"Anchored in Excellence"
It was so lovely to have the boys and girls from Primary 4 to 7 return to school today. The children had so much fun reconnecting socially with their friends. We took advantage of the good weather to have a ‘walk ‘n’ talk’ around our village. It was a real pleasure to see their smiles and listen to them chatter away as they were all able to play together once again.
The boys and girls at Portpatrick Primary have been busy celebrating World Book Day both in school and at home. In School the Primary 1-3 children have taken part in the Live Lesson/Reading from David Walliams, listened to their favourite books, completed the ‘In school’ scavenger hunt, made a road map of all the books that MC Grammar Raps in the very first ‘World Book Day Song’ and finished off by baking some delicious Gruffalo Crumble. It has been a fun filled couple of days in school for the Primary 1-3 children and we have thoroughly enjoyed learning and exploring our favourite books.
However, lets not forget about our P4-7 pupils, who still joined in on the action and celebrated World Book Day from home – they were given a range of activities to pick from to join in on the fun. On offer were tasks such as the Masked Reader, designing their favourite character from fruit/veg/a toilet roll tube, a Big Booky Breakfast, and lots more! Have a keek below for some photos from all of our pupils, to show how we celebrated the day in style!
MC Grammar Rap + Road map to the library
Scavenger Hunt
Gruffalo Crumble
Home Learning – World Book Day
It may have been an odd year, but nonetheless 2020 was a rather successful one for the North Rhins Primary Schools – we are delighted to announce that we have achieved our Bronze Award for Rights Respecting Schools! This is to recognise the work we have done so far and our commitment to learning more about and embedding the UNCRC Rights of the Child in the life and ethos of our schools.
Our work started waaaay back in January last year (pre-Covid times – can anyone remember what that was like?!) when pupils began learning about the Rights of the Child at assemblies. Then, when pesky Covid came on the scene, we were forced to continue our journey towards our Bronze Award online, with some home learning challenges on various different Rights of the Child.
When we were eventually allowed to return to school and class assemblies resumed, we then focused on ‘Respect’ – what this means and how to respect others’ rights. We learned how respect is at the centre of anti-bullying and we made a video to share with everyone, explaining what ‘RESPECT’ means to each of us; here is the link if you’d like to watch it and the finalised copy of our ‘Respect for All’ policy to have a read through:
Portpatrick: 
Portpatrick Respect Movie.MOV
Respect for All Policy: 
RfA Final Policy October2020.pdf
Behind the scenes, staff have also been busy learning all about the Rights of the Child, how this permeates lots of what we do in school (including how it is embedded into our ‘Respect for All’ policy) and how we can use language and a restorative approach to further promote respecting everyone’s rights.
A huge thank-you to everyone who helped in achieving this award – we are very pleased to gain national accreditation and recognition for all of our hard work. We can’t wait to continue our Rights Respecting School journey towards our silver award – watch this space!
It was lovely to welcome the primary 1-3’s back to Portpatrick Primary today. It was nice to see all the children’s smiling faces. Below are some photos from our walk and trip to the beach this afternoon.
There was something new in the playground, awaiting the boys and girls on their first day back today! Back in September we were successful in receiving some funding from Maths Week Scotland. The only condition was that we had to use this to promote Maths, so we decided to purchase a new wall-mounted Snakes & Ladders board game with fancy magnetic counters. This will enable pupils to work with numbers to 100 in a fun way both at break times and during lessons if they go outdoors.
Have a keek below to see some smiling faces giving our new game the thumbs up!
Lockdown 2021 meant that we could not have our usual in school Scots poetry focus as all learning was taking part at home. But, this did not stop us! Our in inaugural North Rhins inter school Scots poetry competition took place on Friday 29th January and was judged by local Burns enthusiast, Mr Alec Ross.
This event took place on Microsoft Teams, where everyone could see the beautiful handwriting and creative artwork. Pupils recited their poems with gusto, over the internet.
