Portpatrick Primary

Our responsible pupils took part in a community litter pick today.  Despite the driech weather, the children were enthusiastic and keen to help protect wildlife and keep our beaches clean.

Kerry Monteith, Ward Officer Stranraer and the Rhins, helped organise the event as part of the Keep Scotland Beautiful – Spring Clean Month with the aim of carrying out as many spring cleans across Stranraer and the Rhins as possible in March.  It was a real community initiative as we were joined by Brenda and Helen, volunteers from Onus SW Scotland (Oceans Need Us) too, linking in with our Eco Schools Litter target. The spring clean activities are a collective action between

We rootled amongst the seaweed and managed to gather a surprising amount of plastic rope, twine, broken shards of plastic and wrappers.  It was amazing how much was there.

We are doing our bit to help our community and the planet too!

# Responsible Citizens

Primary 7 pupils from across the Stranraer area came together for a curling bonspiel today.

There were two section games running concurrently :

• Rephad 1 vs Belmont
• Sheuchan vs Park 2

and

• Sandhead vs Park 1
• Portpatrick vs Rephad 2
• Leswalt vs Kirkcolm

The results were as follows:

• 1st – Rephad
• 2nd – Kirkcolm
• 3rd – Sheuchan

There was teamwork, sportsmanship and determination evident from all and  a great time was had by everyone.  Well done to all the competitors.

Thank you to the North West Castle for hosting and organising the event and for providing a delicious lunch for the competitors.  Thank you also to Mrs Ross for escorting our curlers.

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By kind invitation of Steve, P5 – 7 visited the Stoneykirk Aviation Musuem.  The learning experience fits with our Social Studies topic of World War II, as chosen by the children.

Steve led a guided tour around his very well equipped museum.  He took us round his exhibits, showing how technology has evolved since the early war years to the time of Concorde.   The children were able to handle genuine artefacts such as ration books, identity cards and bullets. As part of our tour, we learned of the significant role Wigtownshire played in the war effort.

The highlight of our experience was the impressive hanger with cockpits of planes dating from WWII onwards.  Steve has lovingly restored these by hand.  We saw the De Havilland plane made from wood, nicknamed the wooden wonder, when metal was so scarce during the war.

The boys and girls had so much fun climbing into the cockpits of the planes and getting a wee taste of what it was like for the pilots of these impressive machines.

Thank you so much to Steve for allowing us this opportunity.

# Successful Learners

Just a wee bit early, Portpatrick Primary kicked off British Science Week 2023 with a bang today.  We opened our doors to our families to offer a science carousel event.  We were joined by Karen Creighton of DG STEM. A Dumfries and Galloway cameraman was also in attendance, filming the event to share across our region as an example of good practice in STEM.

Our older pupils took on leadership roles as facilitators at each station, guiding the activities with the classmates.  There were also instructional QR code links to help reinforce the learning points for each activity.

 

 

 

 

Our Activity Stations

Have a look at the fun we had in our STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths) learning:

British Science Week 2023

This year’s British Science Week’s theme is all about making connections. Innovations in science, technology, engineering and maths are the foundation of this. Kirkcolm, Leswalt and Portpa…

Go to this Sway

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Our P5 – 7 STEM Gurus were at it again today.  This time we participated in a national Code Along linking with 21 other schools across Scotland.  The theme of this experiential learning activity was Networks and radio communication with Micro:Bits.

We selected coding blocks to allow our Micro:bits to communicate in pairs via radio signals.  We also introduced IF, THEN and ELSE controls into our coding blocks to create dicated option responses. dependent on these pairing.

 

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Portpatrick pupils celebrated World Book Day on Thursday 2^nd March. We started off the day by talking about our favourite books, sharing why we loved them and who our favourite characters were. We then took part in a school competition ran by our librarians, Katie and Louise, to draw a picture of our favourite book character – we had pictures of the Worst Witch, Horrid Henry and the Ice Monster.

After lunchtime, P1-4 pupils took part in a World Book Day scavenger hunt where they had to hunt inside and outside for pictures of well-known book characters and find the clue written on them. Afterwards, we had a chat about the books these characters are from and pupils were able to share their knowledge of familiar stories. At 2pm, we snuggled up with a hot chocolate to enjoy the live David Walliams’ Storytelling Spectacular online event. David entertained us with excerpts from some of his famous books, including Gangsta’ Granny and the Boy in the Dress, and he even gave us a sneak-peak into his new book ‘Robodog.’

