Portpatrick Primary

The weather was kind to us today as the whole school participated in a sponsored walk at Dunskey Estate.  This was to raise funds for the P.F.A.

P1-2 walked a route from the Tea Room, round by Home Farm and the Game Keeper’s cottage before returning back to the start.  P3-6 walked a longer distance appropriate to their age via Glen Lodge.  Mr Orr-Ewing popped out to say hello as we walked by Dunskey House.

The children had a chance to enjoy playing in the maze before returning to school.

Thank you to the parents who gave their time to organise the walk, transport and supervise the children.  Thank you also to Mr & Mrs Orr-Ewing for granting us permission to walk on the estate.

Our annual school sports day was well attended by friends and family today.  Luckily, the weather was kind to us.  The boys and girls enjoyed a great range of sporting challenges from egg & spoon to distance sprints.  The children demonstrated a great attitude of sportsmanship and encouragement towards one another throughout the afternoon. The parents were keen to have a go and were ‘good eggs’; joining  in our obstacle races.  There are rumours of a steward’s enquiry over conduct on the Daddies race, however 😉  Results will be communicated as soon as possible.

Effective contributors – Confident Individuals

As part of their project on “The Romans”, Mrs Cameron set her class the homework task of designing and making a shield at home.  Have a look at the fantastic results of this challenge.

Portpatrick Primary would like to say thank you very much to Jean Rankin.  Jean recently did a 10 mile sponsored walk in aid of school funds (for the “carpet fund”).  Today she popped into school to had over a big cheque for £370.  Jean has also kindly organised for all pupils to have an ice cream after sports day – and has paid for that herself.

Many thanks Jean  for thinking of us at Portpatrick Primary, it was very kind of you!

On Friday 9th of June, the whole school set off for a day of learning and fun at Dumfries House in Cumnock.  We were joined on our journey by P5-7 from Leswalt Primary.  On arrival, the groups split off to participate in different activities.  P1-4 went on a bug hunt, exploring creatures in the habitats around them.  The children helped to construct a ‘bug hotel’ and visited the garden area to pot plants of their own.  P5-6 explored the conditions plants need to grow.  They then moved on to plant rapeseed in pots in the potting shed.  The pupils also considered what materials are biodegradable before creating their own compost gardens in a bottle to take home.

Both schools came back together to have free time in the adventure playground.  The boys and girls then enjoyed an ice-cream before returning journey.

Primary 5 and 6 were treated to another great session with Pitch, Pulse and Magic today.  The Spencer Strachan duo performed a range of classical pieces on the violin and cello.  The children were asked to identify the tempo and the musical concepts in a selection of famous pieces. For example, the pupils had to guess the animal being depicted in the Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saens.

There was opportunity to explore inter-disciplinary learning links with science (sound).  The pupils were asked to identify how sound is produced and how it travels.  They also carried out a water pitch experiment to identify which glass of water, when tapped, produced the highest/lowest pitch sound and why.

We also linked to our Language and Literacy work of poetry this term.  The pupils used their Higher Order Thinking Skills to Create movement to music that was matched a poem read aloud by Jenna.

This session was followed by our continuing Feis Rois Ukelele workshop.  Primary 5 and 6 are  becoming very proficient in identifying, reading and playing musical chords on this instrument.  They are able to work collaboratively to play very pleasing group compositions.

Successful Learners – Effective Contributors.

P1-4 went on a journey through time today as part of their ‘Life Long Ago’ topic. They experienced a History Alive workshop exploring the Roman Era.  Kathryn delighted the boys and girls by dressing up as a Roman Centurion.  She displayed a range of authentic artefacts and weapons for the children to explore.  Our Roman visitor then shared many facts about Roman traditions, culture and lifestyle.  The children were given an opportunity to be hands-on by dressing up and engaging in role play.  There was much discussion on what life must have been like and how it compares to life today.

