Portpatrick Primary

As part of our upcoming Maths Week Scotland event starting soon, Primary 5 – 7 met with Gillian from the Museum on the Mound in Edinburgh today.  We participated in a live online, interactive workshop to explore the History of Money.

The session began by discussing what do we use money for?  The children came up with the explanations that we use it to exchange something to get something else. We could save or we can  gift it.  Tilly said that we have to earn money.  Erin explained that we use coins and notes, Apple Pay, Contactless cards today.

We tried ripping polymer samples of bank notes but couldn’t do it.  They are pretty tough.

 

 

 

 

 

The children were given samples of items which were used as money long ago.  The first items were cowry shells.  These were used as money in China 4000 years ago and in Africa 100 years ago.

These are strong, rare and couldn’t be copied.  They were used far away from the sea. 500 years ago, one shell would buy you a cow, approx. £1500 in today’s money.

 

 

 

 

We then looked at a tevau, which was used as money in the Solomon Islands.  The children tried to identify what this 9 metres long item is made from.  It turned out to be made of bird feathers which are trimmed from the bird and it is then released. It would take one person over a year to make a tevau, thus it was a very valuable item.  Cameron stepped out 9 metres with string in the classroom. It was 40 of his foot lengths. Everyone agreed that not everyone has the same sided feet so the length might be inconsistant if measured using different people’s feet sizes.

Further sample envelope was shared with the children in groups.  They had to consider these discussion points:

• How would you describe this object?
• What do you think it is?
• Why do you think it would be valuable to the people who used it?
• Can you work out the object’s length?
• Do you think it would be easy to use as money? Why/Why Not?

Group 1 – Tea was packed in to bricks and used as money, heavy.  Used in China & Tibet as money.  It could be drunk and broken into smaller parts. One tea brick weighed about 1kg and would dissolve if wet.

Group 2 – Cocoa beans pods.  These were used by the Aztecs in Mexico as money and were valuable and used in lots of ways; to drink, buy things with them.  A rabbit would cost 35 cocoa beans. They would make good money as they were easy to carry around, but fake ones made of mud were common.

Group 3 – Tobacco leaf.  This is ground up and made into cigarettes.  When they didn’t have enough coins, Americans would use it in big barrels which weren’t easy to transport.  People used to be paid in tobacco.

Group 4 – Salt.  Big blocks were used in Ethiopia in Africa until about 100 years ago.  They would cut it up into little bricks and use as money.  It was big and heavy and was used to preserve food.  A timani of salt would buy you 8 chickens.

Erin noted that all these items had other uses besides money.

We learned that anything could be used as money as long as everyone agrees how much an item is worth.  We sometimes don’t even use physical coins and money any more.  During the pandemic, bartering of items returned in many places around the world when people were unable to get to banks to use modern forms of money.

The children then had an opportunity to design their own badge with a money themed design.  These will be posted off to the Museum on the Mound and returned as real badges for the children to enjoy.

# Successful Learners

Elspeth Hall from the D&G STEM team visited school this morning to provide the pupils with a fun, hands-on maths workshops – and they certainly weren’t disappointed! The workshop was part of our Maths Week Scotland celebrations (although we are a week early due to Elspeth’s busy schedule!).

After a little ice breaker where we had a competition to create as many different sized triangles as we could, both classes got their thinking caps on and had to work together to solve problems and complete challenges using various visual and concrete materials. We had:

• The Engine challenge where we had to sequence the coloured carts of the train in the correct order (this involved lots of maths language);
• The Wizard’s Cat where we had to put 3 magic circles around the cats so they each had their own space;
• Dice Towers were each of the 4 sides had to equal 14 but no number could be the same (think Sudoku using dice!);
• Domino walls where each side had to equal 10;
• And a graffiti wall made up of loop cards where pupils had to match the question to the answer.

The pupils had a brilliant morning applying their maths skills into contextualised problems. Many thanks to Mrs Hall for providing pupils with a marvellous morning of maths!

