Portpatrick Primary

P1 – 3 have been beavering away in the outdoor environment as part of their farming topic this term.  They have been working collaboratively to prepare and plant a selection of vegetables in our  vegetable patch.  The children will nurture and care for potatoes, carrots, turnip, onions and beetroot. Ewan Little and Barsolus kindly donated the potatoes, carrots and turnips.  The children are all looking forward to harvesting their crop and tasting the ‘fruits’ of their efforts.

# Effective Contributors.

The pupils of P4-7 have rose to the challenge of producing a WWII related resource of their own choosing.  The children made models, posters, podcasts, rationing recipes and more!

A range of STEM skills were utilised in the tasks.  Here are just a few of the applied skills they have used:

• measuring
• weighing
• cutting
• sawing
• sticking
• combining
• decorating
• researching
• Using IT sofware

The standard was so high that Barbara had a hard time judging the winner.  She selected:

3rd Place – Maya McNeill for her Anderson Shelter

2nd Place – Isabella White for her Anderson Shelter cake

1st Place – Lee Gaunt for his dug out battle scene.

Everyone received ‘highly commended’ recognition for their sterling efforts.  Thanks go to willing family members who helped, supported and encouraged the children to be independent learners.

As a class, we used Papier Mache to produce our own Anderson shelter model.  We also worked with Balsa wood and cardboard to produce our fleet of WWII fighter planes.

# Independent Learners

Rhian, Rowan, Olivia and lee recently took part in the inter-school curling tournament which took place at the North West Castle Ice rink.  They displayed great sportsmanship.  The team were not placed, but did enjoy their day mixing and playing with senior pupils from other schools.  Many thanks to Sian Roberts for supervising the pupils at this event.

#Successful learners

As part of P1-3’s topic of Ancient Egypt, the class have been learning about the diet of the Egyptian people.  They discovered that they, in the main, had a very healthy diet and that the most important food staple was bread.

The boys and girls decided to make some using a traditional recipe to see for themselves how good it was.  They had a discussion on why yeast was needed.  The skills they used to complete this task were:

• Following a pictorial instruction recipe
• Weighing and measuring
• Mixing
• Cooperating
• Food hygiene
• Tasting
• Evaluating

The bread was deemed a resounding success by everyone!

#Successful Learners

 

On Friday afternoon, the boys and girls of Portpatrick Primary displayed their wonderful talents to the school to help raise money for Comic Relief. Families were invited in to watch the ‘Portpatrick’s Got Talent’ competition in return for a donation towards the very worthy charity.

Organised by members of the Pupil Council, pupils were asked to apply to take part in the competition. Auditions were then held and 8 acts were selected to go through to the final, held on Red Nose Day.

Entries in the competition included: Livvy singing ‘Little Do You Know’; Lewis and Liam performing magic tricks; Lillie, Alba and Izzy dancing; Ruby singing ‘Don’t Stop Believin’; Findlay playing the flute; Rowan identity 100 flags of the world; and Erin, Holly, Rose and Caroline singing ‘7 Years Old’.

Our judges, Pat, Barbara and Mrs Jean Ross, provided some very thoughtful feedback after each act and had the very difficult decision of selecting 1st to 3rd placed entries.

3rd place was awarded to Rowan Harbottle. In joint 2nd place we had Findlay Thorburn and Lewis McQuillan. The overall winner in 1st place was Ruby Rankin.

A huge well done to everyone who applied, auditioned and competed on the day. What a talented bunch of pupils we have!!

To further raise funds for Comic Relief, we held a non-uniform and crazy hair day. Alba and Izzy also kindly baked and decorated some cupcakes at home which they sold at break time.

We raised a grand total of £128.57 for Comic Relief – thank you to everyone for your donations!

To kick-off the start of the national British Science Week (which runs from 8^th-15^th March), Primary 1-3 pupils held a science afternoon in school which parents were invited to pop along and join in with.