Results were as follows –
North Rhins Scots poetry results – January 2021
P1 – ‘Wee rid motor’ – Recitation winners : 1. Harry McKie (PPK); 2. Rebecca Manson (KKM);Lily Bennewith (LES): Illustration winner – Jessica Johnstone (KKM) : Handwriting winner – Rebecca Manson (KKM)
P2 – ‘Nessie’ – Recitation winners : 1. Colin McGregor (LES) / Aaron Farquhar (KKM);Rececca Connor (PPK) : Illustration winner –Ben Thomson (LES) : Handwriting winner – Rachael Drummond (LES)
P3 – ‘The Circus’ – Recitation winners : 1. Carter Henderson (PPK); 2 .Ela Chang (LES);Ellie Bennewith (LES): Illustration winner – Erin Harbottle (PPK) : Handwriting winner – Erin Harbottle (PPK)
P4 – ‘Fireworks off the castle’ – Recitation winners : 1. Cameron McNeil (PPK); 2. Hamish McGregor (LES); Cara Jamieson (LES) : Illustration winner – Carys McHallum (LES) : Handwriting winner – Faye Adams (LES)
P5 – ‘Magic Pizza’ – Recitation winners : 1. Noah Gaw (LES); 2. Thomas Agnew (LES);Olivia Johnstone (KKM): Illustration winner – Jack Trafford (PPK) : Handwriting winner – Thomas Agnew (LES)
P6 – ‘The Whistle’ – Recitation winners : 1. Maya McNeil (PPK); 2. Malcolm McGregor (LES);Breagh Kirkpatrick (LES): Illustration winner –Izzy and Alba White (PPK) : Handwriting winner – Malcolm McGregor (LES)
P7 – ‘Robert Burns’ – Recitation winners : 1.Jack Cloy (LES); 2. Gregor Reid (LES); Zack Ashton (KKM) : Illustration winner – Zack Ashton (KKM) : Handwriting winner – Arla McCulloch (KKM).
Many thanks must go to all parents and carers at home for supporting the children in this.
Portpatrick Primary School has been exceptionally busy celebrating Scottish history and culture over the past few weeks. To celebrate the birthday of Robert Burns, pupils have embraced learning about Scots language and explored both Scottish Saints as well as Robern Burns own life and legacy. Children have, as always, marked the occasion with the traditional competitions; Handwriting, Arts and Crafts and A Poem Recital. Despite restrictions, the children have fully embraced the Burns/Scots activities and have sent in photographs of the wonderful work they have been doing at home. Judging will commence on Friday with our special guest Alec Ross (former pupil at Portpatrick) and children will be invited to recite their poems live on Microsft Teams to celebrate the event. It is Alec’s own Birthday on Friday and so we hope to be able to give him something to smile about by providing him with an excellent exhibit of live entertainment.
Good luck to everyone who is taking part and I hope to see you all there. If you have not already done so could you please respond to the e-mail invitation to help with planning and organisation.
Below are some examples of the excellent work that has been produced by the boys and girls at our fabulous little school.
To celebrate the last day of term and to give those Christmas jumpers another outing, the boys and girls came to school today in their festive knits.
As a final festive treat, we spent the morning down at the community hub, watching an online pantomime – “The National Elf Service.” There were lots of giggles and shouts of “it’s behind you!” throughout the performance from the pupils (and staff!) as we helped the main character, Sam, to ensure that Santa and his elves stay healthy for Christmas, so they’re able to make and deliver all of our presents!
Half way through the panto, we stopped for a snack, kindly provided by Connors restaurant. We tucked into an amazing spread of marshmallow snowmen, strawberry Santas, chocolate orange segments, Christmas pudding crispies, and Christmas tree biscuits. A huge thanks to Connors – it was absolutely delicious!
As if we hadn’t had enough treats, we arrived back at school in plenty of time for our Christmas buffet lunch – the best type of lunch there is! Some people went up for seconds (and even thirds!) – I’m surprised we weren’t all in need of a nap come the afternoon!
To finish the day off, we each received a goodie bag (thank-you to the RNLI for some of our treats!) to take home and enjoy over the holidays.
Our Christmas celebrations may have been slightly different this year, but they’ve certainly been memorable nonetheless. Happy holidays everyone!
As part of our Eco Schools work learning about food and being responsible citizens, this Christmas we decided to run a ‘Reverse advent calendar’ – rather than the boys and girls getting a chocolate each day (they weren’t too impressed with this idea initially, I think many wanted the chocolate!!), they were asked to bring in a donation for the local food bank.
We spoke all about why it’s good to help charities, particularly people in need our local area, and learned about the work of the food bank. By the end, we were overwhelmed with our families’ generosity – we had pupils bringing in bags of donations as they realised how important it is to support the charity (despite only 1 item being requested per family!).
We are delighted to be able to deliver such a huge donation from our little school to the Wigtownshire food bank this Christmas – and we hope that it manages to help lots of families in the area.
After a busy morning engaged in active learning building Gingerbread houses and making Christingles, it was party time!
Our House Captains, Robin and Izzy, organised a fabulous party for the boys and girls in P4-7.
The running order of fun and games was as follows:
Everyone got a treat, a snack and a drink to enjoy. When we returned to our classroom, we were surprised to see that we had had a visitor. Santa had popped in to leave presents for the boys and girls.
Have a look at the fun time the children enjoyed.
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