Portpatrick Primary are demonstrating that we are responsible citizens this week. As part of Anti-Bullying Week, we are discussing and sharing ours views on the subject of bullying.
The boys and girls came to school dressed in odd socks to celebrate difference. We designed our own odd socks and chatted about how all of our differences made us unique and special.
Both classes held virtual assemblies, as provided by the Anti-Bullying Alliance, hosted by BBC presenter Andy, with special guests including Mo Farah and Anne-Marie!
P4-7 carried out a scrunching paper activity to demonstrate the impact of mean behaviour towards others. We started off with a smooth sheet of blank paper, representing our unblemished feelings. Each child then wrote down examples of mean things that someone might say to another. For every comment, we scrunched our paper a little bit. By the end of the task we had a crumbled ball. We then tried to smooth our paper to get it back to the way it was before all of the mean words. We realised, that the paper could never be returned to the way it was after its experience, just in the same way that hurtful words and deeds can cause lasting upset to a child.
What might a bully say?
Our damaged paper feelings
Hurt feelings stay hurt
P4-7 moved on to define what is meant by the term bullying. We identified strategies to tackle this issue. We then used this knowledge to create our own anti-bullying advice posters and displayed them in our hall; along with our fabulously colourful odd sock artwork.
Wow! Portpatrick Primary pupils have gone that extra mile to support this year’s Children In Need.
Our day started with a parade of all our wonderful onesies, pj’s and spotty attire. Don’t the boys and girls look fabulous?
Next up, we jumped into action to participate in the final session of Joe Wick’s 24 hour workout. It was hot work, but we gave it our all.
The children then enjoyed decorating Pudsey’s face, hand crafted by Kim, with small change that our families very kindly sent in. It makes a pretty picture. Mrs Ross brought in her penny jar to add to our loose change collection. Thank you!
Class 1 get creative
Our finished Pudsey
We opened our Pudsey shop for the final time. The children generously bought Pudsey ears and Pudsey badges. They also had a final go of guessing the name of the penguin. The boys and girls also used their maths skills to estimate many cubes were in the jar.
Class one get their ears on.
Have a go!
Conor and Scott won our cute penguin by selecting the name Icicle. There were 264 cubes in the jar. Ruby was the winner with her closest estimate.
Meet Icicle
Ruby estimates to win
We then used our maths skills to sort and count up all of the coins and notes we had collected. After our fund raising efforts, £174 will be going to Children In Need, which is great result for a wee school.
We received many kind donations and contributions from our fundraising team -the Pineapple Squad, our families, the wider community and even the King Slayer move crew at Dunskey. Thank you very much everyone. Your kindness will help change children’s lives.
The boys and girls of Portpatrick Primary have commemorated the occasion of Remembrance Day as Responsible Citizens and Effective Contributors.
Our Pineapple Squad (a.k.a. Maya, Izzy and Ava Lily) have taken it upon themselves to organise an enterprising project to raise funds for Poppy Scotland. The girls decided to create a wide range of hand crafted items to sell. The team have been busy, giving up their break times and working in the evenings at home, to design and make hand-crafted book marks and loom band bracelets to sell. We have received orders from pupils, family and friends of the school. With sales and donations to the girl’s projects, they have raised a grand total of £30.50. This is such a great result for their efforts.
Fund Raising Heroes
Open for Business
Beautiful Work
Our Merchandise
The pupils have also been buying poppies; the proceeds going directly to Poppy Scotland. We raised £13.64 selling poppies.
Our grand total raised to support Poppy Scotland is £43.64!
The children have created beautiful poppy artwork which is now on display in Morrison’s for all to see and admire. Here are just a couple of examples from Ruby and Izzy to share with you.
In addition, Primary 4- 7 have been learning the famous World War One poem, In Flander’s Fields by John McCrae. Please have a listen to their reciting the poem as a team by copying and pasting the link below.
Today we made full use of National Outdoor Learning Day. Bright and early, we headed up to Dunskey Woods to take part in a range of learning activities across the curriculum.
