Author: Ms Whorlow

The Primary 7 boys and girls from the North Rhins Partnership had a visit to Skills Development Scotland today.

As part of Developing the Young Workforce, Lucy, Kathryn & Connor gave the pupils an overview of the careers services available at Stranraer Academy.

Our pupils learned that they will have a subject choice chat in S2, with follow up visits for each other year to help them plan career options more fully.  Lucy explained that Skills Development Scotland is available to everyone at any time in our community to help find jobs.

There was a mixer game where children played ‘Would You Rather?’ This was a game to help the children make careers decisions based on their preferences and interests.

They then played ‘Shark Island!’ In groups, the children had to decide which 3 of 5 people they would choose to help them escape from an island.  Their choices were based on the careers of the five individuals. There was a change of mind once more information was given on the people’s backgrounds. It was a very interesting discussion.

 

Hamish, Atticus and Cara volunteered to role play career characters. The children had to work out what jobs they might do based on their props and outfits.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, we were shown the My World of Work careers advice website with industry sector information and job videos. It was very informative.

Our thanks to Skills Development Scotland team. Today was a great workshop for Developing the Young Workforce and for strengthening our pre-transition friendships.

UNCRC Rights of the Child – Article 29 Aims of Education.

 

 

It was  Read ‘n’ Treat time today for the boys and girls to celebrate Book Week Scotland.

We brought our favourite mugs from home and cosied up for some quiet reading time with a Hot Chocolate and Marshmallows.  Some chose to dip into audiobook readings  on David Walliams’ favourite titles or on our class book for this term – Holes by Louis Sachar, which has been made into a film. You can access the QR codes here.

Book Week Scotland AudioBook LInks

While we were reading, we sketched the mental images that appeared in our minds, using our HOTS creativity skills.

We also watched Dr. Suess’ The Sneetchers, which is all about discrimination.  This links with our learning about our rights, in particular Article 2. It also connects with our Anti-Bullying work to participate in Anti-Bullying Week, which coincides with this event. We had a discussion on the meaning of the story .  The children were very insightful, linking this to how people might be treated differently on the basis of their race, religion, gender or protected characteristics.

The children enjoyed the chill out time, building those all important connections of reading for pleasure.  Reading just 20 minutes a day can make such a difference to a child’s achievement too – Win, Win!

Primary 1-3 pupils were very excited this afternoon to receive their Bookbug (P1) / Read, Write, Count (P2-3) gift bags. Parents were invited in as part of our launch of this Scottish Government initiative which aims to inspire a lifelong love of reading, writing and counting, and strengthen links between home and school learning by supporting parents in taking an active role in their child’s learning to give them the best start in life. They were shown the contents of the bags and given suggestions for helping to develop literacy and numeracy at home using these resources. After presenting the boys and girls with their bags, everyone headed down to the classroom where we spent time exploring our new books and games. The pupils are really looking forward to using the contents of their bags at home!

UNCRC – Article 29: Aims of Education

Primary 7 from Portpatrick, Leswalt and Kirkcolm were treated to a curling experience at the North West Castle today.

 

The children were split into teams of 5 with each member allocated aged a role as either sweepers, throwers or a skip skip.

Gail gave a motivating speech, sharing the great olympic success we have in our community. She explained the format of the day and the terminology of curling such as weight  line, handle, stabiliser, slider and stone.  Everyone enthusiastically got started with a warm up.

After a practice, the children were placed in teams. The winners were judged on the best performance out of eight tries of getting a stone as close to the target as possible.

Each participant received a certificate and an invitation to return for the curling club sessions.

There was a break for juice and biscuits kindly provided by the North West Castle. Our thanks to all the coaches and to the Castle for their kind hosting.

Our groups did very well with Lewis’ team just pipping Max’s team.

UNCRC Rights of the Child – Article 15 Setting Up & Joining Groups.

 

Portpatrick Primary pupils have been learning about Armistice this week.  

World War One began in 1914 and ended in 1918. The war ended at exactly 11 o’clock in the morning of Sunday 11th November after both sides agreed to stop fighting. This truce was called the Armistice.  Many millions of soldiers died in those four years. After the war, people remember the soldiers who died every year on 11th November. This is called Remembrance Day.

Today, we still mark Remembrance Day to not only remember those who died in the great wars, but to pay our respects to all those who have sacrificed in wars around the world.

 The children learned about the work of PoppyScotland. This organisation provides support for current and former members of the Armed Forces as well as their families.  Our generous families sent our children in with coins to buy poppies to help raise fund to support their very important work.

We decided to create our own environmentally friendly poppy wreaths using home-grown willow and foliage.  The children worked in pairs to carefully twist the willow strands and incorporate evergreen foliage between the strands.  We then made paper poppies that we placed on as the finishing touch.

Primary 1 – 4 creating tissue poppies to make a respectful window display.

The whole school walked to the village war memorial to pay their respects.  Our youngest pupils, George and Layo, laid a wreath from each class at the foot of the cross.  We all respectfully stood for a minute’s silence to think about the sacrifices people have made.

 

We displayed our remaining wreaths on the pathway to our school for everyone to see.  We think they are beautiful!

Our children are demonstrating they are responsible citizens.

Lest We Forget.