If we don’t get to the farm, then the farm comes to us!

Today saw an extravaganza of farming fun for the children of the North Rhins Partnership.  All three schools came together to participate in a carousel of farming activities kindly organised by Mrs McKnight.  This was an opportunity for us to learn more about farming as a career first hand, seeing a range of farming roles up close. Jack Milroy kindly allowed us to use his field for the event.

Stuart McCrindle demonstrated the great team work skills of himself and Zak rounding up sheep.  Zak is the Scottish Sheep Dog Trial Champion this year, so we were treated to an exceptional demonstration of skill.  Stuart explained that he became interested in this aspect of farming as a young boy and has made a career out of his interest.  He also explained that it takes about 4 years to fully train a sheep dog – one year for each leg, as he put it. 😉 Stuart brought along a very cute puppy that the children were able to pet and nominate names for.  The winner will be announced shortly.

Grant Hurcomb and Jack Milroy delighted the children with a sheep sheering demonstration.  The boys and girls were amazed at how quickly a sheep could be fully sheered – the work of seconds!  Grant talked about why we sheer sheep, and explained the uses of wool.  The children had an opportunity to feel the freshly clipped wool for themselves.  There was a discussion on careers as a sheep farmer.  Grant has taken part in lots of shearing competitions, clipped sheep in New Zealand and even clipped sheep for 50 hours raising nearly £50,000 for charity.

Ian McKnight (Mrs McKnight’s husband)  educated the children on sheep animal husbandry.  He explained what a farmer must do to ensure his flock is healthy and happy.  He shared examples of the medication and vitamins that are given to sheep, as part of an ongoing yearly calendar,  to prevent diseases and ensure they have the right minerals.  He also shared the different kinds of feed given to the sheep for different purposes. There were two very lovely calves and sheep nearby for the children to pet.

And last, but not least, Steven Adams and Angus Brown  brought along tractor and a chopper to show the children.  They chatted about what they use them for and the children were very excited to get the opportunity to sit in the vehicles and even toot the horn. could have a seat inside.

It was a highly successful afternoon learning about the world of work in the farming industry.  We certainly have a few budding farmers in the making!

Prior to the farming event, the children enjoyed connecting with their friends across the partnership with some outdoor play time.

Thank you to Mrs McKnight and our Farming Volunteers who took the trouble to come along and share with us.

# Successful Learners

As a wee surprise, the children arrived back at school to find that Kim and Mark had kindly fitted swings in the playground for them to enjoy.  They didn’t want to go home at 3 O’clock as they were having so much fun!

 

 

 

The children were excited to become App designers  today!

Francis Wallace, Principal Engineer of the Make It Happen Club joined us this morning to offer us the opportunity to take part in an exciting App Design challenge.  The children have the chance to enter their own app design creations into a competitition just for the North Rhins Partnership. The winning design from across our three schools will be made into reality for everyone to enjoy and use!

To help prepare children to develop their creations, Francis discussed the various apps that we use in our everyday life, chatting about who would use them and what they do.  She then shared examples of winning designs from previous years that had been made into real apps.

 

 

 

 

 

Have a look here to see the wonderfully creative apps that children have designed in the past. Click on the Winners tab.

Our boys and girls spent a little time reviewing the features of past winning apps, before moving on to design their own.  Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) were are the fore, as childrem analysed, applied, created and evaluated their concept design.

This ‘unplugged’ activity helps develop children’s digital  literacy and computational thinking.  It also builds an awareness of technological developments through representing concepts and products through the use of graphic media.  We will share our design shortly, not wanting to reveal our entries too soon. 😉

Good Luck Team Portpatrick!

Update:  Here are the results:

North Rhins ‘Make It Happen’

The children of the North Rhins Partnership were excited to become App designers.

