Some of you might remember that back in January of this year Portpatrick Primary submitted an application for a STEM Nation Award. Ms Worlow has been developing STEM across all three schools now for a number of years. As a result, last year Portpatrick Primary was invited by Education Scotland to participate in the STEM Nation Award Pilot Scheme.

I am delighted to report that everyone’s hard work has been formally recognise. Portpatrick Primary has received a STEM Nation certificate which recognises excellence in STEM curriculum and Learner Pathways.  Thank you again to Ms Whorlow for providing excellent STEM experiences and for all the hard work and dedication in putting together the application !

Halloween has definitely not been cancelled this year at Portpatrick Primary. Today, the boys and girls enjoyed an immersive STEM Day themed on all things Halloween.

Throughout the tasks the children were using and applying  Skills 4.0 as outlined by Education Scotland as promoting skills development for a thriving future for our children and young people.

Bone Bridge Building – Engineering:

The boys and girls were set the challenge of working collaboratively to design and construct a ‘bone bridge’ using cotton bud bones and a range of selected construction materials.  The design criteria was to create and build a bridge that was raised from the surface and that had a span of between 0.5 metres to 1 metre long.

The children were completely focussed on their task; discussing and sharing their ideas.  They quickly adapted and modified designs in light of practical experience to achieve their successful outcome.

Self-Inflating Ghost Heads – Chemistry:

The two classes took turns to combine substances to create a chemical reaction.  We poured 50ml of vinegar into a drink bottle.  We added a heaped teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda into a balloon with a spooky face drawn on it. We then stretched the balloon neck over the neck of the bottle.  When we were ready, we all tipped the balloons upright and watched them inflate.

Maya explained that the two substances reacted together and that the chemical reaction produced carbon dioxide which inflated our balloon ghost heads.

Creature Catchers – Engineering/CDT:

The next challenge was to design a creature catcher web that would be capable of trapping creepy crawlies when lifted up after they had been placed on its surface.  The winning team would be the one that had the least amount of creatures fall through the net and escape the spider’s web.

The most problematic area was how to construct a frame with which to create the net.  Once the children overcame that, they quickly found efficient methods of weaving a network grid to capture the creepy creatures.

To test our creature catchers, we placed 20 creepy crawlies on top of each catcher and lifted it to see how many would fall through.  We had great results with only a quarter falling through on one design and zero falling through on each of the others.  We discussed why more fell through on the one catcher and determined that there were more gaps on that mesh as the weave was only in one direction.  We reviewed and reflected on how to improve the efficiency of that design.  It was a great learning activity for all.

Trick or Treat Toss – Physics:

The final challenge involved imagining a scenario where a shy ghost wanted to find a way to deliver trick or treat sweets to children without having to leave his haunted house.  The children designed and built their own catapults using fulcrums.  We then tested our treat launchers to see which design managed to send a wrapped sweet the farthest distance.  Robin and Alfie managed to toss their sweet an impressive 1.9  metres.

There is more spooky learning & fun planned for tomorrow.  Watch this space!

Effective Contributors

Successful Learners

Mhwwwhaaahah!

Today we said goodbye to our wonderful school cleaner, Larraine. After working at Portpatrick Primary School for 10 years (yes 10!!), Larraine has decided to put her feet up and retire!

The pupils presented Larraine with some gifts from the children, staff and the Parent Council to remember Portpatrick Primary by – she loved the handmade card with a photo of her wearing a flowery headband!!!

Thank-you Larraine for everything you have done for Portpatrick Primary, both in your capacity as our cleaner and in volunteering. Enjoy your well deserved retirement – and don’t be a stranger!

Today we said thank-you goodbye to our superstar janitor, Mr Brawls, who has sadly retired from Portpatrick Primary. Mr Brawls has been at Portpatrick for over 3 years and has worked his socks over – nothing was ever a problem to him!

Our House Captains and a few other pupils presented Mr Brawls with some retirement gifts, to fondly remember his time at Portpatrick Primary by.

Thank-you for everything Mr Brawls – we’ll miss you! Enjoy your retirement!

As part of our ongoing commitment to S.T.E.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) we got our aprons on today; with food technology and nutrition as our learning focus.

This year, the Royal Horticultural Society’s Big Soup share took a different tack, where organisations were encouraged to share a pot of soup within their social bubbles.  The annual event is to encourage social involvement and highlight the issue of food waste.

