Portpatrick Primary

Portpatrick and St. Joseph’s football teams enjoyed a practice session in the sun today. Our two coaches, John & John were on hand to offer tips, advice and guidance to our eager team players. Wishing our teams good luck at the Academy tomorrow.

UNCRC Rights of the Child – Article 15: Joining groups, Article 24 – Health

SHANARRI – Healthly, Active, Included

Today Parents and stakeholders from the community came to our school to appreciate how hard our children have worked on learning their UNCRC Rights of the Child.

We kicked off the afternoon with a performance from P1-4 accompanied by the Feis Rois group. They sung beautifully and shared brilliant Scottish knowledge and jokes that had the audience in laughter.

After this we had a whole school performance for “We’ve all got Rights”. The children have learned to sign this song as part of our schools endeavour to become more inclusive.

Mr. Webb who is the equality improvement officer for Inclusion then gave a talk about the importance of Rights and how they can be embedded in schools. He kindly gave up his time to enlighten our community on the objectives for meeting a gold award and how the Rights can benefit us.

We then participated in a competitive game of Rights Bingo. Well done Mrs. Ross who won the coveted Kit Kat bar prize!

Our pupils then introduced our playground charter and how this was shaped using our Rights and the younger class talked about our ABCDE of Rights. After this families joined in to play Rights games and talked to children about their journeys towards gold.

A big thank you once again to everyone who came along to the Parent assembly, your continued support is greatly appreciated. It was especially exciting to see one of our new pupils who is starting after the summer.

UNCRC Rights of the Child

Article 3: Best interests of the child, Article 1: Definition of a child, Article 42: Everyone must know Children’s Rights

SHANARRI: Nurtured, Respected, Responsible, Included.

Global Goals: Quality Education, Partnerships for the goals

Well done to our great wee team of football players for playing their first matches at the inter-school 7-a-side matches on Friday. There was great team spirit from everyone. Thank you to Mr Morrison as our team coach. There will be a replay again in a fortnight’s time.

UNCRC Rights of the Child – Article 15: Setting up and Joining Groups, Article 24: Health

SHANARRI – Active, Included

Taking a closer look at what we can do to save our planet

Today at school children learned about what Earth Day is and how it affects everyone. This years theme is plastic and we discussed about which steps we can take to cut down our carbon footprint. We looked at the detrimental effect that plastic and fossil fuels can have on the planet and the animals which inhabit the earth.

After our great dialogue, we then created our own stained glass window globes. Well done everyone on your fantastic work! Some of the children chose to have their planet in a magnifying glass to change the way world leaders ‘look’ at the earth.

UNCRC Rights of the Child

Article 12 – You have the right to be heard

Sustainable Development Goals –

12 – Responsible Consumption and Production, 13 – Climate Action, 14 – Life Below Water and 15 – Life on Land

SHANARRI – Nurtured and Responsible

Yesterday, our children were learning about the ABCDE of rights as part of our Rights Respecting Schools gold journey. Its purpose is to show how the concepts of rights are universal, inherent, inalienable, unconditional and indivisible.

Universal – All children have rights

Inherent – You have rights since Birth

Inalienable – Your rights Cannot be taken away

Unconditional – Rights Do not have to be earned

Indivisible – All rights are Equally important

Our children very philosophically came up with some great ideas for posters for our ABCDE of rights. The top poster had girls reflecting that even though everybody is different (as shown by the hands), every child’s rights are still the same! A group of boys worked on a galaxy poster which depicts no matter where you are in the milky way, our rights are universal!

Excellent work Portpatrick!

Rights of the Child –

Article 29 – Aims of Education

Article 17 – Access to Information

Sustainable Development Goals – 17 Partnerships for the goals

Portpatrick Primary School recently had a visit from staff on behalf of he Wigtownshire Foodbank. Children learned about how the foodbank works, what kind of food is most welcomed and who might use a foodbank. Our community were able to bring in a very generous donation to the school which was highly appreciated by staff from the foodbank (see email below!).

The staff couldn’t speak highly enough of the children who asked ‘some of the best questions’ they’d ever heard. Well done Portpatrick community for giving to those in need and supporting yet another local charity 👏

UNCRC Rights of the Child –

Article 6 – Life, Survival and Development

Article 24 – Health, Water, Food, Environment

Article 27 – Food, Clothing, a Safe Home.

Sustainable Development Goals 2 – Zero Hunger

SHANARRI – Healthy and Nurtured

Primary 5-7 were invited to attend the Ryan Centre this afternoon for a musical experience. This was presented by the Stranraer Music for All team.

We were able to listen and enjoy a range of of instruments from guitar to harps.

This afternoon we went to the Music for All workshop at the Ryan Centre. When we got off the bus, we went into the theatre and sat down. There were two people playing instruments: Ron playing the guitar and Rachael playing the clarsach (a small harp).

They started with a few tunes then Rachael told us about her clarsach – she told us that it was made of Canadian wood and that the strings were made from cows guts. Then Ron and Rachael played some traditional Scottish songs while we played air harps along with them!

They finished off with some questions from the audience then a final song. We had a great afternoon!

UNCRC Article 31 – Right to take part in cultural and creative activities.

As a class reward for earning 100 gems in Term 3, P1-4 enjoyed an adventure day where they shared knowledge they had learned about the Vikings and used their Position and Movement skills to navigate a treasure hunt!

We enjoyed a sunny afternoon exploring Portpatrick, using clues and our compass skills. Each time we found a Viking image we had to share some Viking facts to earn the next clue and direction. The treasure hunt lead us to the park were we enjoyed playing with our friends.

We returned to school to continue our Adventure day and discussed fire safety before creating a fire in the playground to cook like the Vikings! We toasted bread on the fire and added butter we had made in class by shaking cream in a jar until the fat and butter milk separated. The P5-7 joined us for our Viking fire and enjoyed hearing about how we made the butter and what kinds of food Vikings would cook over the fire. These activities allowed the boys and girls to use and develop some of their Meta Skills; focussing, communicating, collaborating and leading.

UNCRC Rights of the Child –

Article 6 – Life, Survival and Development  Article 24 – Health, Water, Food and Environment

Sustainable goals – Quality Education.

SHANARRI – Safe, Active, Responsible, Included

As part of a very busy last couple of weeks, Portpatrick pupils enjoyed some Easter celebrations.

First of all there was judging for ‘Paint the Egg’. The competition for this was very fierce and lots of hard work were put into all entries. The winners for this were Cameron and Layo.

After judging, the children went on an Easter Egg hunt. They were able to find some sneakily hidden eggs from the teachers and the children cooperated well to find all missing eggs!

Finally as the weather was nice, we went outside to roll Easter Eggs down the hill.

The children thoroughly enjoyed their day while learning about the importance of Easter as a tradition and how it stemmed from Christianity.

UNCRC Rights of the Child –

Article 30 – Minority Culture, Language and Religion, Article 14 – Freedom of Thought and Religion

Sustainable goals – Responsible consumption and production.

SHANARRI – Responsible and Included

Children from the upper school worked with Mrs. Dampney in preparing the Portpatrick school garden for the summer. This included ensuring the plants are progressing at a good pace and mulching. The children learned about how this increased the quality of the soil around the plants in our garden and helped keep weeds at bay.

This was spearheaded by our Eco group, who have a keen interest in keeping our environment well kept and looked after.

Sustainable goals – 15: Life on Land

UNCRC Rights of the Child

Article 24 – Health, Water, Food, Environment, Article 29 – Aims of Education

SHANARRI – Healthy + Responsible