowow – what a week we have had! This past week has been the annual Maths Week Scotland, so we have been celebrating all this MATHS related! The theme this year has been WILD MATHS so we have certainly tried to live up to it!

Monday

Kicking things off strong on Monday, the entire school went out this morning with Richard Patchett (our outdoor learning expert!) to make some catapults! After pupils worked diligently all weekend to collect some conkers (shout out to Ruby & Sally for the giant bag they brought it – our conker collecting queens!) we made some catapults and use these to launch some conkers onto our targets. We used our measure estimations to guess how far they went, as well as tallying up our scores! ☀

Tuesday

In the morning, P1-4 went outside once again for their numeracy work, they went outside and worked on their positional language and compass points! 🧭 P5-7 got stuck into some numeracy programming by taking on the maths Week Weather Monitoring challenge so we programmed our Microbits to measure various weather phenomenon! In the afternoon we got mums and dads involved in the maths fun! We had a parent open afternoon where mums and dads could come in and participate in some BIG Maths with their little ones, to see just what the pupils are up against! I think the boys and girls thoroughly loved seeing their loved ones undertake the timed Learn Its tests, as well as all the problems on their CLIC! 👨‍👨‍👦‍👦

Wednesday

Wednesday had P1-4 embarking outside once ore for their maths. They used the sunshine to help them link their math work with their science topic – looking at shadows! 🌞 They measure their shadows to compare them later to see how the sun moved across the sky! P5-7 spent their morning looking at sheep sales by exploring math ion the farm through RHET! 🐑 This was an intense morning trying to keep with very fast speaking sheep sales – wow! A new found appreciation for the amount of maths the farmers have to do! We finished it by linking numeracy with our RME and art topics and looking at Islamic patterns! 

Thursday

Another sunny day meant another day of taking our numeracy work outside for the day! P1-4 were working on capacity so went outside with Mrs Adams to do some measuring (in a safe environment where no carpets can get soaked!) while P5-7 looked at evidence of symmetry in nature before collecting loose parts to create their own symmetrical models on the floor! 🌊🍀🌿🍃

Friday

For fabulous Friday, we rounded off our Maths Week fun to a close. P1-4 did a capacity scavenger hunt outside with Miss Farquhar, searching for items which matched different weights! ⚖ P5-7, joined by their Leswalt friends, took part in the Save the Rhino Live Lesson which explored using numeracy with AI to stop poachers from attacking rhinos! 🦏

Meta Skills 

All of them! 

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Article 28 – Access to Education 

Today, the Leswalt upper class popped over with Miss Douglas to join us for a morning of audio drama!? 🎧 Pupils in the upper classes across both schools had been signed up to take part in ‘The Impossible’ – an audio drama which focuses on resilience and flight, creating a vivid story using the pupils own imagination! 👩🏻‍✈️👨🏻‍✈️

Over the course of the term the boys and girls have been learning about the 4 forces of flight, famous aeronauts from the past and what exactly is in a flight deck of a plane!? They put this knowledge to work by creating their very own flight decks to take part in the audio drama, this gave them a space to experience the story from which helped to immerse them in the experience. 🧭 

They began the session using their senses of touch to explore some objects associated with flight and Amelia Earhart before letting their imagination run wild! The story taught them about the forces of flight and how a heroic girl overcame her own anxiety with coping mechanisms to conquer her fears! I am sure adults at home are going to be so impressed with the pupils hard work on their flight decks when they bring them home today and hear all about the story – The Impossible!

Meta Skills 

Creativity Cassidy

Collaborating Cora

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Article 17 – Access to Information 

Article 29 – Aims of Education 

Article 31 – Rest, Arts, Play & Culture 

As part of our Eco plan, this week we participated in a live lesson based on Climate Action Week! During this lesson we learned when we actually found out that climate change existed! A mere 201 years ago – just before the industrial revolution started! We built on our knowledge and understanding on what greenhouse gases are and how they are linked with our planet getting hotter and hotter! 🥵

Upper class did their lesson on Tuesday and the younger class followed with theirs on Wednesday! Both classes did a couple of follow up activities on the changes we can make for a more climate friendly world! 🌍

Meta Skills 

Leading Li 

Curiosity Carlos 

Sense Making Samira 

Adapting Aleksander

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Article 6 – Life, Survival and Development 

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After a long day of travelling by car and train, I get to Edinburgh.   From the train station  Jack (someone who works at Children’s Parliament)  and I walked from Waverley train station to Edinburgh art college.

Once we get there, we waited for the rest of Children’s parliament to arrive. Once everyone arrived, we all went inside the college. We meet James (a worker from Edinburgh art college) and Bob and Roberta Smith or just Bob – the artist that I met.

