Portpatrick Primary

As part of a British Science Week, P4-7 participated in an online chat group with 12 UK scientists today.  This event is organised through funding from the Sustaining Excellence Award from Wellcome the UK’s largest charity.

The boys and girls interacted with the scientists, asking them a range of topical science questions on their field of expertise.  The pool of scientists present in the session was varied, representing a balance of genders, a broad spectrum of ethnic groups and specialist fields.  The children had an opportunity to explore the diversity of the world of work in this STEM sector.

We learned interesting facts about a wide range of subjects such as finding out about the ‘zombie fungus’ that takes over insects bodies and compels them to climb higher to 25 cm to more efficiently spread its spores at the right temperature and humidity.

The children asked questions about research into a vaccine for Covid-19.  They were reassured to find out that there are many hundreds of scientists working on this right now.  Also, the science team said that we can greatly reduce risk by simply using tissues to sneeze and cough, washing our hands and avoiding touching our faces.

It was a very interesting session, which follows on from our I’m a mathematician online chat at the beginning of the year.

# Successful Learners

Our Library monitors, Alba and Izzy, ran a competition for World Book Day, where pupils had to design a new front cover for their favourite book. Today, they had the difficult task of judging the entries and selecting 2 winners – one from P1-3 and one from P4-7.

It really was a tricky task – so much so that we had joint winners in P1-3 as the entries were so good! Tilly and Lewis were announced as the joint winners in P1-3, and Rose was selected as the winner from P4-7. The winners had a selection of books to choose from and took home 1 each as their prize.

Well done to all the boys and girls who entered the competition – it was great to see so many colourful and eye-catching designs.

 

Findlay Thorburn joined up with p7 pupils from Kirkcolm to form a partnership curling team to take part in the inter school end of season tournament on Monday 6th March. 

Findlay has been going along to the after school sessions at the North West Castle with Scott from Kirkcolm.  Findlay was skipping the team of four.

In the first game they drew with Rephad and then went on to be beaten by Sheuchan.  Findlay played a great last stone in the final end to claw back a one.

It was  a great experience for them all and allowed the Primary 7 pupils to get to know each other a bit more, prior to moving on to Stranraer Academy.

 

Primary 1-3 pupils had a taster session of rugby this afternoon with Mr Harbottle, who kindly volunteered to deliver this. They were learning how to handle a rugby ball given it’s different shape and how it moves, and participated in various games to help them learn how to do this.

Have a keek at Mrs Wither’s photos below to see all the fun they had!

The whole school were book worms today to celebrate World Book Day.  There were many activities that the children participated in.

Alba & Izzy organised a second hand book sale as part of their library monitor responsibilities.  The children had the opportunity to recycle and reuse by purchasing old book stock for the princely sum of 20p per title.  P1-7 enjoyed.  We raised £22, which equates to over 100 books purchased for our little school.

All of the children participated in DEAR – Drop Everything and Read.  Everyone signed on to their new MyOn online reading accounts and enjoyed reading at least one book.  We collectively read 1940 pages in 93 books. Our top three genre selections were longer books, adventure and sports.

P4-7 then took part in ‘Bookbusters’, a retro-style quiz based on the old TV series Blockbusters.  The class split into two teams (blue and red) and answered questions on famous books by the letter of their title.  The winners were the ones to first reach the other side of the board in a linked chain.

The activities moved on to the children designing their own book cover for their favourite book.  This is due in tomorrow, so there is still time to polish the artwork before the winner is judged.

Finally, P4-7 had the challenge of writing the best book review in the class.  Children can bring their completed entries to school tomorrow. The winner will receive a copy of ‘The Wimpy Kid Do-It-Yourself Book‘ to create their own memoirs for when they are famous.

# Effective Contributors & Successful Learners

We were thoroughly entertained on Wednesday morning by 4Front Theatre, who brought their wonderful performance of ‘A Fisherman’s Tail’ to Portpatrick Primary. The pupils sat engrossed for almost an hour as they listened to the story of 4 fishermen (James, John, Andrew and Simon) who were competing to catch the biggest fish on the Sea of Galilee, when Jesus appeared. The fishermen became Jesus’ disciples, and the story went on to tell of the miracles of Jesus, right up to his crucifixion.

The performance was full of songs that got the pupils clapping along, and some very funny scenes that had them all roaring with laughter.

A huge thanks must go to the Baptist Church and Scripture Union who made this wonderful experience possible. It was a very enjoyable RME lesson, teaching pupils about some of the key messages of Christianity in a fun and engaging way.