Here are some quotes from the girls and boys recounting their experience:

“I asked a lot of questions about lots of different kinds of things.   My favourite thing to do was dress up as a rich Roman lady.   After dressing up I went to hold a sword and it was really heavy!   Ava Lily.

“The Roman visitor brought some Roman weapons like swords and spears and some armour. After that, we got to play because the Roman visitor brought Roman costumes and some Celts costumes. We play- fought with fake spears.  It was very fun. We got to try lift very heavy armour.”  Finlay Schofield

The joint partnership football team from Portpatrick and Leswalt  Primary schools took part in the first fun day tournament of this term – with great success.

The boys and girls played at Rephad fun night and progressed unbeaten to the final.  This competition was open to all schools in the Stranraer cluster.  In the final they played Belmont Primary, who eventually won. 

Well done to all who played – there was great team work and sportmanship displayed throughout.  Special thanks must go to Ewan Dodds for coaching at Leswalt and Alec Ross, from Portpatrick,  for managing the team at this tournament.

To celebrate Scotland’s national outdoor learning day, Ms Whorlow and Mrs Henry planned lots of fun activities to take place outdoors throughout the whole day.  There were great links to numeracy and maths, literacy, technologies, science, social studies, art and much more!

P1-4 ventured in to the playground to play a huge game of battleships!  They had to read co-ordinates on each other’s grids to try to sink each other’s battleships!  They picked up co-ordinates quickly and were soon sinking the crafts!

Before lunch, P1-4 also went a walk down to the harbour for some imaginative writing.  The used the beautiful setting in Portpatrick to describe what they could see, hear, touch, taste, smell, feel and then used this for inspiration for a story.  In groups, the pupils created characters (some included an ‘evil mexican’, a ‘dragon’, a ‘royal sea pup’ and a unicorn!) and used their imaginations to create a story with an introduction, a problem then a solution to the problem.  Lots of locals and visitors in the village enjoyed listening in to all these wonderful ideas and commented on how well the children were engaged in their learning!  The class then wrote up their stories once back at school after lunch before ending their outdoor learning outside with Mrs Edwards, our PE specialist for some fun with patterns and skipping!

 

In p5/6, they focused on identifying angles within their environment.  They had to find compass point bearings for local land marks and made birds eye view sketches of these from their excellent elevated view from the playground.  They also marked out compass points using cones and recorded the angles.

After this, to link in with their current Science topic on ‘Plants’, the children went around their environment observing the variety of flowers on show.  They also used magnifying glasses to observe the different insects who travel to these flowers which led to great discussion on food chains.  The magnified view allowed the children to view the intricate details of leaves and the components of flowers e.g. petal, leaves, stem, anther, stigma etc.

The learners then used what they had observed to create intricate sketch drawings of the flower, really focusing on attention to detail.  This provided opportunities to discuss symmetry and compare and contrast features of flowers and plants.

In the afternoon, the class ventured in to their local village to explore which areas provide rich tourism for the local community.  They visited the putting green, family play park, local walking paths, fishing trips, golf club, local restaurants and bars as well as the beautiful sandy beach and rocky cliffs.   For being a wee village… Portpatrick certainly has a lot to offer the rest of the world! 🙂

On their way back to school, p5/6 bumped int o p1-4 who were out collecting data on the locals and visitors favourite things.  They questioned passer by’s appropriately then recorded their responses in a table and used tally marks to record totals.  They will turn this information in to a graphical display next week!

We were so lucky to have 2 gorgeous sunny days to extend the outdoor learning 🙂

Next week, p1-4 will be learning how to be journalists and reporters by creating their own newspapers and articles.  To help with this learning, Mrs Henry took them all in to the local Free Press Office in Stranraer to meet the production and reporting team and see how a newspaper is created.

The staff were fantastic with the children and really got them involved in the process from start to finish … they even made it on to the front page of the press in a mock up paper on the editors computer! 🙂