Portpatrick Primary

This afternoon pupils at Portpatrick primary were creepin’ it real as they got dressed up for their annual Halloween party. The party was run by our wonderful House Captains, Findlay Thorburn and Lillie Baker who organised some fang-tastic  games for everyone to participate in. Everyone was in great spirits and the effort that went into the costumes was incredible.

The winners of the games are as follows;

Costume Parade: P1-5 Louise

P6-7 Alba

Halloween Corners : Stephen

Halloween Jungle Tig : Ruby

Halloween Statues : Ruby

Wrap the Mummy : Erin’s Group

Best Dancer: Maya

Then we had Dookin’ for Apples to round off a wonderful afternoon.  A very special mention to Findlay Thorburn and his mum for creating some wonderful handmade Halloween prizes, it was very much appreciated by all.

See below for photos.

Our Prize Winners;

Party Fun ;

Class Photos;

Primary 7 enjoyed their first day at Stranraer Academy in the company of all the other Primary 7 pupils from the cluster.  The day had an enjoyable focus of Music, with members of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra travelling down to Stranraer to conduct a workshop with all the pupils.

Our pupils were singing, dancing, playing games, composing and learning about the orchestra and their music in a fun filled day.  After lunch they were joined by older pupils from the Academy who came along to listen to the final performance from the musicians.

All returned to Primary, more familiar with Stranraer Academy and informed and entertained by the orchestra.

The whole school were given some very wise advice on how to stay safe during this season’s bonfire celebrations.  Representatives from both the Police and Fire Brigade came to talk to children about the dangers that are present when they are near fireworks and bonfires.

Everyone agreed that Guy Fawkes celebrations are great fun, but that we should all make sure we take simple precautions to keep ourselves out of harm’s way.  We now know how to behave sensibly around fire and fireworks.

Thank you to our emergency services.

#Responsible Citizens.

P5 and 6 were given the opportunity to visit Balgracie Dairy farm as part of a R.H.E.T. organised initiative.  The pupils were given a guided tour and an explanation of farm processes that apply technology, science and engineering to carry out tasks.  They learned about the many, many jobs that are required to keep a healthy and productive dairy stock and how farming is undertaken in an environmentally responsible way.

All the milk from Balgracie farm goes to Nestle to make Kit-Kat chocolate.  We were treated to a few ‘biccies’ to take home with us to sample after our visit!

The children then applied their recount writing skills to share their experience with their partnership Glow e-buddies.

See below for an example of recount writing from Ruby P5:

All about Balgracie Farm!  Ruby Rankin P5

Introduction:

Today P5-6 went to Balgracie farm on the 29.10.19 at the farm.  We learned about dairy farming.

Arrival:

When we arrived we had to dip our feet into a soapy bucket to kill any germs so we didn’t infect the animals.  Then, Mrs Mc Nicoll gave use a pair of gloves and we were not allowed to take our gloves off.

Baby calves:

Next, we went to see baby calves. They were all six weeks old. They had blue or red tags on their ears. Blue was for boys and red was for girls. When the calves are born they have to get colostrum milk within six hours or they get ill.

Milking parlour:

After we saw the baby calves we went to see the milking parlour. Mr Drennan showed us the milking pumps they use to automatically milk the cows.  He demonstrated the automatic nut feeder that gives the cows food to eat whilst they are being milked. He also showed us a yellow cream that you put in the udders so they don’t get bugs.

Sleeping barn:

Next, he showed us the cow beds.  They were made out of rubber.  There was a motorised pooper scooper to clean away any slurry.  The slurry is used as fertiliser for the fields.

# Successful Learners

This afternoon pupils at Portpatrick Primary were delighted to be invited up to Dunskey estate to help Chef Chris make some apple crumble using foraged apples from the trees in the walled garden.

First, we had to pick the apples. Although this was harder than it looked for the average 3 1/2  ft tall 5 year old! Luckily some of the older pupils were on hand to help. Mrs Baker even produced the most spectacular “apple picking device” we had ever seen.

Next, we took a walk up to the main house where Mr and Mrs Orr Ewing gave us a warm welcome and lead us into the dinning room. Once we had taken our jackets off and washed our hands, the brilliant bakers were ready to go.

Led by Chef Chris the children made their crumble. To say we enjoyed ourselves would be an understatement. As you can see, there were smiles and giggles galore. Uniforms are sure to be needing a wash after having fun with the flour!

Chef Chris then gave the children a taste of the apple crumble he had made earlier. It was delicious!! Lastly, the boys and girls were given a copy of the recipe and their own crumble to take home to bake and share with parents.

Huge thank you to the Orr Ewing Family and all the staff at Dunskey Estate for having us. What a wonderful way to round off a fantastic first term.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Our partnership pupils completed a Digital Technologies pupils’ views survey recently.  The children answered responses to a range of questions and offered their feedback and comments on how they view their Digital learning experiences.