UNCRC Rights of the Child – Article 29: Aims of Education

Primary 5 – 7 held a Sphero Showcase for our families today.  As we have now completed our Sphero extra -curricular club sessions, we invited our parents in to join us to share in our learning.

The children demonstrated all the wonderful skills they’ve developed such as:

• Pairing and driving the Sphero using Bluetooth and Wifi
• Tracing a shape to command the sphero to follow the pathway
• Altering colour displays and LED arrays
• Selecting coding blocks to follow 2D shape patterns by varying heading, speed and duration
• Layering coding blocks to tell a story using sound effects, light sequences, audible speech and movement

Everyone had an opportunity to have a go, from pre-school to grandparents.  We even had a Sphero drive obstacle race with worthy winners.

Our thanks to our parents for supporting our project and giving their time to share our learning together.  Well done everyone!

Sound full up please 🙂

It’s been a busy computing science week!

UNCRC Rights of the Child – Article 15 (Setting up & joining groups), Article 29 (Aims of Education).

 

P5 – 7 were treated to an in-person workshop on designing games online using arcade make code.  This was the third of three workshops on using coding to design gaming activities.

Morna Fiskin fron My World of Work, travelled to Leswalt, Kirkcolm and Portpatrick to meet with our pupils to help develop their computational skills.

We first of all learned that Scotland is the second largest producer of space satellites after America, which is impressive.  The children discussed how the space industry is a career option for our nation.  We chatted about different careers options.

There is 100,000,000,000 pieces of space junk estimated to be orbiting earth.  That’s 14 zeros!

We designed a game to shoot at space debris to destroy it.  We selected sprite, control , scene, maths coding blocks to construct our programme. There was lots of special effects such as shooting the debris down with pizzas, tacos and and lemons! We had to code to direct the missiles to intercept the debris.

Thank you so much Morna for travelling down to work with the children.  They literally had a blast!

UNCRC Rights of the Child – Articl 29 Aims of Education

Mrs Hall came to visit us this afternoon to complete our marble runs we started constructing at DG College last week.  The children worked together in pairs  to translate their designs into reality.  They used a range of tools to cut and stick sections of ‘obstacle’ wood to complete their runs.

We are sure you will agree that their finished game boards are excellent!

Have a look at our runs in action!

Thank you to Mrs Hall and Mrs Copeland for facilitating this practical workshop. 🙂

UNCRC Rights of the Child – Article 29 Aims of Education

P5 – 7 got coding crazy this week at Portpatrick to celebrate Computing Science Week.

First up was joining Morna Fiskin from My World of Work to design a computer game – The Floor Is Lava.  We logged on to http://arcade.makecode.com to build our scene using background image using selected tiles. We then inserted obstacle platforms and lava traps to create our game.  We used a variety of coding blocks:

• scene
• controller
• Logic/Conditionals
• Physics
• Feedbacks for Game win and loose displays

Everyone enjoyed playing each other’s games.

We will update and add our activities through the week. 🙂

UNCRC Rights of the Child – 29 Aims of Education

 

Primary 5 – 7 from the North Rhins Partnership set off to DG College today to develop their skills for learning, life and work through participating in a series of STEM based activities.

 

 

 

 

 

Connecting with our community partners, DG STEM and DG College, our  boys and girls went along to our local college to participate in a carousel of workshops to develop their skills and experiences.

The children used their computational thinking skills through coding robotic Sphero balls.  With its advanced sensors, programmable LED matrix, and innovative technology, our students were able to to explore their creativity, coding skills, and inventiveness. We practiced controlling our Spheros using speed and direction. We also adjusted variable settings for led arrays. We extended our learning to explore coding blocks to control our Sphero direction using angle, speed and time too!

Next on the agenda was a session on Using Tools For Construction. There was lots of enthusiasm to wield the hammers. We learned how to safely use different saws and hammers to construct a marble run. Working cooperatively, there was lots of evidence of planning, measuring, sawing and gluing to make our board puzzles. Everyone demonstrated collaboration, negotiation and cooperation skills throughout.

Mrs Hall has very kindly offered to pop along on Tuesday to deliver a further session to the children to carry on with this construction activity.

Finally, the boys and girls visited the Childcare department. Here we explored a range of activities to develop social, mental, motor and artistic skills through a range of games and crafts.

Our thanks to DG College childcare staff and students for planning a great session, to the catering team for accommodating us and to Mrs Heron college manager for inviting us to visit. Thank you also to Miss Creighton and Mrs Hall from DG STEM for a great day!

UNCRC Rights of the Child – Article 29 Aims of Education

 

The boys and girls of Portpatrick Primary had a frighteningly good time at their Halloween party on Tuesday.

Our House Captain, Lewis, demonstrated great leadership and organisational skills by arranging all of the party games & prizes, planning activities and making sure everyone had a great time!

Layo and Tilly were picked as our best costume winners

Party games included:

• Creepy Corners
• Mummy Makers
• Musical Tombstones (chairs)
• Monster Mash Moovers ‘n’ Groovers
• Dookin for Apples

See for yourself the fun that was had!

Parents donated costumes as part of a Halloween Costume Swap Shop to reduce waste and to look after the environment.

UNCRC Rights of the Child – Article 31 Rest, Play, Culture & Arts