On Thursday 30th May we were delighted to welcome visitors from UNICEF UK and family members to discuss how our school and school community have been working towards our Gold Accreditation. The P1-7s have been working very hard to ensure we are a Rights Respecting School. In our journey to becoming a Gold Accredited school we have completed activities such as rights assemblies, developing a rights mascot, sharing a rights homelink book, designing rights games, hosting a rights open afternoon and singing the ‘We’ve All Got Rights Song’ with sign language. Our pupils took full responsibility for showing our visitors around the school and carefully explaining and discussing all of the exciting things we have been up to.

As part of our learning and teaching during the visit, linked to our writing topic – Instructions, we gave ourselves the challenge of following instructions to make a paper Rights Fortune Teller. This proved quite tricky but by following the instructions carefully and with a little bit of help we managed to fold them successfully and began adding rights to test our peers!

We are very proud of the boys and girls for warmly welcoming our visitors and confidently sharing their super knowledge. As a little treat for all of their hard work we enjoyed a bowl of ice cream together as a school and recapped our Rights journey so far.

Great work everyone, we look forward to hearing back from UNICEF UK to find out if we have successfully achieved our Gold Accreditation.

• UNCRC Rights of the Child: Article 4 Making Rights Real / Article 13 Sharing Thoughts Freely
• Sustainable Development Goal: 4 – Good Education
• SHANARRI – Achieving, Responsible, Respected, Included

On Tuesday 28th May our after school Life Skills Club continued. This week the P1-7s were invited to attend a skills session based on hospitality. We started by setting our table for a two course meal. The boys and girls had good knowledge of how to set a table from previous experiences but few had set a table for more than one course. We looked at an example of a table setting before getting to work setting our own place.

Once the table was set we got started on preparing our first course – melon boats. We discussed food hygiene and agreed that before we started we should always wash our hands. Everyone confidently used a knife to prepare their fruit after some discussion about knife safety. We showed skill and control when using a knife to cut and slice.

Then, we took our melon to our place setting and discussed how we would serve the plate to someone already sitting at the table. We also had a chat about table manners and how to show someone that you are finished with the food in front of you. We carefully cleared the plate from the person to our left, scraped any waste into the bin and neatly stacked the sink ready for washing up.

For our second course we made tortilla pizzas. Again, we used our chopping skills and got creative with our toppings. While these baked we returned to the table for a toast and a drink of something fizzy! We discussed the skills we had used during the session including listening, organising, cutting skills, focusing, being clean and using our manners. To finish off we enjoyed our delicious pizzas and cleared our table.

We didn’t forget our washing up, we ran out of time during our session but the dishes were still there in the morning to be rinsed, cleaned and dried before being put away.

Meta-Skills

Initiative / Communicating / Collaborating / Critical Thinking / Curiosity

• UNCRC Rights of the Child: Article 6 Life, Survival and Development / 15 Setting up and Joining Groups / 24 Health, Water, Food and Environment
• Sustainable Development Goal: 3 – Good Health & Wellbeing, 4 – Good Education
• SHANARRI – Healthy, Nurtured, Responsible, Included

Over the past 10 weeks P1-4 have enjoyed sessions with Paul and Becky from the Youth Music Institute, Feis Rois. They have joined us each week to teach us about Scottish and Gaelic music. We have investigated Scottish instruments, learned some new Scots and Gaelic words and took a tour of Scotland to learn the history of some of the songs we have been singing.

The boys and girls thoroughly enjoyed singing, playing games and even getting a chance to play some instruments while preparing for our Tartan Tour Showcase.

To round off our sessions we had a visit from a videographer who wanted to capture our last session and get some insights from the children and staff about the music program and its impact. We had some brave volunteers who were mic’d up and interviewed by Ruairidh about their experience.

A huge thank you to Paul and Becky from Feis Rois who travelled from Glasgow each week and provided such fun and engaging lessons.

• UNCRC Rights of the Child: Article 31 Rest, Play, Culture and Arts
• Sustainable Development Goal: 4 – Good Education
• SHANARRI – Achieving, Responsible, Included

On Tuesday 21st May our new Life Skills Club started after school. The P1-7s were invited to attend the first skills session based on camping and organising. It was a beautiful afternoon to practice our team working and problem solving skills while putting up tents and packing an over-night bag. The boys and girls worked in small teams to look at the equipment they had before beginning to assemble their tents.

We faced a number of challenges including feeding the poles through the tent, the breeze trying to blow the tents away and working out how the inner sleep sections attached to the outer tent. However, with some team work, using previous experiences and problem solving we managed to successfully assemble one tent….. The larger of the tents was very tricky indeed! We learned that you must check (and double check) the length of the poles and the instructions before starting to assemble the tent. We will tackle this one again another time!

The boys and girls worked well together and were Percy Perseverance’s, remaining patient and not giving up! To finish our session we identified some of the skills we felt we used during this task: Team work, strength, listening, talking to each other and problem solving.

