Portpatrick Primary

It is a sad day indeed at Portpatrick Primary.

Barbara, our fabulous catering manager, is retiring today after 20 years of faithful service. Over two decades Barbara has served delicious and nutritious meals to each and every one of us.  Each meal has been prepared with love and care.  She served her very last school dinner to Izzy today and we couldn’t let the occasion go unmarked even in the midst of  the current circumstances.

She has always gone above and beyond, making sure every individual child was catered for.  She has always embedded herself in whole school life, organising events and giving of her time and skills for charity and the community.

She is irreplaceable and will be very much missed by all!

Wishing you every happiness for a long and happy retirement.

With love from us all at Portpatrick Primary

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The whole school had a blast today, taking part in a range of STEM activities (Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths).  We made full use of our environment.

To start our day off in the fabulous sunshine, the boys and girls enjoyed a maths themed Easter egg hunt. They had to seek out colour coded number challenge eggs to complete their calculation mission.  They were rewarded with a wee treat of a chocolate egg courtesy of the Easter Bunny, who had made an early delivery to the school.

Next up was practical STEM engineering and construction challenges in our STEM Zone. The children got stuck in to our new Kapla building kits. There were models, bridges, towers and structures galore; all created using HOTS ingenuity and imagination.  P1-3 were busy beavers too. They used the K’nex vehicle kit to make moving vehicles and machines of their own design.  Some undertook Lego challenge missions to construct models, patterns and designs successfully.

Coding was next on the agenda as the children applied computational thinking to design algorithms to complete challenges on their coding fundamentals course with Code.org.

Finally, we all made our way down to the park for well earned social time.  The children enjoyed participating in active play with their friends.

Wishing you all safe, happy and healthy over this period.

Love from Portpatrick Primary

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There is a wealth of information, ideas and resources available free to use to assist you with helping your child to learn during the school closure.

Here is a handy ‘one stop shop’ web page that is set out in sections to make finding resources easier to navigate. Simply copy and past the link below into your browser.

https://sites.google.com/view/homelearningsite?fbclid=IwAR2Anu8-Il0RzEeVKQgV0HL-k_XII4QkSUhWye_Qkk7Rr44IRUT1peHrhC0

It has sections on:

• Home teaching ideas – listed by subject area
• Useful websites – listed by subject area
• Useful apps – All free, inc. of how to download Glow to your mobile device
• ‘How to’ videos’ inc. of how to use Glow.
• Google Drive
• Youtube – inc. of Joe Wicks PE activities etc.
• Articles with links to a wealth of ideas and resources e.g. “Alexa, help me learn.”

Here is a downloaded version of how to access Glow and its resources at home:

How to access and use Glow for Distant Learning

If you don’t have a computer at home, it is possible to set up an Xbox to gain access to the site through your device :

Don’t forget you can install Office 365 at home for free using this tile, which which is available on Glow and is already installed on your child’s launch pad app.  Children can share work directly with their teacher using online Word etc.

Hoping this is helpful : )

As part of our ongoing Eco Schools work to try and achieve our next Green Flag, we participated in the Keep Scotland Beautiful Pocket Garden competition. As part of this, families and pupils were invited to design a garden based on one of the 4 themes: Year of the Coasts and Waters; Keep Scotland Beautiful’s 20th Birthday; One Planet Picnic; and Wildlife Gardening.

All P4-7 pupils designed a garden in class and we submitted the entries last week. I am delighted to say that we received an email from Keep Scotland Beautiful, stating:

“We were thrilled to receive over 100 entries from across 21 of Scotland’s local authority areas and I am delighted to let you know that your entry has been successful!  There was a very high standard of entries inspired by all the themes and the judges were all impressed by the creativity, imagination and humour in the designs.  Please pass on our congratulations to your talented pupils.”

Our winning entry was from Ava Lily Orr-Ewing – a huge well done!!!