We then spent time looking online at the books that are available to swap our World Book Day tokens for at WHSmith – younger pupils liked the look of the ‘Dave the Pigeon: Bookshop Mayhem’ and older pupils were keen on ‘Boot It!’ and ‘A Dragon Realm.’

We finished the day by spending time enjoying our favourite books and some pupils were able to sit an Accelerated Reading test. Everyone left school with an appreciation of the importance of reading, the knowledge of some new books they might like to read, and a book token in hand to put towards a new book.

Tomorrow, our librarians will draw our reading raffle for February and select the winner of the drawing competition.

As part of Cyber Scotland Week P5 – 7 participated in a cyber safety webinar with George Milleken of Education Scotland and Poppy from Techshecan.

We learned what cyber risks are and talked about the kind of information we should keep private.  We know now never to click on a link or share information unless we check with an adult first.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As part of Developing the Young Workforce (DYW), we explored future careers in Cyber Safety:

 

Poppy shared ways that cyber security keeps us safe online e.g.:

• 2-step verification
• Biometrics with facial and thumbprint scanning
• Encryption
• Anti-virus software

We then watched a video to learn more:

 

Tech for Katie and Tex explore cyber security (techshecan.org)

You can explore more on cyber safety using this game based website here:

– Cyber Games UK

# Responsible Citizens

Monday saw the culmination of an eight week Soundtrap project where our P5-7 digital savvy pupils have been creating their own music.

Our boys and girls have been selecting instruments, layering tracks, inserting loops, choosing beats and tempos AND editing & refining to produce a quality music soundtrack.  The children worked both in pairs and in groups, developing their meta skills and the skills for life, learning and work.

 

This has been a fabulous opportunity for the children to develop their digital literacy by accessing innovative software.

 

 

Why not head over to the Spotify webpage to have a listen to the wonderfully creative work our super smart kiddos have produced!

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# Effective Contributors

We can’t thank Mr Dinning enough for everything he has done with us over this past 4 weeks. We will certainly ensure to make as much use of these free accounts as we can and keep your eyes (and ears) peeled for our sessions making their way onto Spotify!

As part of learning about World War Two for our Social Studies topic, we were joined by William and Barbara’s grandson, Charlie today.  The gents came along to share their knowledge on WWII in our local area.

William has published WWII themed two books on the subject.  He brought along copies to share with the children.  He patiently took questions from the class and shared his knowledge on a wide range of subjects such as German bombing of Belfast and Glasgow, Loch Ryan in the War and our area being used to train pilots from around the world.

The children had some personal interview time with William, finding out more information to fit with their chosen WWII projects.

Charlie directed us to Scarlet Visuals.  The Youtube channel provides access to a number of WWII videos highlighting our local area’s role during WWII.  We watched World War II History: On The Shores of Loch Ryan as William provided additional relevant commentary on the content too.

Thank you to William, Barbara and Charlie for support our project research today!

# Successful Learners

Mrs Hall from DG STEM team joined us today for a Sphero workshop.  Sphero is a programmable robotic coding toy that allows children to explore coding using direction and angles.  The device is capable of rolling around under the control of a smartphone or tablet.

The children connected their Sphero to their IPad using a bluetooth connection.  We then used the controls to select a different colour for each Sphero L.E.D. display to allow us to differentiate each group’s devices.  We then learned about the speed, steering wheel and aim controls.

The class took turns on steering their Sphero robots through ‘bridges’ (our legs).  Computational thinking was required to consider direction, angle and speed to achieve a score point.

We then moved on to more complex challenges of controlling Sphero to approach a wall as close as possible without contact.  We got as close as a gap just the width of a sheet of paper.

Our next challenge was to traverse a square pattern using angles and direction, moving on to include changing colour coding blocks.  Through debugging, we found that including a delay at each corner point created a smoother transition and avoided ‘roll on’.

It was a really fabulous session with lots of purposeful discussion and learning.  Thank you to Mrs Hall for leading the workshop!

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