Portpatrick Primary

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

 

This term Primary 4-7 are learning about how to manage risk more safely as part of our H.W.B. topic.   Class 2 received a visit from PC Wilson and PC Logie today to educate us on online resilience and cyber bullying. We discussed a range of risks that we might experience when we go online. We shared ideas and strategies on how to manage risks online sensibly. The children talked maturely about the potential dangers from unknown contacts, privacy invasion and oversharing of information. The issue of cyber bullying was also raised. We talked about our views on what is acceptable behavior and what is not and what to do if we experience this. Hopefully, as part of our ongoing education on this issue, the pupils will be better equipped to keep themselves and others safe and conduct themselves appropriately online.

# Responsible Citizens

Mia and Innes were selected to be Portpatrick’s Primary 7 Responsible Citizens for 2018.  They achieved this through their consistently kind and considerate attitude towards others.  They are always willing to lend a hand to whoever needs it and can be relied upon to be sensible and mature.  We are proud of them both!

# Responsible Citizens

Miss Amelia Stapleton is a charity superstar!

She has had an impressive 10 inches cut from her hair and is donating this to the charity, Wigs For Kids.  Amelia’s mum has said that this donation is long enough to allow a full wig to be made from Amelia’s hair.  For thirty years, this charity has been making hair replacements and offering support for children who have lost their hair due to chemotherapy, radiation therapy, alopecia, trichotillomaina, burns and other medical issues at no cost to children or their families.  Well done for your very kind act Amelia!

# Effective Contributor

It was a milestone day today for our new Primary 1 pupils: Carter, Erin, Holly and Ollie, who joined us for a morning of learning activities.  All the shiny, new pupils were happy and keen to learn, readily mixing with their new classmates.

Our upcoming P4 pupils: Alfie, Ava Lily, Maya and Ruby, came through for a familiarisation session in Class 2 for maths at the same.  They proved themselves busy beevers, working away on their Big Maths skills.

#Successful Learners

As part of our ongoing Eco work, we were visited today by 2 members of the Coastwise Project.  The team delivered a workshop to both classes separately to help educate us about the problems plastic pollution is causing to our coastlines, seas and wildlife.  They shared information about recycling plastics and the alternatives we can use to avoid single use plastics.

The children had the opportunity to study aquatic life skulls and objects up close.  Our boys and girls are very aware of our responsibility to help sustain our world.

#Responsible Citizens