The boys and girl picked our home grown sweetcorn  and leeks from our veggie patch.  We brought in a range of vegetables to add to our pot.  We cleaned,  prepped and chopped carrot, pepper, sweetcorn, leek and onion.  The children were given a choice of adding rice, pasta or lentils to our soup.  Rice was the winning choice.

Next, we simmered our soup and enjoyed a tasting session in the afternoon.  The verdict was that soup is a great way to get those veggies eaten in a delicious way.  There were seconds and even thirds served and the pot was scraped empty!

Successful Learners

P1-4 pupils had a wonderful session with Susi Briggs on Wednesday afternoon, as part of the Rhins Coastal Path project. Susi popped back this afternoon to complete her input with the class – and what a lovely time we had out in the sunshine making music!

We started by humming along to familiar tunes – pupils suggested sounds we could make such as meowing, barking, howling rather than saying ‘la’ all the time – we had quite the menagerie!!  We then kept the beat to a different tune by tapping, clapping and jiving! Pupils started to compose a class song on Wednesday all about the things they saw at the beach last week, so we had a practise of our song, standing like a professional choir on the outdoor steps!

Next, we got the instruments out – this was the bit we had all been waiting for!! We practised playing our instruments at different speeds and volumes – we definitely needed our listening ears on for this one given the noise level!

After that, we split into 2 groups – 1 group explored the instruments and looked and which instrument would be best to match a given word/phrase, e.g. the clip-clop of horses hooves, the shimmering of the waves. The other group worked with Mrs McHarg to decide on actions/movements for given words – we pretended we were limpets on the shore and used our arms to wave like seaweed. We were then given a song and we had to choose instruments and actions to match the words – and then performed it to the class.

After one final version of our class song which was recorded, we thanked Susi for a fabulous afternoon of music outdoors!

For our last day of maths week, P4-7 have been learning and revising our knowledge of coordinates.  We introduced our activity by locating the treasure on a pirate’s treasure map by plotting and locating coordinates.

We then went outside to play a game of human battleships.  The children worked out the appropriate size of grid for a fair probability of getting a hit for someone’s position when standing on the grid.  We decided that a 6 x 6 grid would give a probability of 1 in 36 chance of getting a hit for each person standing in a grid location.  We calculated all the possible grid coordinates that we would need to play and created grid cards accordingly.

Next, we split into two teams.  Each member of our ‘ship’ team selected a square to stand in.  The ‘submarine’ team then drew out coordinate cards from a bag.  If the coordinate on the card matched the position that a ‘ship’ (person) was standing in, then they were sunk.

The children were very enthusiastic and had great fun whilst learning in the sunshine.

Successful Learners

P4 – 7 learned about classifying angles today.  We used the angle family to help us group angles in to types: acute, right, obtuse and reflex.

We constructed our own angle classification tools from card and used these to identify angle types found both outdoors and indoors.

We simply moved our slider against the angle we were measuring to find out what segment it fell into to identify the angle type.

Have a look at our active learning.

Successful Learners

P4 -7 have been extending their thinking on 2D and 3D shape following on from our observational walk in the village when we looked and discussed shapes used in building structures.

Today, the children got their architect’s hats on and designed their own structures using software on the computer.  They used a range of 2D and 3D shapes as building blocks to form their structures.

Next, some translated their designs in to physical buildings by using Kapla building block materials.  Other’s used trial and error in the design process.

The task helped develop team working soft skills such as negotiation, cooperation and communicating where critical thinking was at the forefront of their challenge.

Effective Contributors & Successful Learners

P1-7 had a special treat today as we visited the set of the feature length movie, Kingslayer,  being filmed on location at our local Dunskey Estate.

Mr and Mrs Orr Ewing and the film production team, Stronghold London Limited, kindly invited the pupils to join them to learn a little about how movies are made.  The period film is being directed by Stuart Brennan  who also stars in the movie along with Carolina Carlsson, Ryan Gage and Ellie-Rose Mackinlay.

We all met around the fire pit where we were entertained with a lively talk about life in medieval times by actor and director, Stuart Brennan.  We saw replica weapons and had the opportunity to look at period costume examples. We then got to witness a sword fight and found out how each step is carefully choreographed over a long period of time to get it just right.

Next, we were invited on set, in the woods, to watch an scene being filmed.  We could see the many different people who work in the industry who are required to film scenes and make film production possible.  This experience helps children understand the varied career paths and options that might be available to them in the future.

It was an insightful experience which the children thoroughly enjoyed.  Everyone was given a little memento of the day; a laminated shooting schedule for today’s filming signed by the stars of the film.

Thank you to everyone who made this trip possible.