As part of our ongoing Eco Schools work, the Eco committee are planning on running a gardening club after the Easter break. However we were given some tomato seeds which needed to be planted now – so the boys and girls rolled up their sleeves on Wednesday morning and got planting, kindly aided by Sian who volunteered to come in and help. Every pupil in the school now has a pot of tomato seeds to care for over the coming weeks. We will be keeping a close eye on them to ensure they grow and develop!

P4-7 took part in a science workshop event organised and delivered by S6 Stranraer Academy STEM Ambassadors Lilly and Emma.

The young ladies delivered a carousel of four activities.  First up, the children used their sense of smell to determine whether the could smell as well as a shark.  The pupils had to sniff vials of varying strengths of water/perfume from zero, 20ppm, 200ppm and 100ppm.  They then ranked them in order of weakest to strongest.  Robin and Alfie were in full-on shark mode, getting the vials in the correct order.

Next up, the pupil had the very enjoyable activity of making slime like a slug.  A simple mixture of cornflour and water was produced.  The children explored the properties of this substance. The mixture flowed, but became stiff when squeezed or pushed by a spoon.  We learned that this is an oobleck mixture that becomes more viscous when pressure is applied.  This is beneficial to a slug as the creature can apply different pressure points with its foot to both slide and anchor in place.

Following that activity, the pupils engaged in a brain challenge.  They were presented with colour words written in a non-matching colour e.g. the word pink written in green pen.  The children had to try and say the colour word and not the colour it was written in.  It was a bit of a brain tease.  Most people find it easier to say the word rather than the colour as the word has a strong influence on the brain.  Words are read faster by the brain than colours are named. If you would like to find out more about this challenge, it is called a Stroop test.

The final activity was testing our peripheral vision.  The boys and girls attached string to a protractor to create an arc with which to rotate an object into our field of view.  We were using our rod cells to sense objects.  There are fewer rod cells at the periphery of our retina.  Hence, why we could not determine what the object was until it was more directly in front of us.

To bring the session to a close the STEM Ambassadors elicited the pupils’ thinking on the science behind each activity.  The children explained what they had learned by carrying out the practical activities.

Thank you to Lilly and Emma for a great learning experience!

# Successful Learners

The whole school enjoyed celebrating Shrove  Tuesday today.  The children have been learning about this practice as part of our RME topics on Easter and Lent.

In P4-7, we applied HOTS creating skills by designing a range of topping choices for our pancakes: 1 healthy, 1 indulgent and the one they actually produced.

As P4-7 are also learning about fractions in maths this term, we applied this in context to engage with the recipe at differentiated levels.  We did the following:

• Halved the recipe ingredients to make a lesser quantity of pancake batter
• Worked out the fraction of a litre we used for 200ml of milk (1/5th)
• Worked out what fraction of a kilogram we used for 100g of flour (1/10th)
• Converted between improper and mixed fractions i.e. when we added five, 1/4 teaspoons of sugar to our mixture.  We calculated that this equates to 5/4 as an improper fraction and 1  whole + 1/4 as a mixed fraction.

P1-3 focussed on using and applying instructions as part of following recipes.  The children used their maths skills to measure and weigh the correct amount of each ingredient to make the batter mix.  The activity was followed up by creating and/or organising the correct sequenced steps for a pancake recipe.  The boys and girls then had a mock pancake race for PE using beanbags and racquetes.

As part of estimating and measure, the class measured out 15 metres in the hall to visualise the circumference of the biggest pancake ever made. Everyone agreed it would have taken some eating!

Throughout the food technologies activity, all the boys and girls worked safely and hygienically to cook their individual pancakes before selecting their toppings to enjoy as a tasty snack.

# Successful Learners

Our P4-7 pupils carried out an interactive survey of their practices and attitudes to online activities.  The children were asked a range of questions on their online habits.  This was anonymous and conducted through a computer voting system not requiring any login details.

As per national trends, the results demonstrate to how our young people are engaging with social media and online devices.

Have a look at the video to view the results.  The footage can be paused on each slide to allow you to digest the information displayed.

We are using these results to have a conversation on how to use online media safely and responsibly.

The class also undertook a class discussion quiz that focussed on how consent works in an online context. We explored how young people ask for, give and receive consent online. This covered aspects such as friendships or relationships, how they take and share images and videos or how they manage their privacy and data.

# Responsible Citizens