Kirkcolm Primary School

P1-3 had a fantastic day today at the Wigtown Book Festival. Wigtown book festival aims to provide opportunities for young people to enjoy and learn through writing and storytelling and we most certainly did !

Alan Windram talked to us about his award winning book ‘One Button Benny’. He explained that Benny is a special robot. A single red button sits in the middle of his stomach. Benny has never known what the words “Only Press in an Emergency” mean until one day he is forced to find out.

The boys and girls then enjoyed participating in Robot Karaoke which included elements of dancing, singing and even some guitar. What a brilliant afternoon !

Miss McNicolls P5-7 class got a visit from Mr. David Kerr on the 25th of September to learn some Spanish! The class got to learn how to say hello and how to answer to “Hola, Que tal?” which the class very much enjoyed. The children also learnt how to say good morning, good afternoon, good evening and good night. Mr. Kerr had  prepared a quiz for the P5-7 pupils to test their knowledge of Spain and taught the children a bit of Geography. He left the school at 2:30 and the children cant wait to for Mr. Kerr to come back next week to teach them Spanish numbers!

Written by Ivy Richardson (P.7)

This term P1-4 have been exploring their local area and one focus for this was the different types of homes people live in.

In order for them to get the full experience, they decided first hand was the best way! With Mrs McColm accompanying them and clipboards in tow they set off on a little jaunt along the village this afternoon to have a look at all the different types of houses, streets and gardens that are out there for all the people of Kirkcolm to live in.

They had a grand wee afternoon out in the fresh air having an explore and managed to give everybody they passed by a good old wave as well as getting on with their surveying.

So – if you got a wave off some lovely boys and girls wearing burgundy today, you know what they were up to! 🙂

P5-7 had the delight of a visit from a paramedic today under the best possible circumstances!

Tanya Ellis was kind enough to come in and speak to the boys and girls and tell them all about her job as a paramedic and the hard work she does. This was in relation to P5-7’s health and well-being focus of First Aid.

Tanya informed us all about how she qualified for her job, what exactly her job entails as well as lots of additional and very valuable first aid information.

The boys and girls were trained in what the emergency position is and had the challenge of trying to put each other in it correctly and learned about the steps of CPR.

They are extremely clued up in how to act if an emergency situation arises and a couple of them have come away considering a career as a paramedic which is exciting to hear!

Here are some photos of the boys and girls in action:

Best Listeners!

Luke’s not the greatest at unconscious acting..

On Wednesday P5-7 were lucky enough to have a visit from a Sound Engineer called Mr Dinning. Mr Dinning introduced us to a new program we could all access called Sound Trap and showed us how to create effective songs and music through it.

It allowed us to select our own instruments and music styles and then put all of them together to see if we can create our own genre of music, we learned how to fade out and layer instruments and create whole new sounds as well as giving us the option of playing our own virtual instruments!

The best part about this is we are going to get 3 more class inputs to help hone our sound engineer skills and we have full access to this app at home using our GLOW e-mail address so we can show you all the amazing things we have done so far and collaborate with each other.

Watch this space; Kirkcolm’s new up and coming music artists are on the rise!

Pupils have had a busy start to the year, applying for various jobs in the school and demonstrating they are keen to take on positions of responsibility. We received lots of applications for Pupil Council and monitor jobs; several pupils were keen to be interviewed for the Eco committee; lots of boys and girls in the senior class applied via the online application for Digital Leaders; and P6/7 pupils said their House Captain election speeches at assembly.

This year, we have decided that pupils will earn a ‘salary’ (in the form of merits – not cash!) for undertaking their job to give them further experience of the world of work.

After a difficult decision, we have selected our new committees for the year.

Our new Pupil Council members are:

Our new House Captains are: Danny for Loch Connell and Abbie for Corsewall.

Our new Eco Committee, hoping to work towards achieving our 2nd Green Flag in 2 years’ time are:

And finally, our new Digital Leaders who will help to develop ICT in classes and provide technical support in the school are:

Today P5-7 were very lucky to have their first visit from Feis Ros…

They were given their very own tin whistles and have started their 12 week block of tin whistling!

We got to have a good look at different singing games,  instruments and had our own shot at being conductors.

We are looking forward to inviting everyone in towards the end of our block to debut our newfound skills!

We are delighted to announce that we have been awarded our first Eco-Schools Green Flag! Pupils in the Eco committee have been the driving force behind all of the environmentally friendly work that we have undertaken throughout the year, with all pupils in the school joining in on activities and taking responsibility for making the school and community a greener and more sustainable place.

Over the last year, pupils have participated in various Eco-friendly activities, organised and led by the Eco committee. They have carried out a local beach clean, inviting parents and the local community to join in; joined various recycling projects including crisp packets, batteries and pens; worked with the local community group ‘Keep Kirkcolm Tidy’; and held litter assemblies to raise awareness of the impact to the whole school. Two Primary 6 pupils, Danny and Jak, were selected as our Junior Road Safety Officers (JRSOs) and helped to promote active travel and staying safe when travelling during the darker winter nights.

Our Eco-Schools assessor stated, “Congratulations on successfully achieving your Eco-Schools Green Flag award! I thoroughly enjoyed reading your application and am very excited about the work being done at Kirkcolm Primary School. I was very encouraged to read about your efforts and successes in involving the whole school and local community in your Eco-school activities.” The assessor also stated that aspects of our work were noted as examples of good practice and may be used on the website/social media as case studies to support other schools with their Eco-Schools work.

Work is already underway to select our new Eco committee and continue the good work to ensure we are able to renew our Eco Schools green flag in 2 years’ time.

Have a keek below to see photos of the pupils with our Green Flag, which we will be displaying in the school foyer. The Eco Committee members were particularly proud as punch of their achievement – well done to you all!!

Tuesday saw all 3 of our North Rhins partnership schools come together for a morning of exploration and an afternoon of inter-school sports fun. Pupils from Portpatrick and Kirkcolm travelled to Leswalt, who hosted the event for the first time. After arriving, the boys and girls made their way up to the Aldouran Wetlands for some fun in the gardens.

They then made their way back to school for a picnic lunch outside, and enjoyed getting to know and play with pupils from the other schools. Just as we were ready to head to the village park to begin our sports, the rain started – but it didn’t damped our spirits! Thankfully, the shower passed and it was a lovely warm afternoon for the boys and girls to cheer on their own schools – they were all getting very competitive and were keen for their school to be the overall winner of the afternoon!

There were various races for pupils to participate in, including sprint, skipping, sack, egg & spoon, distance and a relay. After counting up the points and working out the scores proportionately given the differing numbers of pupils in the 3 school, Portpatrick were the overall winners of the afternoon, with Leswalt in 2^nd place and Kirkcolm in 3^rd.

A huge thank-you must go to Lidl who supported the event for the 2^nd year running, by providing water and fruit for the pupils to enjoy – they were well in need of this after the distance race! Also to the Brown family, who transported the equipment from the school to the park for us. The pupils had a wonderful afternoon mixing with other boys and girls in their year group across the 3 schools and are looking forward to our next get together already!

It was a successful weekend for both the football and netball team this weekend.

On Saturday the netball team won the tournament at their own Kirkcolm Gala day.  Well done to them, they have played really well all season.  And, many thanks to Jemima Johnstone for helping coach them and supervise them.

Today, the football team were in action at Sandhead fun day.  And, after a nil-nil draw in the final, it went onto penalties to decide the winner.  And, Kirkcolm were victorious!  Great work by the team, and thanks also to Robert Agnew with his time and help with the boys.

It was a successful end to the season for both teams.