Today we said goodbye to our wonderful school cleaner, Larraine. After working at Portpatrick Primary School for 10 years (yes 10!!), Larraine has decided to put her feet up and retire!
The pupils presented Larraine with some gifts from the children, staff and the Parent Council to remember Portpatrick Primary by – she loved the handmade card with a photo of her wearing a flowery headband!!!
Thank-you Larraine for everything you have done for Portpatrick Primary, both in your capacity as our cleaner and in volunteering. Enjoy your well deserved retirement – and don’t be a stranger!
Today we said thank-you goodbye to our superstar janitor, Mr Brawls, who has sadly retired from Portpatrick Primary. Mr Brawls has been at Portpatrick for over 3 years and has worked his socks over – nothing was ever a problem to him!
Our House Captains and a few other pupils presented Mr Brawls with some retirement gifts, to fondly remember his time at Portpatrick Primary by.
Thank-you for everything Mr Brawls – we’ll miss you! Enjoy your retirement!
Everyone gathered in the hall to say goodbye
House Captains presented Mr Brawls with gifts from the school
Maya presented gifts from the Parent Council
Ava Lily presented a card she made that everyone signed
As part of our ongoing commitment to S.T.E.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) we got our aprons on today; with food technology and nutrition as our learning focus.
This year, the Royal Horticultural Society’s Big Soup share took a different tack, where organisations were encouraged to share a pot of soup within their social bubbles. The annual event is to encourage social involvement and highlight the issue of food waste.
The boys and girl picked our home grown sweetcorn and leeks from our veggie patch. We brought in a range of vegetables to add to our pot. We cleaned, prepped and chopped carrot, pepper, sweetcorn, leek and onion. The children were given a choice of adding rice, pasta or lentils to our soup. Rice was the winning choice.
Next, we simmered our soup and enjoyed a tasting session in the afternoon. The verdict was that soup is a great way to get those veggies eaten in a delicious way. There were seconds and even thirds served and the pot was scraped empty!
P1-4 pupils had a wonderful session with Susi Briggs on Wednesday afternoon, as part of the Rhins Coastal Path project. Susi popped back this afternoon to complete her input with the class – and what a lovely time we had out in the sunshine making music!
We started by humming along to familiar tunes – pupils suggested sounds we could make such as meowing, barking, howling rather than saying ‘la’ all the time – we had quite the menagerie!! We then kept the beat to a different tune by tapping, clapping and jiving! Pupils started to compose a class song on Wednesday all about the things they saw at the beach last week, so we had a practise of our song, standing like a professional choir on the outdoor steps!
Next, we got the instruments out – this was the bit we had all been waiting for!! We practised playing our instruments at different speeds and volumes – we definitely needed our listening ears on for this one given the noise level!
After that, we split into 2 groups – 1 group explored the instruments and looked and which instrument would be best to match a given word/phrase, e.g. the clip-clop of horses hooves, the shimmering of the waves. The other group worked with Mrs McHarg to decide on actions/movements for given words – we pretended we were limpets on the shore and used our arms to wave like seaweed. We were then given a song and we had to choose instruments and actions to match the words – and then performed it to the class.
After one final version of our class song which was recorded, we thanked Susi for a fabulous afternoon of music outdoors!
For our last day of maths week, P4-7 have been learning and revising our knowledge of coordinates. We introduced our activity by locating the treasure on a pirate’s treasure map by plotting and locating coordinates.
We then went outside to play a game of human battleships. The children worked out the appropriate size of grid for a fair probability of getting a hit for someone’s position when standing on the grid. We decided that a 6 x 6 grid would give a probability of 1 in 36 chance of getting a hit for each person standing in a grid location. We calculated all the possible grid coordinates that we would need to play and created grid cards accordingly.
Next, we split into two teams. Each member of our ‘ship’ team selected a square to stand in. The ‘submarine’ team then drew out coordinate cards from a bag. If the coordinate on the card matched the position that a ‘ship’ (person) was standing in, then they were sunk.
The children were very enthusiastic and had great fun whilst learning in the sunshine.
P4 -7 have been extending their thinking on 2D and 3D shape following on from our observational walk in the village when we looked and discussed shapes used in building structures.
Today, the children got their architect’s hats on and designed their own structures using software on the computer. They used a range of 2D and 3D shapes as building blocks to form their structures.
Next, some translated their designs in to physical buildings by using Kapla building block materials. Other’s used trial and error in the design process.
The task helped develop team working soft skills such as negotiation, cooperation and communicating where critical thinking was at the forefront of their challenge.
P1-7 had a special treat today as we visited the set of the feature length movie, Kingslayer, being filmed on location at our local Dunskey Estate.
Mr and Mrs Orr Ewing and the film production team, Stronghold London Limited, kindly invited the pupils to join them to learn a little about how movies are made. The period film is being directed by Stuart Brennan who also stars in the movie along with Carolina Carlsson, Ryan Gage and Ellie-Rose Mackinlay.
We all met around the fire pit where we were entertained with a lively talk about life in medieval times by actor and director, Stuart Brennan. We saw replica weapons and had the opportunity to look at period costume examples. We then got to witness a sword fight and found out how each step is carefully choreographed over a long period of time to get it just right.
Next, we were invited on set, in the woods, to watch an scene being filmed. We could see the many different people who work in the industry who are required to film scenes and make film production possible. This experience helps children understand the varied career paths and options that might be available to them in the future.
It was an insightful experience which the children thoroughly enjoyed. Everyone was given a little memento of the day; a laminated shooting schedule for today’s filming signed by the stars of the film.
Thank you to everyone who made this trip possible.
P4-7 headed up to the woods in the sunshine today to gather natural materials to create symmetrical pictures. We had the challenge of finding matching items of similar size and and shape such as leaves, twigs, grasses and pine cones etc.
Back at school, we created a line of symmetry on a large sheet of paper. The children had to work in pairs using their soft skills of cooperation, idea sharing and negotiation to agree their layout theme.
They carefully selected and placed natural materials to produce symmetrical pictures with similar parts facing each other as a mirror image.
The children have been very creative in combining art with maths today. Have a look at their lovely symmetrical pictures.
P4 – 7 kicked off Maths Week by learning about how architects use maths and science in their jobs to design structures.
We looked around our classroom to identify the range of 2D and 3D shapes that were visible. Despite the drizzle, we extended our observation by going for a walk in the village to see how many other shapes we could identify. We found a wide range. The older buildings provided a greater range of shapes in their structures. We made sure to look up to spot the triangular prism shapes of roofs and the triangular structures on dorma windows.
We discussed why the square and rectangular shapes were more common on modern buildings; with their properties of tiling and tessellating easily together.
We created a tally chart of our shape spotting. We then used technology to plot a graph of our results before we analysed our data by answering a range of questions. For example; Why do you think this structure has been designed this way? How does this shape provide structural support?
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