The prize is to now turn Ava Lily’s design into a real life garden and take it up to the Gardening Scotland event that is held in Edinburgh at the end of May. Our gardening club will start after the Easter holidays (circumstances permitting) and will focus on creating this.

Here is a handy ‘how to’ guide on how to access your child’s Glow account at home.  There is access to email and shared resources and files via Teams.

Your child’s Glow login will be in their homework diaries.  They have all been checked as working today.

Click on the images to enlarge or click on the attached document hyperlink to download the full Word version.

How to access glow email_teams at home Blog How to access glow email_teams at home

P4-7 ask themselves the following scientific hypothesis:

Would tomato seeds thrive quicker in a green house construction compared to those not placed in a green house cloche?

To assist with this challenge, the pupils got their engineering design heads on today.  In groups of 3 they planned and constructed a greenhouse structure using just straws, connectors and cling film.

The children applied collaboration, negotiation, self-evaluation and modification to their designs as part of the construction process.  Each team successfully produced a free-standing structure that can simply be lifted away to aid watering.

Half the plants have been placed in the cloches and half are set aside for comparison.  We will monitor growth over time to see which condition promotes the quickest growth.

# Effective Contributors & Successful Learners

As part of our week long activities for British Science Week (BSW), Portpatrick Primary invited families to join us for an open day event this morning.

Everyone took part in a carousel of STEM based activities (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths).

The range of challenges on offer were as follows:

• Geology – Observational study of rock formation
• Forces – Magnetism and materials
• Electricity – Series circuits, conductors & insulators
• Engineering – K’nex moving parts construction
• Computing – Soundtrap pocast/music making
• Computing – Coding
• Biology – Place the internal organs on a body tunic
• Biology – Studying life cycles – live caterpillars
• Aerodynamics – Construct and test an ‘O’ glider
• Aerodynamics – Construct and test a paper aeroplane
• Science Terminology – Complete a vocabulary crossword

Everyone was fully engaged and there was much chat about the learning that took place.

# Successful Learners

P1-3 got busy today to tell the time by forming a human clock.  The children had to work collaboratively to problem solve and calculate position.  They ‘chained’ together to form the minute and hour hands of a clock to show given times. The task was differentiated appropriately.

P1 challenge – O’clock

P2 challenge – half past the hour

P3 – challenge – quarter to and quarter past the hour

# Successful Learners

As part of a British Science Week, P4-7 participated in an online chat group with 12 UK scientists today.  This event is organised through funding from the Sustaining Excellence Award from Wellcome the UK’s largest charity.

The boys and girls interacted with the scientists, asking them a range of topical science questions on their field of expertise.  The pool of scientists present in the session was varied, representing a balance of genders, a broad spectrum of ethnic groups and specialist fields.  The children had an opportunity to explore the diversity of the world of work in this STEM sector.

We learned interesting facts about a wide range of subjects such as finding out about the ‘zombie fungus’ that takes over insects bodies and compels them to climb higher to 25 cm to more efficiently spread its spores at the right temperature and humidity.

The children asked questions about research into a vaccine for Covid-19.  They were reassured to find out that there are many hundreds of scientists working on this right now.  Also, the science team said that we can greatly reduce risk by simply using tissues to sneeze and cough, washing our hands and avoiding touching our faces.

It was a very interesting session, which follows on from our I’m a mathematician online chat at the beginning of the year.

# Successful Learners

Our Library monitors, Alba and Izzy, ran a competition for World Book Day, where pupils had to design a new front cover for their favourite book. Today, they had the difficult task of judging the entries and selecting 2 winners – one from P1-3 and one from P4-7.

It really was a tricky task – so much so that we had joint winners in P1-3 as the entries were so good! Tilly and Lewis were announced as the joint winners in P1-3, and Rose was selected as the winner from P4-7. The winners had a selection of books to choose from and took home 1 each as their prize.

Well done to all the boys and girls who entered the competition – it was great to see so many colourful and eye-catching designs.