Great work team! Next week, we will be practising different skills during a Hospitality session.

Meta-Skills

Initiative / Communicating / Collaborating / Critical Thinking

• UNCRC Rights of the Child: Article 31 Rest, Play, Culture and Arts / Article 15 setting up or joining groups
• Sustainable Development Goal: 3 – Good Health & Wellbeing, 4 – Good Education
• SHANARRI – Active, Included

Portpatrick Pupils were environmentally aware today.  As part of our Eco Schools Scotland action plan on litter and waste, the children have been learning about the negative impact this has on biodiversity. 

The children have been working in partnership with our local Community Safety Wardens to design litter awarness posters.  These have been made into weather-proof posters to encourage everyone to be responsible to protect our environment &  wildlife, and to keep our beautiful village looking spotless for everyone to enjoy.  The community safety team escorted the pupils around the village to prominently display our posters for all to see. 

We are responsible citizens and effective contributors.

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

Sustainable Development Goals: 1 – Life Below Water, 15-Life on Land, 

SHANARRI – Responsible

Our Partnership Primary 6 pupils attended Operation Safety at Stair Park on Tuesday as part of an education and awareness service operated by our emergency services.

The children participated in workshops on a range of key themes to help educate them on dangers they may face and how best to manage risk to keep themselves as safe, healthy and trouble free as possible.

The workshops attended were:

• Coastguard – keeping ourselves safe when rescuing someone drowning
• Ambulance – assessing the situation and recovery position
• Police – alcohol and its effects
• Fire Brigade – Dangers in the home
• Police – Vandalism
• Scottish Power – Electricity and its dangers
• Police – Social media safety
• Police – drugs

Our pupils developed a deeper awareness of the potential risks and discussed strategies to help them cope sensibly with risky situations.

Thank you to our emergency services for a very informative day and worthwhile day.

UNCRC Rights of the Child:

6 – Life, survival and development

16 – Protection of Privacy

17 – Access to Information

33 – Protection from harmful drugs

Sustainable Development Goals:

3 Good Health and Wellbeing

On Friday afternoon we donned our tartan, grabbed our flags and got our dancing shoes on to celebrate 50 years of the Bay City Rollers’ Shang a Lang!

The boys and girls (and adults!) of Portpatrick Primary boogied the afternoon away to commemorate 50 years of the famous single Shang a Lang. While listening to her favourite radio channel, Mrs Henry heard the challenge set by Greatest Hits Radio to submit a video of everyone enjoying the catchy tune. We jumped at the chance to let Mrs Henry relive her youth and have a bop with the children, so keep your eyes peeled to find out if we made it into the official Greatest Hits Radio video!

For now, enjoy our own photos and videos of a fabulous afternoon dancing with a view!

• UNCRC Rights of the Child: Article 31 Rest, Play, Culture and Arts
• Sustainable Development Goal: 3 – Good Health & Wellbeing, 4 – Good Education
• SHANARRI – Active, Included

Pupils from Portpatrick and St. Joseph’s primaries joined together to enjoy a day of outdoor learning at Logan Botanical Gardens.  The children headed off in the sunshine for two workshops.

Primary 4 – 7 pupils explored different ways of experiencing our local habitat to find out some of the ways that environmental factors shape the biodiversity and the landscapes we live in. They practiced creative mapping techniques using scale.  They learned how to represent and connect to their surroundings by recognising the four cardinal directions using compass bearings between features in a landscape. This helped them develop the meta-skills of sense-making and curiosity.

After the workshops there was time for the children to enjoy a picnic lunch in the beautiful gardens.  It was a fantastic day thanks to the Royal Botanical Garden Edinburgh.

• UNCRC Rights of the Child: Article 24 Health & Environment
• Sustainable Development Goal: 3 – Good Health & Wellbeing, 15 – Life on Land
• SHANARRI – Healthy, Active, Included

Janet from Creative Stranraer came to visit our school on Monday this week to tell the children about the exciting Cycling Festival which is happening in Stranraer soon. She was looking to gather ideas from the children as to what type of activities they would like to see at the event. As expected, the children were full of fantastic ideas including…

Janet was delighted with the children’s suggestions. She plans on seeing if any can be used for the event. She hopes to see the children and families at the Cycling Festival soon – keep a look out for dates!

• UNCRC 5 – Children have the right to be guided by their communities
• UNCRC 12 – Respect for Children’s Views
• UNCRC 13 – Sharing Thoughts Freely
• SHANARRI – Responsible, Respected, Included

Portpatrick and St. Joseph’s football teams enjoyed a practice session in the sun today. Our two coaches, John & John were on hand to offer tips, advice and guidance to our eager team players. Wishing our teams good luck at the Academy tomorrow.

UNCRC Rights of the Child – Article 15: Joining groups, Article 24 – Health

SHANARRI – Healthly, Active, Included