There were several different science activities on offer to participate in, including making a rainbow, a rain cloud, a sycamore helicopter, and a moving car. As we are keen to promote STEM subjects, there were also stations involving K’Nex challenges and the Code ’N’ Go Mouse to develop programming skills.

Pupils loved the make a cloud station, where they had to use shaving foam, water and food colouring to simulate a rain cloud – although half of the shaving foam ended up on pupils’ noses rather than in the jar!!

Thank-you to all the parents who popped in – everyone had a fab afternoon!

As part of this term’s WWII topic, Primary 4-7 created some authentic rationing recipes today.  P4 made fruity buns using a range of dried and fresh fruit ingredients.  P5-7 created carrot biscuits.  Each group had to select ingredients and use equipment hygienically and safely.  Maths skills were required through weighing and measuring activities.

We used the stimulus to write our own instruction text recipes, using ‘bossy’ imperative verbs and key language features.

The class tasted both recipes and evaluated them for taste, presentation and appeal. We were about 60/40 on the fruity buns, but it was a resounding thumbs up from everyone for the carrot biscuits.

To add to our creative flare, we undertook a challenge to plan a party dish from limited wartime ingredients.

Throughout it all, the class enjoyed listening to wartime songs.  There was even a little sing along to Run Rabbit Run 🙂

# Successful Learners

A trio partnership science morning was the order of the day at Portpatrick Primary today. Pupils and family in our  P4 – 7 classes from Kircolm, Leswalt and Portpatrick came together to participate in a wide range of STEM based activities (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) as part of British Science Week.

The showpiece of the event was a mobile planetarium provided by the Galloway Forest Astronomical Society, organised by Mrs Ferguson.  Mr Antony Berretti, Dr Douglas Snell, Mr Hunter McCall and Mr Brian Rice, gave up their time voluntarily to bring a night sky experience to the children.  We were taken on a journey through the planets and moons of our Milky Way, learning fascinating facts on our travels. P1-3 were also treated to a session as an added bonus.  This resource has been kindly funded by the Kilgallioch Community Fund and is being made available to schools within our region.

The planetarium will be part of the attractions on offer to all ages on Saturday 9th March during the weekend programme for the Wigtown Big Bang Weekend event. (11-4pm, £5 per entry).  There are visiting astronomical dignitaries scheduled to attend the weekend.

When not in the planetarium, the pupils were given a carousel of hands-on challenges to select from; ranging from electrical circuits to tower construction and from pin the organ on the body to parachute making.  For example, they had to design an electrical circuit that would sound an alarm in the event of a flood.  Our little engineers didn’t let us down and were up to the challenges of all the problems presented to them.

There was even an opportunity for social time during break, which the children made full use of.

P1-3 will not miss out as they will have their science event this coming Friday.

#Successful Learners

 

Well done to Rowan and Rhian who  competed in the Wigtownshire badminton championships at Newton Stewart, last night.

After many games, Rowan was awarded a bronze medal for being placed 3rd in the boys competition.

And, for the second year in a row, Rhian was the Wigtownshire Girls badminton champion.  Rhian only dropped 3 points in the whole of the tournament – amazing skills Rhian!

Many thanks must go to Jean Ross who has helped coach pupils in badminton over the years.  I am sure she will be as proud of them as we are.  Little Portpatrick certainly has badminton talent!

As part of Safer Internet Day (SID), our Digital Leaders organised an optional whole school competition: P1-3 were to design a poster all about Smartie the Penguin’s message for staying safe online; P4-7 were to design an internet safety leaflet. Today, the Digital Leaders got together to look at all the entries and vote for the winner. We are delighted to announce that Izzy White’s leaflet won! Well done to everyone who took part, and to Izzy for your fabulously informative leaflet!

Izzy’s leaflet will be copied and sent home to parents along with a ‘Digital Parenting’ magazine, which contains lots of useful tips and articles about keeping children safe online. Look out for these in your child’s school bag!