Portpatrick Primary

Portpatrick pupils participated in a day of Climate Ready Classroom activities, as part of our ongoing Eco Schools work. This was a whole day event of online sessions and follow-up activities that schools right across Dumfries & Galloway took part in.

During the morning session, we learned all about what climate change is and why it is happening. Pupils went on a hunt around the school for different emissions and Atticus got dressed up in as many items of clothing as possible to demonstrate how greenhouse gases are affecting the planet.

Between break and lunch, the focus was on how climate change affects biodiversity. Pupils went outside and used string to create a food web to demonstrate how everything is interconnected. They then worked in groups to complete a scavenger hunt, identifying things in the playground that breaks down plant waste, things that produce oxygen, etc. Pupils had to stop and use their senses to also find something that had an interesting texture, an interesting sound and something that looked beautiful – to which Lewis identified himself!!!

Our afternoon session looked at how we can take action to help climate change. Pupils brainstormed the various things that we could do at Portpatrick Primary to reduce climate change and we developed a school action plan to take forwards.

We had a fun day learning all about climate change and are looking forwards to carrying out our action plan to help make a difference.

We are proud to announce that Portpatrick Primary has achieved it’s sixth Eco Schools flag!

This represents fantastic eco-friendly action from our highly motivated pupils.  The achievement recognises all the hard work, dedication and drive from our pupils, our staff, families and our wider community.  Our action targets for 2021 – 2023 focussed on:

• Litter and Waste
• Healthy Living
• Energy

Our good work is featured in this year’s Dumfries and Galloway Learning for Sustainability Conference Showcase.  Why not click on the link to have a look for yourself to see all the fantastic activities our boys and girls have been engaged in.  They are truly responsible citizens and effective contributors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Education and Learning Team from Keep Scotland Beautiful have written to us with this message:

I have very much enjoyed reading through your journey. You have worked really hard on your wide-ranging actions to make your school a more environmentally friendly place to be. Well done!

You have fitted a huge number of amazing actions since I reviewed your last application, and it is fantastic to see that your whole school and community are involved in your Eco-Schools work. You have clearly embraced sustainability and made it part of your school ethos, which is brilliant.

Why not read the full report to see the excellent feedback we have received from Eco Schools Scotland!

Feedback52023 (1) Certificate52023 (1)

We won’t stop there as we’re already thinking ahead to our next action plan for 2023 – 2025!

UNCRC Rights of the Child: Article 24 – Health, Water, Food & The Environment.

Sustainable Development Goal: 3 – Good Health and Wellbeing, 15 – Life on Land

As part of our Eco School target of Health and Wellbeing, Primary 5 – 7 participated in the Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel Challenge.

To encourage healthy, sustainable travel, we pledged to track our transportation modes between the 20th to the 31st of March.  Pupils opted to scooter, walk and park ‘n’ stride as much as possible during this timeframe.

2772 schools participated nationally. We are pleased to share our 1st place award in the United Kingdom Small Schools Category.  We received a lovely framed certificate today – Go us!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

UNCRC Rights of the Child: Article 24 Health, Water, Food & Environment

Sustainable Development Goal 3 – Good Health and Wellbeing

Primary 5 – 7 have written and published our own fables using Book Creator online.  Using the work of Aesop’s fables, we created our own story boards and then transferred our tales into online books for everyone to enjoy.  Every story has a moral message.

Here are the digital literacy skills we used:

• Logging onto Book Creator using QR codes and Microsoft logins
• Inserting and editing text and images on each page
• Recording our voices to narrate the story
• Publishing our books online to share with our reader

Please enjoy our stories by clicking on each link below.  Don’t forget to click on the speaker icon on each story book page to listen to our narrators tell their own stories.

Katie

Louise

Conor

Lacey

Scott

Jack

Lewis

Max

Cameron

Tilly

Carter

UNCRC Rights of the Child – Article 29: Aims of Education

What beautiful weather we had for our outdoor learning day today!

We got stuck in to a wide range of learning opportunities using our outdoor environment.  In the morning, we were visited by Mrs Norval Dampney of the Incredible Edible team to carry out some TLC of our fruit orchard.

We have been reducing waste by recycling and soaking cardboard to make mulch.  We combined this with straw and soil and created a moisture sandwich around the base of each tree to act as a moisture reseviour to keep the roots watered on dry days.

Mrs Dampney educated the children on all things soil and plant related.  Did you know that there are more microbes in one teaspoon of soil than there are humans on the planet!  She promised to come back in October when the trees will be dormant to carry out some pruning with the boys and girls.

P1 -4 were Eco champions; carrying out a litter survey and a litter pick in our village.  We are pleased to report very little litter was found.