Observational Zones – Maths & Science
First on the agenda was a combined maths and science challenge. The children used a metre stick to find a natural stick of equivalent length. We then used that stick as a measure to locate 3 more. We formed a metre square area with our sticks as boundary markers. We then observed the natural objects that were present in our study zone. There was a wide variety of items; from pine needles to leaves and larvae to beetles. The class created a tally chart of the objects they observed in each group zone. Finally, we used digital technology to present our data as a bar graph to interpret our results more readily.
Getting organised
Measuring using standard measures
Measuring our sticks
What can we see?
We’ve a tree in our square
Tally Chart
Graphical Representation
Tower Building – Engineering
The next challenge was to see which group could build the tallest free standing tower using just sticks. There was a lot of discussion on how to tackle this problem. Some opted for a layered square tower, whilst other groups made use of a conical shape. The children quickly realised that balancing the sticks to a centre point gave the most height. They also concluded that they needed a key stick with a ‘Y’ shaped branch formation to help support the structure. Maya, Ava Lily, Tilly and Izzy were the winning team with a final height of an impressive 2.5 metres! This was even after their first tower of 2 metres got knocked down by accident. They rebuilt in super quick time, even taller than before. Well done on your resilience girls.
Busy layering our sticks
The stacking method
What shape of support stick shall we use
Criss cross squares
Stable structure
Winning team
Mud Monsters – Art /Language (follow up task for tomorrow)
Everyone then moved on to create mud monsters. The children combined water and soil to create just the right consistency of mud to bind and adhere to tree trunks. They then used their inventiveness to imagine a monster character. They used foraged materials such as twigs, leaves, moss and pine needles to create the facial features for their monsters. You will see from the photos below that it is an interesting rogues gallery.
We made sure we had gloves for those who wanted to use them, water and wet wipes to wash our hands, and hand sanitiser to ensure we kept as clean as possible.
The follow up creative writing task will require the children to write a fact sheet to describe their mud monster character, its personality characteristics and what it likes to do. We will focus on the use of similes, alliteration and metaphors as figurative language tools.
After lunch, we chose to take a closer look at our everyday, familiar surroundings with a fresh focus. The children went on a forage hunt around the school playground, selecting appealing items that they found interesting. Each little treasure was tied carefully to a stick they had brought back from the woods to make a traditional Journey Stick. We talked about our objects and why we selected them. Further talking and listening skills will be used to describe our objects in more detail.
Throughout the day, the children demonstrated great interpersonal skills. They all cooperated, shared ideas and thinking and supported each other fully. They took care of their environment and made sure they left everything as they should. They were a pleasure to spend a grand day outdoors with.
P4-7 have been busy applying their computational thinking to programme dance animations. Computational thinking allows us to take a problem, understand what the problem is and develop solutions. We can then present these solutions in a way that a computer, a human, or both, can understand.
The children have been using and applying logic skills to create algorithms with sequenced coding command blocks. They have had to filter unnecessary lines of code using abstraction and then debug their coding algorithm to ensure it satisfies the task requirement. Busy bees!
Copy and paste the links below to watch a sample of their avatars boogie on down!
Our Halloween STEM fun continued today as we got stuck in to a food technology team activity. We scooped out pumpkin flesh and followed an instruction text recipe to make the American Halloween treat of pumpkin pie. We used a variety of food preparation techniques such as chopping, boiling, blending, mixing and rolling etc.
Robin’s uncle was up at the crack of dawn making short crust pastry, to Gillespies’s secret recipe, for us to use for our pies. We all agreed the pastry was just delicious. Thank you so much to Iain!
Many of us had never tasted pumpkin pie and we were keen to try it. We can report that the flavour didn’t disappoint.
Nothing was wasted as we roasted the pumpkin seeds. We enjoyed eating this nutritious and healthy snack.
The children were in charge of the tasks in the activity. This included using their technology skills to record our steps with digital photography. The boys and girls also designed and carved the pumpkin for themselves.
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!
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!
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.