Go to this Sway

# Successful Learners

 

Digital Leaders from Kirkcolm, Leswalt and Portpatrick came together for a training session today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The children covered a lot of areas as part of today’s agenda:

• Roles and Responsibilities
• Correctly handling, storing and charging devices
• Login – personal information, successfully accessing sites
• Bookmarking favourites and displaying our favourites bar
• Adding tiles to personal Glow launch pads e.g. Teams, Email, One Drive etc.
• Creating and sending emails with attachments to the correct recipient
• Discussing possible breaktime clubs e.g. Scratch Coding

Our inventive team decided that they would like to collaborate with each other across the partnership to plan events such as Safety Internet Day.  We have now set up an email group just for our digital leaders so they can communicate with each other.

The session was very productive and our team are ready to support their classmates in any way they can.

Here is a useful guide for parents to support their child online:

Digital-Learning-Parental-Leaflet-2022_23-2

# Responsible Citizens

Each Friday this term, we are very lucky to have Neve from Wigtownshire Rugby Club coming in to coach the whole school in rugby skills! Neve makes the sessions very interactive and engaging whilst teaching us new rugby skills.  She is developing our ability to throw, catch and deflect along with  e safe tackling.

This is the start of a 6 week block of lessons and our boys and girls will be out every Friday with Neve.

# Successful Learners

We are proud to share our elected Pupil Voice Representatives for 2022 – 2023

Eco Council

Pupil Council

House Captains

Digital Leaders

# Responsible Citizens

What better way is there to celebrate growing our own tatties for the Dandelion Great Tattie Growing Project than turning them into a delicious pot of tattie soup!

Coming together over a meal and cooking together, with the satisfaction of eating our produce, gives our children a sense of achievement and connects them to their environment.

We created a plant based meal as part of looking after our planet and helping children eat more vegetables. We scrubbed, scrapped and chopped our home grown tatties along with leaks, carrots and onions and lentils to make a MASSIVE pot of delicious soup.

 

Everyone enjoyed tucking in to a tasty bowl of home made soup, sharing our meal together. Some even had seconds!  Erin commented that, “You can taste the pototoes are home grown.  They have more flavour.”

Not only does this event celebrate our tattie crop harvest for the Dandelion Project, it also fits in with the Royal Horticultural Society’s Big Soup Share. We are promoting healthy eating, and social experiences to help support children’s wellbeing.

# Effective Contributors

Yesterday, the boys and girls of Portpatrick had a visit from our local Community Safety Team for the West of Dumfries and Galloway!

The Safety Officers took this opportunity to remind pupils about how they can stay safe in and around the community and keep their community and surrounding safe for others. 

We discussed issues related to dog fouling and litter – things that just don’t make for the nicest surroundings… Pupils were reminded of the laws regarding these issues and were informed of what can happen to offenders. We also discussed the rising issue with Gulls in the area – no longer seagulls but urban gulls!

The officers introduced a competition to design a ‘gull proof’ bin, which we could certainly do with at our school.  The winning design might even actually be constructed by D & G council! The officer promised to send details very soon

We had a lot of great discussions based around how we can keep ourselves and our community safe and the boys and girls proved to be superstar listeners. 

# Responsible Citizens

This term, Primary 5 – 7 are participating in a series of workshops organised by the Glasgow Science Centre, where we will be exploring the future of energy.

Through investigation of renewables technologies and the pathway to net zero, our pupils will discover opportunities in the energy sector and explore how their skills could change the world.

Our first learning experience focussed on electricity generation by wind turbines.  The blades of a turbine rotate when they are moved by the wind.  The slow rotation of the turbine blades can be transformed into a fast rotation needed for a generator.

To model this process, we created gears of different circumferences.  We aligned them on boards so the cog teeth interlocked when turned.  We were able to predict and test the direction of travel of each gear (clockwise or anti-clockwise).  We also calculated the r.p.m. of the gears to identify the increase in rotation rate from the larger to the smaller gears.  We used observation with a digital stopwatch, compared results and calculated our class average r.p.m. to make a fair test.

 

 

# Successful Learners