Portpatrick Primary

Our boys and girls were treated to a visit from our local Stranraer Coastal Rowing Team today.  The team members proudly displayed their hand built skiff, The Lady Bay, and explained the construction process to the children.  We were all surprised to learn that not a single nail had been used.

During the building phase, members of the local community volunteered their help with no previous knowledge of boat building.  We all agreed it was a fine craft, painted in the colours of our local Stranraer Academy.

The children were invited to sit in the skiff and try their hand at ‘on-land’ rowing. Lewis, Ruby and Maya took up position as coxswains to guide proceedings.

Wendy Cuff explained that the week long Stranraer SkiffieWorlds rowing festival in July (7th – 13th) will see competition entrants from around the globe come to Loch Ryan. There will be up to 1500 competitors and as many as 70+ skiffs are expected to participate in the World Championships for the St Ayles Skiff class of Coastal Rowing Boats. There will be a wide range of family based events on offer during the week.  It is definitely an event not to miss!

The children took the opportunity to get their design heads by designing and decorating their own skiff back at school.  These are to be displayed around Stranraer during the festival.

The whole school put on their community spirits today as part of their Eco School responsibilities.  We all carried out a litter pick in the village with the support of family and friends.  The children got stuck in making the place spike and span.  They used their eagle eyes to spot and safely collect litter using the litter pickers provided by Kelly Monteith of the local council.

The boys and girls then applied their maths skills to calculate the weight of litter collected.  We problem solved by weighing a willing pupil before and whilst holding the litter collected.  The children then found the ‘difference’ by taking away.  We found we had gathered 5kg of litter on our clean up.  We talked about what fraction the litter weight was in relation to the pupil’s weight and converted the figure to a percentage.

This clean up is part of a wider trio litter action event organised by Mrs McHarg.

#Effective Contributors.

 

Parents and pupils were treated to a musical recital by the P4-7 class yesterday.  Over the term, they have been working hard on their Scot’s musical compositions with Claire Mann from Feis Rois. The children have learned songs in Scots and Gaelic and have composed their own instrumental arrangements to accompany their singing.  We were all delighted to listen to a wide range of instruments that the children played independently.  They showcased their talents on violins, flutes, tin whistles, a guitar, African drums and Xylophones!

Everyone agreed that it was a very entertaining morning.  Our thanks go to Claire and to the pupils for all their musical efforts, and also to the parents who came along to share the experience.

#Successful Learners

 

Pupil enjoyed a fab day away today, courtesy of the Community Council. The school was kindly given £500 to take the pupils on an extra trip – so we headed off to Ayr for the day! 

After meeting at the train station at half 8, we made the journey to Ayr, with some pupils playing I Spy to fill the time. 

Once we arrived, we walked to LA Bowl where we had a game of 10-pin bowling. There was some friendly competition between staff and pupils – Mrs Warwick was victorious in her game; but Myles beat Ms Whorlow and Liam beat Mrs Henry! It was a close competition between Mrs McHarg and Ruby – there was only 1 point between them!  

During this, groups were taken out for a game of laser quest. Pupils had a blast running around in the dark – although they targeted the teachers, who didn’t stand a chance! 

After some lunch, we made our way to the park to run off some steam, before heading back home on the train. 

Pupils had a wonderful day – many thanks to the Community Council for making this possible. 

Pupil were outside yesterday and this morning planting trees with Sian Roberts in our playground, to help provide a home for the wildlife and brighten up our playground. The 30 trees are from the Woodland Trust, who were giving them to schools for free to encourage pupils to get involved in planting trees. There are 3 different types of trees, including cherry and silver birch.

Many thanks must go to Sian and helpers who gave up their time to do this.

 

Congratulations must go to our own Rhian Palmer who at the weekend was crowned the Dumfries and Galloway Primary girls badminton champion – for a remarkable 2nd year in a row!

Rhian travelled to Dumfries to compete against all of the regional finalists and was victorious in all of her matches.  She dropped very few points in the whole event.  Rhian will now go on to the Scottish Finals in Perth, in May.

What an achievement – well done Rhian!

P1 – 3 have been beavering away in the outdoor environment as part of their farming topic this term.  They have been working collaboratively to prepare and plant a selection of vegetables in our  vegetable patch.  The children will nurture and care for potatoes, carrots, turnip, onions and beetroot. Ewan Little and Barsolus kindly donated the potatoes, carrots and turnips.  The children are all looking forward to harvesting their crop and tasting the ‘fruits’ of their efforts.

# Effective Contributors.

The pupils of P4-7 have rose to the challenge of producing a WWII related resource of their own choosing.  The children made models, posters, podcasts, rationing recipes and more!

A range of STEM skills were utilised in the tasks.  Here are just a few of the applied skills they have used:

• measuring
• weighing
• cutting
• sawing
• sticking
• combining
• decorating
• researching
• Using IT sofware

The standard was so high that Barbara had a hard time judging the winner.  She selected:

3rd Place – Maya McNeill for her Anderson Shelter

2nd Place – Isabella White for her Anderson Shelter cake

1st Place – Lee Gaunt for his dug out battle scene.

Everyone received ‘highly commended’ recognition for their sterling efforts.  Thanks go to willing family members who helped, supported and encouraged the children to be independent learners.

As a class, we used Papier Mache to produce our own Anderson shelter model.  We also worked with Balsa wood and cardboard to produce our fleet of WWII fighter planes.

# Independent Learners

Rhian, Rowan, Olivia and lee recently took part in the inter-school curling tournament which took place at the North West Castle Ice rink.  They displayed great sportsmanship.  The team were not placed, but did enjoy their day mixing and playing with senior pupils from other schools.  Many thanks to Sian Roberts for supervising the pupils at this event.

#Successful learners

As part of P1-3’s topic of Ancient Egypt, the class have been learning about the diet of the Egyptian people.  They discovered that they, in the main, had a very healthy diet and that the most important food staple was bread.

The boys and girls decided to make some using a traditional recipe to see for themselves how good it was.  They had a discussion on why yeast was needed.  The skills they used to complete this task were:

• Following a pictorial instruction recipe
• Weighing and measuring
• Mixing
• Cooperating
• Food hygiene
• Tasting
• Evaluating

The bread was deemed a resounding success by everyone!

#Successful Learners