Portpatrick Primary

P1-3 had a fantastic day today at the Wigtown Book Festival. Wigtown book festival aims to provide opportunities for young people to enjoy and learn through writing and storytelling and we most certainly did !

Alan Windram talked to us about his award winning book ‘One Button Benny’. He explained that Benny is a special robot. A single red button sits in the middle of his stomach. Benny has never known what the words “Only Press in an Emergency” mean until one day he is forced to find out.

The boys and girls then enjoyed participating in Robot Karaoke which included elements of dancing, singing and even some guitar. It was brilliant, and for some it was exhausting…

On Wednesday, our new playground toys arrived!! Huge thanks must go to all the friends of families of the school who participated in the Kirkcolm Mini Walk to raise funds which went towards this.

We have loved having toys to play with at break times, and our responsible playground monitors (Alfie and Lewis) are ensuring that we are taking care of them.

More photos to follow…

Last Thursday, the boys and girls in Primary 1-4 took a stroll down into the village to have a look around our community. Our current topic is Portpatrick and we have been looking at what types of facilities we have around us and why, who are the people in our community and why are they important.

During our walk we made sure to talk about all of the above, however we had a very important task to complete. The boys and girls were conducting a survey on the types of houses we have within our community. They were able to correctly identified the different types of houses and discuss why we have more terrace and semi-detached housing in the main part of the village opposed to the detached houses we find more common on the likes of Heugh Drive .

Below are some photos from our walk.

Keep an eye out to see how we will use technology to help explain what we have been learning about and display our findings from our survey.

 

 

Portpatrick Primary opened its doors to family and friends this afternoon to share our learning on digital technologies and coding as part of Digital Coding Week.

There were many activities for everyone to participate in.

P1-3 were set the challenge of programming a code-n-go mouse to navigate a large scale map of Portpatrick village.  Everyone had to estimate and try step quantity and direction to reach landmark destinations the children had reproduced on the map.

P4-7 practiced and shared their skills on digital coding, using the free online courses available on www.code.org (select projects tab).  These are available to explore further at home.  The pupils are signed up for differentiated levels of challenge.

They also continued with their musical composition using Soundtrap; sharing and collaborating on making tracks.

The pupils practiced their keyboard skills by using www.dancemattypying.com. (This is also available online at home).

Throughout the range of activities, the children were applying their computational higher order thinking skills of:

• tinkering
• collaborating
• using logic
• creating algorithms
• perseverance
• debugging

Digital technologies and computational thinking are at the forefront of the skills demand for the future world of work that our pupils will be entering.  We are committed to helping our children prepare for the challenges and opportunities that are ahead of them.  By embedding digital technologies within our curriculum, we hope to support them in this goal.

Why not watch the Socialnomics 2018 video below to see for yourself the powerful message on how our world is changing?

# Successful Learners

 

P4-7 received a special visit from Paramedic Tanya Ellis today.  We learned a great deal of information about the role of emergency services, why we would contact them and what we would say if we had to call in an emergency.  The pupils considered carefully the dangers of making hoax 999 calls.

The workshop then moved on to practicing placing an unconscious person in the recovery position. All the boys and girls were able to achieve the required pose for their unconscious casualty.

Tanya then demonstrated carrying out C.P.R. on a dummy.  The children practiced performing compressions on the dummy for themselves.  We learned that the sequence is 30 compressions to 2 breaths.

The class then shared their knowledge on how to treat a range of injuries and emergencies such as burns, asthma attacks, breaks, bites and bleeding.

# Responsible Citizens

P4-7 had our first workshop sessions on Soundtrap with Mr John Dinnin. We learned how to use it to make our own music.  We used loops and instruments to make music track.  We shared them with  each other and asked each other to tell us if they liked our music.  We will get another 3 workshop days with Mr Dinnin.  Have a listen to Sophia’s music.

# Successful Learners

Written by Digital leader Rose P4

Click play below to listen to music made by Sophia.

Pupils have had a busy start to the year, applying for various jobs in the school and demonstrating they are keen to take on positions of responsibility. We received lots of applications for Pupil Council and monitor jobs; several pupils were keen to be interviewed for the Eco committee; lots of boys and girls in the senior class applied via the online application for Digital Leaders; and P6/7 pupils said their House Captain election speeches at assembly.

This year, we have decided that pupils will earn a ‘salary’ (in the form of merits – not cash!) for undertaking their job to give them further experience of the world of work.

After a difficult decision, we have selected our new committees for the year.

Our new Pupil Council members are:

As a new addition this year, we have introduced House Captains. They will help to motivate and lead their house to gain as many merit as possible throughout the year, and will help with the organisation of events such as parties. Our House Captains are:

 

Our new Eco Committee, hoping to take forwards our current action plan and achieve our Green Flag next year:

And finally, our new Digital Leaders who will help to develop ICT in classes and provide technical support in the school are:

Maya, Rose Findlay and Lillie (photo to follow)

P4-7 are continuing to explore instructions through a range of mediums.  Today, we used our STEM craft skills to construct a paper hat.  We were required to:

• Sequence diagram images in the correct order
• Carry out the construction stages to make a paper hat
• Record each step with a clearer, digital photograph
• Create a fuller, instruction text with all the required features i.e. Title, equipment, tips, stage photographs, written commands, sequencing connectives and imperative verbs.

The children then experimented with using ‘Sway’ to create their instruction text publication.  Here is an example made by Findlay T – P7. Click on the link below then select play.

How To Make A Paper Hat

Created by Findlay Thorburn p7

Go to this Sway

# Successful Learner

P4 -7  have been doing their coding course on code.org and they have also have been giving a robotic mouse instructions to find and collect cheese through a maze made by the pupils.  We are working with how to create and debug instructional algorithms as part of  learning about instruction texts in our language topic.

#Successful Learners

Post by Digital Leader Findlay Thorburn

 

 

Findlay, our experienced digital leader, has been showing the new digital leaders how to upload photos to a computer from the digital camera. The new digital leaders have been learning how to create and publish a blog with their glow accounts.

Our new digital leaders are Findlay, Lillie, Maya and Rose.

# Effective Contributors & Successful Learners

Blog posted by Findlay T – P7