Portpatrick Primary

Throughout January, the boys and girls have been busy with some Scots challenges – they had to learn their Scots poem and practise reciting it with great gusto; write out their poem in their best handwriting; and create a piece of artwork linked to their poem.

On Tuesday, Mr John Ross had the difficult and unenviable task of judging the competition – we had a few joint winners, he just couldn’t choose!!

Lots of parents, family members and friends of the school then joined us on Wednesday for our Scot Showcase assembly, to celebrate the pupils’ successes. They were presented with certificates and entertained the audience with recitals and some Scots songs.

A huge well done to all the pupils for their efforts. Below is a list of the winners:

Recitation winners

P.1         Ode tae a spider     

1^st Rebecca Connor  2^nd Stephen Ross

P.2         Twa Leggit Mice          

1^st Carter Henderson 2^{nd equal} Louise Webb & Erin Harbottle

P.3         The Sair Finger         

1^st Cameron McNeil 2^nd Atticus Orr-Ewing 3^rd equal Lewis Mcquillan & Conor Ritchie

P.4         The Bogle        

1^st Rose Santangeli  2^nd Jack Trafford  3^rd Sophia Schofield

P.5         The Wee Kirk Moose  

1^st equal  Maya McNeill & Ava Lily Orr-Ewing 2^nd Ruby Rankin  3^rd Isabella White

P.6/7     Address tae the Haggis  or Willie Wastle

1^st Findlay Thorburn  2^nd Robin McLean  3^rd Finlay Schofield

Illustration winners

P.1        Rebecca Connor

P.2        Erin Harbottle

P.3        Lewis McQuillan

P.4        Jack Trafford

P.5        Alba & Isabella White

P.6/7    Lillie Baker

Handwriting winners

P.1         Rebecca Connor

P.2         Erin Harbottle

P.3         Tilly Gordon

P.4         Jack Trafford

P.5         Ava Lily Orr-Ewing

P.6/7     Lillie Baker

P4-7 braved the chilly day today to pop outside to have an outdoor maths session.  The focus was measurement, perimeter and area.

P6 & 7 measured the length and breadth of our football pitch in metres.  They recorded their length as 17m by 30m. They calculated that the perimeter  was 94m and the area was 510 metres squared.

P4 & 5 measured the length and breadth of the paving slab, which was 60cm by 90cm.  We calculated the perimeter as 300cm (3m).  The area was 60 x 90 cm = 540cm squared. ( Some took an extra challenge of working in decimals: 0.6. x 0.9=  0.54 m squared)

As it was so chilly, we popped back inside and worked out the area and perimeter of our P.E. hall.  Some children worked in whole numbers, whilst others worked accurately to 1 decimal place. The children produced a scale drawing of the measured area using cm squared paper.

We then applied real life problem solving to work out costs of placing a border around the hall  and the price of carpeting the hall (differentiated by price per metre).

# Successful Learners

This week, at the North West Castle. They spent the afternoon with members from the rotary club and representatives from 12 other schools , listening to speakers and taking part in a quiz all about RHET. The quiz invited them to list reasons why children benefit from visiting farms. Well Done to Finlay Schofield who joined up with Team Leswalt and  got First Prize and some gummy bears. Afterwards they enjoyed a delicious lunch . The boys had a fantastic time and enjoyed representing our school.

All the boys and girls have been very busy applying their S.T.E.A.M. skills in the context of our Scottish Burn’s celebrations. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art & Maths)

The children were set a home challenge of producing an artistic creation to represent the theme of the Scottish poems they have each been learning.  We have been so impressed by the standard and variety of entries.  We have models, dioramas, fabric craft AND artwork!  Our pupils have been applying a wide range of STEAM skills such as designing, selecting materials, measuring, combining, cutting, sticking, sewing, shaping, decorating and even wiring electric lights to name but a few – Wow!

The judges will have a very hard time selecting a winner from each category.  Well done everyone!

Thank you to every family for their support in this challenge.  We hope you enjoyed being creative together.

# Successful Learners

As part of our Scottish celebrations P4-7 has been learning about the legend of the Kelpies.  Mrs Copeland, our resident art specialist, showed the children artwork and images of kelpies as depicted in traditional folklore.  She then demonstrated the technique of creating tint and shade by adding white and black to, in this case, a blue pallet was practiced.

The children have now applied those techniques for themselves and have taken great care and attention with their artistic creations. They have all produced very lovely images which are now on display for all in school to see.

# Successful Learners

Thanks to the Portpatrick Community Council, our Eco committee have purchased some new gardening equipment. This will help us set up a gardening club in the summer term, with a view to holding a plant sale prior to the summer holidays. Have a peek at the photo below of our Eco committee pupils displaying some of their new gardening goodies!

Miss Whorlow has been working very hard on developing STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Maths) across our 3 schools. 

Here she has showcased some of the STEM activities which have taken place at Portpatrick recently

STEM at Port

Miss Whorlow had spent a great deal of time putting together a submission which shows off all the STEM work in our 3 schools.  We hope that this will be verified by Education Scotland as one of the pilot schools in the STEM nation awards.  The power point is all hyper linked.  If you click on it, it leads onto further examples and documents of all the amazing work.

STEM Nation Award

Thanks you Miss Whorlow for all of your hard work in driving this forward for us!

P4-7 got their geneticist heads on today.  We have used our links with Stranraer Academy to borrow their Inheritance primary  loan kit. The children have been learning about how lifeforms inherit their physical and biological characteristics from their parents.

Using the Academy reebop resource, the pupils selected chromosomes from a mum and dad reebop.  Dependent on the combination selected, they then constructed the baby reebop traits to match the ‘building block’ code. You can see the wide diversity of appearance that our reebop babies have inherited.

# Successful Learners

P4-7 have been participating in a maths career based activity called I’m a Mathematician, Get me out of here.  We have been learning about how maths helps a range of experts do jobs in different fields.

As in our science web chat session, the boys and girls interacted with the scientists, asking them a range of topical science questions on their field of expertise.  The pool of scientists present in the session was varied, representing a balance of genders, a broad spectrum of ethnic groups and specialist fields.  The children had an opportunity to explore the diversity of the world of work in this STEM sector.

I’m a Mathematician, Get me out of here is an online, student-led enrichment activity where students connect with people who have maths at the heart of their work.

To get our brains in gear ready for our chatroom session with experts, we watched a very entertaining Christmas Maths lecture: on the mysteries of the never ending number.

https://www.rigb.org/christmas-lectures/watch/2006/the-num8er-my5teries/lecture-1

We learned about prime numbers sequences and how species of insect use prime numbers to avoid predators.  This links with our science topic of adaptation and evolution.  Also, we discovered more on working out formulae and the power of doubling.

We then moved on to study career profiles for two mathematicians:Chloe Martindale, a cryptographer and William Petterson, a computer scientist.The children worked collectively to compile a list of relevant questions to ask these experts to find out more about how maths is used in their careers.

We had a 30 minute scheduled chat room today session where we typed in our questions and received responses in real time.

The children were enthusiastic and even received a tip or two on how to start preparing now for a future career as a mathematician.

# Successful learners