We went in and did some introductions and then we began to paint. We all got a set of paint brushes, and we had to pick a partner (I partnered with Amber) and painted them. This was easy –  apart from the fact that we had to paint the base green.

After that we started to make our placards – big canvas sometimes put on sticks and used in protests. We all had to paint three and each one had to line up with one of the Children’s parliament issues – mental health,  bullying, vaping and climate crises education.

· The first placard had to have a background with lots of colours.

· The second placard had to have a scene; this could be a sunset, a storm or a mountain.

· The third placard had to have no background and just words and details on the front.

After three days of working on our placards, I came up with this.

· For the first placard I did a background that looked like the northern lights, with a slogan that said VAPES ARE VILE I added a vape with smoke and put a cross through the middle of it.

· For the second placard I did a mountain range with some light and dark clouds. I added snow to the top and the sun behind a cloud. Then my slogan was WE ALL MUST GROW.

· For my third placard I wrote THE 1 THE ONLY EARTH I added lots of detail and colour, and made it look wonderful.

I very much enjoyed my trip to Edinburgh and it was so fun to meet a professional artist.

Fallon P6

Pupils in P1-4 had a visit rom the Lighthouse Musicians to their class for another fun musical input! They started their session by listening to different types of music and moving around the  room as various different types of animals to the music! As you can see from the photos – they got really into this, prowling about 🐈🐕‍🦺🦍🐒🐆🐎🐢🐀

Then they learned about written music – Gillian was able to tell them all about the names for different musical notes such as treble clef, minnow, quaver, semi-quaver! 

Fab session once again and always happy to welcome the musical ladies to the school! 🎼🎵🎶

Meta Skills 

Creativity Cassidy

Collaborating Cora

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Article 13 – Freedom of Expression

Article 29 – Aims of Education 

Article 31 – Rest, Arts, Play & Culture 

Following up with our topic of looking at all things photography in the P5-7 class, we took the chance to welcome another photographer into the classroom to chat to the pupils! 

Miss Dorans is both a nursery extraordinaire and photography enthusiast and she was able to come in and talk to the pupils about event and portrait photography! Pupils learned about the technical aspects of photography and the effects different cameras can give, as well as getting to peruse Heather’s albums to see the happy moments she has captured over the years! 

A huge thank you to heather for coming in and allowing us to see a snapshot into your experiences! 

Meta Skills 

Critical Thinking Chris 

Creativity Cassidy

Collaborating Cora

Focussing Fergus 

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Article 13 – Freedom of Expression

Article 31 – Rest, Arts, Play & Culture 

Today all the P3 to P6 pupils across the cluster were invited to Stranraer Academy to attend au author visit from Martin Stewart! This was done through The Scottish Book Trust organisation and we are very thankful to get this opportunity. 

Martin Stewart is is a Scottish author, and former teacher, from Glasgow whose works are influenced by his upbringing near Scottish seaside and maritime towns and cities! Martin has wrote many books over the years but today’s session was mainly focussed around his new novel; Sandy Finn: Operation Splash Landing 🌊🏖

During today’s session pupils learned how Martin came to write novels (boredom during a knee injury!) and how he uses his ‘imagination soup’ and derives his ideas from real life to help fuel his novel writing. Martin also read a chapter of his Sandy Finn series to the pupils as a bonus treat! 

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

Meta Skills 

Creativity Cassidy

Collaborating Cora

Curiosity Carlos 

Focussing Fergus 

Articles

Article 13 – Freedom of Expression

Article 31 – Rest, Arts, Play & Culture 

Today we welcomed Chris Smith (Harrison’s Dad!) into the class to discuss with us all things photography based! Photography has been the art focus for the upper class for this term and we have already explored what photography means and looked at some Macro photography in the playground. This week our focus has been on Landscape photographer and Chris, as a professional photographer, was just the man for this! 📸

Chris was able to show the boys and girls some of his camera kit and discussed with them how he goes about taking his photos and the effort that goes in to taking a good landscape photo. We had no idea! The times you have to get up at in the morning, to drive to the ideal location, to then climb where you need to be, to get the perfect shot at the perfect time… and it’s still not guaranteed! The pupils had many many(!) questions for Chris, all of which he patiently answered, and we are all left feeling fairly inspired to dig out our cameras from the back of the cupboard and have a go ourselves!

After this chat, we all went a walk down Fisher’s Lane, armed with our iPads, to try our hand at taking our own landscape photos. Thankfully in this little corner or Scotland, we are fairly blessed with some good views to take advantage off! 😍

Many thanks to Chris for coming in today and speaking to the children, hopefully he has inspired some budding young photographers of the future! 

Meta Skills 

Critical Thinking Chris 

Creativity Cassidy

Collaborating Cora

Focussing Fergus 

Articles

Article 13 – Freedom of Expression

Article 31 – Rest, Arts, Play & Culture