Portpatrick Primary

Friends and family turned out in force to cheer on the boys and girls at this year’s school sports day.  The challenges for the children were wide ranging, including:

• Sprint
• Skipping
• Sack
• Egg & Spoon
• Throw
• Distance
• Adult obstacle
• Pre-school race

Parents and family were keen to participate too, taking part in a very competitive ‘grown ups’ obstacle course.  The pupils demonstrated great attitudes with good sportsman ship abounding.  The children showed perseverance and motivation in all of their races.  Everyone participated with a smile and we are proud of them all.

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Primary 1-3  have been learning about ‘all things castles’ this term.  To bring this topic to life for the children, Catherine, from History Alive,  came to school today to deliver a hands-on workshop.

The boys and girls were treated to gruesome tales of battle and learned about how castles were built as fortresses to protect the occupants.  The children had the opportunity to dress up in medieval costumes and try out some replica weapons for themselves.  We all agreed they look a fearsome army of warriors.

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Innes, Lachlan and Mia represented our school last night when they volunteered to attend our local Portpatrick Community Council Meeting.  They delivered a presentation, with the support of Community Safety Officers, Andrew and Caroline.  The children informed the council of the results of our recent litter and dog fouling surveys.  They also showcased our poster campaign to discourage dog fouling in our village.  The children spoke with clarity and confidence.

The committee praised all of the children of Portpatrick highly for their admirable community work and their responsible attitude.  The chair has taken our posters away to judge the winners.  It was agreed that the village public display board would be given over to exhibit our results and posters for a period of time.  The committee has also kindly offered to upload the children’s posters onto the Community Council webpage.  Andrew has agreed to produce our posters ready for placing in prominant locations for dog walkers around the village.  A large banner is also planned for our school gate to provide impact for passers by, all in an attempt to encourage responsible dog ownership.  Watch out for the upcoming press release.

Our thanks to the Community Safety Team and the Community Council for their ongoing support.

# Responsible Citizens & Effective Contributors

P4-7 attended the trio partnership rugby festival at Stair Park today with Kircolm and Leswalt Primaries.  All of the children from each school played extremely well in a series of organised team events.  There was great sportsmanship and team work evident throughout. Portpatrick’s performance led to them being clear winners, conceding only one game out of all of their matches.  Our thanks to the organisers from Wigtownshire Rugby Football Club and Andy from Active Sports for a great day.

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P5-7 were lucky enough to be selected to attend this year’s Scotsheep show at Ballantrae organised by RHET.  We were met on arrival by Alison, our volunteer guide for the morning.  They children toured the show and experienced a kaleidoscope of sheep related events.

We were able to view a vast array of sheep breeds in the presentation area.  We learned a lot about the different varieties and their characteristics.  It was very entertaining to watch a sheep dog working hard at rounding up his flock.  The children were treated to a very able demonstration of sheep shearing and were able to feel the softness of the wool for themselves.  We learned more about the farm to fork initiative to educate us on where our food comes from. We voted for our best sheep in a stock show too.  You never know, we might have picked the winner!

It was a very informative morning, providing the opportunity to learn more about land use and agriculture in Scotland today.  Our thanks go to Alison and to Mrs Ross for accompanying us today.

It proved a very entertaining and educational morning.

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As part of managing risk safely in Health and wellbeing  the children are receiving three sessions with Mrs McHarg on how to maintain and ride our bikes safely in Level 1 Bikeability training.  We are learning how to check our bikes are in good order, get on and off safely, set off, ride along, direct, use gears, stop, avoid, manouvre and signal.

# Responsible Citizens

The boys and girls of Portpatrick Primary dressed up in their finery on Friday to celebrate the upcoming wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Earlier in the week they were busy making colourful hats and ties and beautiful fascinators in preparation for the day. We had a delicious buffet lunch to mark the special occasion and Barbara, our school cook, also made a gorgeous cake which was enjoyed by everyone.

Primary 1-3  took the classroom outside today as part of outdoor learning day.  Their first task on the agenda was a 2D shape hunt around our playground.  The children found a wide range in our environment around us.

We then applied science skills by investigating the directional change of shadows throughout the day as part of their topic on Sun, Moon and Stars.  They used chalk around each other’s shadows and observed how they changed throughout the day.

For language, the children were inspired by observing the clouds in the sky to write poetry.

As part of their Castle topic in Social Studies, the children cooperated to build sandcastles on the beach. They included realistic features such as moats and turrets. The winning team was Ava Lily, Jack, Amelia and Max.  All the other groups were highly commended for their creativity.

# Successful Learners

As part of our outdoor learning day, Primary 4-7 spent the afternoon combining Language and technologies skills on the beach.  The pupils were tasked to apply ‘computational thinking’ without the use of computers, which is known as being unplugged.  They had to write an algorithm (set of instructions) for the processes required to make a sand castle.  The children had to apply ‘logic’ and ‘decomposition’ to break the task down into its component steps.  They then had to use ‘abstraction’ to remove any unnecessary information. Once they had ‘debugged’ any errors through practicing their instructions, they challenged another group to carry out their instructions verbatim to see if they worked for others.  We had a discussion on what information was needed/not needed in our instructions to see if we had written a functional algorithm.

Just for fun, we used our Craft, Design and Technologies skills to create sand sculptures, thinking about how we used the material of sand to form stable structures using pressure and moisture.  The winning group was Jenna, Mia, Katie and Olivia for their raft model.  Everyone cooperated well; sharing ideas and tasks effectively.

#Successful Learners

As part of national Outdoor Learning Day, Primary 4-7  have been very busy in the sunshine.  Following on for our Eco targets focussing on litter, we carried out a community litter survey and village clean under the guidance of our Community Safety Officers Caroline, Colin and Alistair.  The children used the criteria cited in the standards for Codes of Practice Litter and Refuse (Scotland 2006) to rate our community under a number of inspection areas.  Our consensus was that, after closer inspection, our village was rated between B – C.   This information will be shared with the Community Safety Management team and with our local community council.

We were joined in our endeavours by Quentin, our local public works and maintenance worker, who was on his very last day ever keeping Portpatrick streets clean and tidy with his cart. He retires tomorrow and we are grateful for all of his help in keeping everything spick and span.

The children enjoyed participating in our community event.  Myles said he felt proud helping to keep our village clean.  Mia said it was good helping Quentin do his important job.

#Effective Contributors and Responsible Citizens