Next up, P5 – 7 linked their data handling topic in maths with outdoor learning.  We walked to the harbour and recorded the colours of cars we found using tally marks.  We then displayed this data as a bar graph and calculated the mean, mode, median and range of our data.  We grouped data such as silver and grey to minimise categories.

P1 – 4 went to the beach for a maths session using sand to draw clock faces to to tell the time.

 

In the afternoon, P5 – 7 had a PE session outdoors to maintain our health and wellbeing whilst P1 – 4 gathered natural materials to use for art printing as well as practicing their spelling words with chalk.

 

P.S. Here’s some gardening activities previousy with Kim when the children planted Casablanca and Shanon potatoes, parsley, sweet peas, pak choi, lettuce.  Yum!  Kim also kindly gave the willow dome a much needed ‘haircut’ today.

UNCRC:

• Article 24 – Health, Water, Food & Environment
• Article 29 –  Aims of Education

 

Today, we used our prior learning on the human circulatory sytem to create  lifesize diagrams of this body system.  We included the following features:

• The heart
• The lungs
• The arteries carrying oxygenated blood away from the heart around the body
• The veins carrying deoxygenated blood back to the heart and lungs

We showed the direction of flow on both the arteries and the veins.

Don’t they look great! 😉

UNCRC – 29 Aims of Education

We are delighted to announce we have been awarded our RSPB Wild Challenge Gold Award for our hard work supporting biodiversity in our school environment.

Our children completed a total of 18 challenges to Help Nature and Experience Nature , all of which promotes Learning for Sustainability, Sustainable Development Goals, outdoor learning and good health and wellbeing!

Feedback from the RSPB – We’re proud to announce that you’re a Wild Challenge gold award winner! A HUGE well done!

What a journey. You’ve taken on 18 challenges, helping your pupils get to know nature and helping it to thrive; you’ve done an amazing job!

 

 

 

 

 

 

We can now proudly display our Gold accolade for all to see.

UNCRC Rights of the Child – Article 24: Heath, Water, Food, Environment

Sustainable Development Goal – 15: Life on Land

P5 – 7 have linked with the Glasgow Science Centre to participate in their Body Works programme to learn how key body systems work.  Today, we explored the digestive process.

To simulate digestion, we filled the mouth (a snack bag) with food (bananas and crackers) and stomach acid (orange juice + water).  We mashed up the food to simulate our stomach muscles contracting and expanding to break down the food into smaller pieces.  We then put the contents into our intestines (tights).  The liquid nutrients passed through the small intestines (tights) into the body’s bloodstream (bowl).  Water was reabsorbed back into the body through the large intestines. The waste food was then passed to the rectum (foot of the tights) and was excreted as faeces through the anus with our hands working as a muscle to aid the excretion of waste (hole in the toe of the tights).

It was a ‘guddly’ mess,  but it certainly let us understand the process better.

Just look at Katie’s face! 😉

UNCRC Rights of the Child – Article 29: Aims of Education

Primary 1 – 4 combined wildlife observation with maths today as part of outdoor learning.  The boys and girls went down to our village beach and to the park to create tally charts on the mini-beasts they could spot in our local environment. The children learned how to use the conventions of tallies to record how many of each species of mini-beast they spotted.

In addition, as part of our RSPB Wild Challenges they carried out a Spot It! activity to see how many tracks and signs they could see around them. There were snail trails, cobwebs, animal droppings and feathers.  The children managed to spot shells and a live crab too.

UNCRC Rights of the Child:

Article 24 – Health, Water, Food & Environment

Article 29 – Aims of Education

Sustainable Development Goal 15 – Life on Land

Portpatrick pupils have been busy this week celebrating the coronation of King Charles III.

Earlier in the week, pupils learned all about the coronation of a monarch – from the very first coronation taking place in Bath in 973AD, to what will happen during the ceremony tomorrow.

Today, pupils came to school looking very patriotic, dressed in red, white and blue. Some even came with Union Jack capes, hats, hair braids and head boppers on! In the morning, we put our maths skills into action and baked some delicious scones,  which we enjoyed later in the day with jam and cream.

After we had enjoyed our delicious buffet lunch kindly prepared by Kim, we made some dazzling crowns and Union Jack flags. We coronated our very our King and Queen of Portpatrick Primary (Jack and Katie!). After they both gave an oath to look after everyone in Portpatrick, the Archbishop of Canterbury (AKA Lacey) anointed the King and Queen with some Portpatrick holy water; they were given the sceptre and the orb; and then they were crowned. The whole school then headed through the village in a procession, waving at locals and visitors as we went!

To end the day, parents were invited to pop into the hall to watch our special performance of “I Just Can’t Wait to be King!”

We had a brilliant day full of Coronation fun!