The boys and girls arrived at school on Friday dressed in their Christmas Jumpers as part of Save the Children’s Christmas Jumper Day 2019. At lunchtime, we sat down to a delicious turkey dinner kindly cooked by Barbara. We had lots of fun pulling the crackers, wearing our paper hats and telling each other Christmas jokes, with the lovely Michael Buble playing Christmas music in the background! Portpatrick Primary was definitely in the Christmas spirit today and to top it off, P4-7 wrote a poem to sum up the day –
The boys and girls of Portpatrick Primary,
Came to school dressed in their festive finery,
At lunch they pulled Christmas crackers and put on their hats,
It may have been a drizzling, but that didn’t dampen pupils’ spirits as they wrapped up warm and headed outside on Friday with Sian Roberts, who kindly gave up her morning to work with pupils. Sian is a local gardener and parent. They were busy weaving the newly grown willow back into the willow dome to make it stronger – we had been keeping a close eye on the new growth and waiting for the leaves to fall off before undertaking this job. Pupils enjoy sitting in the willow dome during breaks for a bit of quiet space, or using it to play ‘jails’!!! Have a keek below to see them at work!
As part of learning about the Victorian era, P4-7 have produced fantastic results in a S.T.E.A.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Maths) challenge. The pupils were given an open ended brief to design, construct and evaluate a resource that depicts an aspect of Victorian life.
As always, the children impressed with their imagination, creativity, and attention to detail. The standard of entry and the enthusiasm of the boys and girls was lovely to observe. Barbara judged the entries and awarded the following:
1st Place – Ava Lily with her Victorian home with fine detail
2nd Place – Liam with his Victorian camera, complete with bellow style covering
3rd Place – Maya with her historically accurate coloured and shaped Victorian post box
All agreed that every entry was of a very high quality. Thank you for all of the family engagement and support that made this possible. Why not pop in to see our terrific table top display?
Sunday saw a very busy and successful Portpatrick Christmas Fayre, held in the village hall. Having spent all week creating Christmas crafts in school, the older pupils took it in turns to run the school craft stall. On sale were snow globes, gift boxes with peppermints, salt dough tree decorations and wrapping paper. In total, the stall made an incredible £125!
The Parent Council also ran the cafe, selling lots of delicious homemade baking, and raised a grand total of £522.23.
Having been held captive in the kitchen to practise their singing from 3.30pm, the pupils took to the stage at 4pm donned with festive jumpers and cheery smiles, to entertain everyone with some Christmas songs they had been busy learning in school. The pupils sang loud and proud and helped to put everyone into the festive mood!
Well done to everyone involved – the countdown to Christmas is now on!
The whole school has been enterprising ‘Christmas Crazy’ this last little while preparing lots of lovely crafty gifts to sell at Sunday’s Portpatrick Christmas Fair.
The pupils (and Barbara) have made peppermint sweet gift boxes, shortbread gift boxes, salt dough tree ornaments, wrapping paper, photo snow globes AND Christmas tree & Snowmen decorations. They all look fabulous and will help decorate your home, ready to get you in the festive spirit.
The children have used this as an Enterprise project to help raise funds.Please do come along and support our wee school. Thank you.
After 12 weeks of learning and practice, P4-7 gave a musical performance to the whole school and family members this afternoon. The children performed a range of traditional Scottish songs sung both in Gaelic and English whilst playing the tin whistle. The boys and girls were accompanied by Wendy and Kate of Feis Rois, who have delivered excellent instruction to the pupils.
The audience thoroughly enjoyed the talents of the pupils and a great morning’s entertainment was had by all.
Have a listen to a couple of the musical performances below to see the skills our boys and girls have mastered.
P4-7 got creative to find ways to support the community Christmas fair. They decided to make sweets to sell. The class made peppermint creams by following a simple recipe. We initially weighed quantities, but after experience we were able to use ‘ready reckoning’.
We applied strict hygiene standards throughout the task, wearing hair nets and aprons and making sure we had squeaky clean hands.
The group were able to calculate the amount we had to sell each pack of sweet for to make a profit. We added up the total cost of the ingredients and divided that number by the quantity of sweets we were able to make. This was then multiplied by how many sweets would be in a pack. We now know how much we must sell each gift pack of sweets for to generate a profit sale.
The boys and girls used paper craft to create decorated presentation gift boxes. They will make a lovely present for someone at the Christmas Fair. We hope you would like to buy them.
Lauren Steel, Principal Technician: Structures & Engineering Design for Communities with Dumfries and Galloway Council joined us today to deliver a P4-7 engineering workshop, in collaboration with the Institute of Civil Engineers (ICE). Lauren volunteers her time to help develop children’s learning in S.T.E.M across the region.
Lauren talked to the children about different designs of bridges that can be found in the world. The most common in Dumfries and Galloway is the masonry arch bridge.
Working in small groups, the children were given the challenge of initially designing and sketching a bridge that would be capable of being load bearing. They then had to select materials and combine them to meet the brief.
The boys and girls used a wide range of Higher Order thinking skills to problem solve. They had to plan, select, estimate, combine, construct, modify, improve and adapt and test their bridge construction. Further, they had to apply their soft skills of cooperating, negotiating, discussing, sharing and agreeing to complete the task – phew!
All children were completely absorbed by the task at every step of the process. They collaborated effectively in their teams and rose to the challenge. Every bridge constructed was successful in supporting a heavy load of a filled water bottle.
I am delighted to say that following a process which we have been undertaking over the last 2 years, as part of our School improvement plan, our partnership of trio schools has achieved National recognition in the Digital Skills Scotland awards.
Yesterday I received official confirmation that we have been validated and awarded this, following a lengthy submission of evidence and visit of an assessor.
Dear Ms Sheila Baillie
Following your Digital Schools Award Scotland validation visit by Alan Yeoman, I am delighted to inform you that North Rhins Partnership Schools – Leswalt Primary / Port Patrick Primary and Kirkcolm Primary have been successful in their application to become Digital Schools in Scotland.
On behalf of all the partners involved in the Digital Schools Award Scotland I would like to congratulate the schools on achieving this award.
I enclose the validation report which summarises the validator’s view of the extent to which the schools addressed the award criteria. The Digital School Award is recognised by Education Scotland.
We are confident that North Rhins Partnership will be a pioneer among schools where digitally enhanced teaching and learning is helping our children and young people prepare for living and working in the 21st Century.
Kind regards
Aoife O’Connor Programme Coordinator Digital Schools Award Scotland
This award is recognised by Education Scotland. Only one other school in the whole of Dumfries and Galloway has this award currently.
Thank you must go to all staff and pupils for their hard work and willingness in this work – they are indeed a “pioneer among schools”.
The boys and girls in P1-4 at Portpatrick Primary have been busy learning all about how Bar Models can help us with our maths reasoning. By Drawing out the bar we are able to decipher what mathematical process is required to solve the problem.
Today we took on Q1 and Q2 of White Rose Maths #Barvember challenge. Each Day a new challenge is uploaded. I think we are starting to get the hang of it now !
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