One particular suggestion from  Emma Drummond of Kircolm, spurred our Digital Leaders to organise rainy day I.C.T. clinics.  Whenever we now have a wet weather break that might keep us indoors, the pupils have the opportunity to come along and share skills and knowledge with one another.

Today’s focus was on using the Smartboard tools.  The boys and girls used both Smartboards to run two workshops.  Everyone found the sessions enjoyable and worthwhile.

# Successful Learners

P4-7 travelled to the Wigtown book festival today to participate in an illustrator workshop with successful book author and illustrator Shoo Rayner.

We learned to use basic shapes as the building blocks for illustrating characters as well as how to use guide lines to rotate faces etc.  They children practiced creating people by starting off with a stick person and ‘filling’ them out.

Shoo reinforced that everything takes practice, practice, practice, just like our school REACH character Practicing Pete.

It was a very informative and enjoyable session.

Shoo Rayner has lots of Youtube videos on  ‘how to draw’ available to watch if you would like to learn more.  Here is one example:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaQOnL-tNULRYma5nRDy1QA

# Successful Learners

P1-7 received a visit from our local Royal National Lifeboat Institute (R.N.L.I.) volunteers Kim and Johnathon yesterday.

They explained that there are over 4000 R.N.L.I volunteers in our country.  Each person gives up their time for free to help others. They work very closely with the coastguard.

We learned that the lifeboat travels at 25 knots, which is equivalent to 32 miles per hour.  The boys and girls agreed this was pretty fast for a  boat.

Kim said that the longest ‘shout’ rescue job they have been on was over 20 hours, so the job can be physically demanding. They will respond from everything to a kayak in trouble to large ferries, wherever anyone needs help at sea. She also said that every volunteer receives basic lifesaving skills training such as C.P.R.  Our P4-7 class have already practiced this skill with Tanya Ellis, our local paramedic.

Johnathon explained to everyone that if we ever fall in the water, the shock of the cold water can be very dangerous for our bodies.  He said we should all ‘starfish’ float for a minute to let our bodies adjust to the cold before we try to swim.  This safety tip could save our lives.

Johnathon showed us all the safety and protective clothing each RNLI officer has to wear when going out on a shout.  It is all designed to protect them from the cold and to save their lives if they get into trouble. Everyone got to try on the helmet and the lifejacket.  The life jacket is a very expensive piece of equipment, costing nearly £1000.

# Responsible Citizens

Photos uploaded by digital leaders Lillie and Maya

Written by Digital Leaders – Findlay Thorburn

P1-7 travelled to the Academy for a Bubbly Maths workshop session today.

Bubbles the clown used string loops to make bubbles of different diameter.

We practiced using our handy body measure to estimate a metre length. Ava lily is the perfect metre from her left shoulder to her opposite right arm outstretched.

We were shown how to visualise and estimate how many metres the hall was in length, breadth and height.  Ruby was asked to count out the number of metre length balloons it took for each dimension.

Bubbles used a square of metre length balloons to let us see a ‘square metre’.  We then used a cube made out of metre length balloons to see a cubic metre.  This helped us to estimate how many it would take to fill our hall.

As we had arrived before anyone else, we got a special session where we estimated how many of our class we could fit into the metre cubed balloon shape.  We managed to fit all 12 of us present into the shape!

Bubbles created bubble shapes using open sided 3D shapes.  Again, we had a sneaky, close up view of this before the other schools arrived 🙂

Ms. Whorlow and Bubbles used a metres cube of string dipped in bubble mix to create a bubble to cover pupils in a bubble case.

Throughout the session we learned to make ‘marvellous mistakes’ that help us learn.

Here is a link to the Bubblymaths website:

https://www.bubblymaths.co.uk/

#Successful learners

P4-7 got their sprinting shoes on this morning to work with time duration and technology.

We first estimated then measured the distance of our football pitch with a trundle wheel.  It had a length of 30 metres.

Next, using a digital stopwatch, each pupil sprinted a double run of 60 metres whilst another took a turn at timing them.

We then used software to plot and display our data graphically.  We discussed which type of graph would be most suitable. The class agreed that a bar would be the best to show each individual time.

The children then selected to use either Microsoft Excel or 2SimpleGraph to enter their data.  We remembered to give our graphs a title and label each axis.

We then interpreted our results. Using our HOTS analysing skills to consider whether our results supported the questions that:

• The oldest/youngest runner was the fastest/slowest
• The tallest/smallest runner was the fastest/slowest

Our results did not support these statements, demonstrating that we are all unique.

As an extra challenge we calculated the speed of each runner using the D=S x T formula transposed to S = Distance/Time

# Successful Learners