Author: Ms Whorlow

Maths Week Scotland 2023

The children of the North Rhins Partnership Schools got their calculating brains in gear to participate in Maths Week Scotland. Each school took part in a fantastic array of maths related a…

Go to this Sway

Why not see what we’ve been up to?  Click on the link then select play. 🙂

UNCRC Rights of the Child:

Article 29 – Aims of Education

We’ve kickstarted off our Sphero robotic and coding club!  After the fabulous news that we were the successful recipients of a £5000 Digital Xtra Grant, we’ve been so keen to get started with Sphero that we’ve borrowed a kit from our South Rhins Partnership school friends until our equipment arrives – Thank you Sandhead and Drummore primary schools!

What is a Sphero, you ask? Well, Sphero robots have many different internal parts that make them work such as motors, LEDs, encoders, processors, a CPU and Bluetooth communication module for connecting to phones, and a gyroscope that keeps it oriented. A small, wheeled robot inside the shell climbs up the walls and pushes them forward, causing the ball to roll.

Sphero programmable robots help kids learn fundamental STEM concepts through play-based learning and educational STEAM activities. You can use Sphero robots to play games, create programs, or complete challenges.

Our first extra-curricular club activities focussed on using Bluetooth to pair our devices, orientating our Spheros and using direction and speed to control the travel of our devices.  The children quickly mastered the balance between speed and control and were then able to navigate obstacles with increasing accuracy.  There was some fun racing the Spheros in figures of eight round cones in  pairs.  We even had a play with adapting the colours of the led array.

Feedback from our pupils asked for more ‘tinker time’, so the second session gave the boys and girls the opportunity to do just that.

Our next activity will bring in the skills of selecting and using a range of coding blocks to ‘draw’ 2D shapes.  This will incorporate thinking about angles, delays and loops.

Watch this space!

UNCRC Rights of the Child:

Article 15 – Setting up and joining groups

Article 28 – Access to Education

Article 29 – Aims of Education

The whole school had an great arfternoon of activities to celebrate harvest festival.  Rev. Breakey, her daughter, Claire, and Mrs Ross came along to give the children the oppportunity to

• Create our  beautifully coloured ‘stained glass’ panel using bright cellothane and piping for the leadwork

 

Look how beautiful the finished panels are!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Plant a selection of edible plants to sell at the Harvest Festival to raise money for a local cause. (Rocket, Cress, Kale & Parsley)

 

The boys and girls were fully absorbed in the experiences.  Rev. Breakey spoke to the children on why Christians celebrate Harvest Festival.

A great afternoon was had by all. Thank you ladies!

UNCRC Rights of the Child:

Article 24 – Health, Water, Food & Environment

Article 31 – Rest, Play, Culture & Arts

P 5 – 7 are studying plants and biodiversity as this term’s science topic.  Today we set up an experiment with the hypothesis of:

Does fertiliser improve the growth of plants?

To keep it a fair test our little scientists determined that we needed to control the variables and the constants:

Constants:

• Type of soil
• Type of seed
• Same amount of sunlight (same location)
• Same temperature (same location)

Variables:

• Adding fertiliser to the water for the plants

Everyone planted a pea seed.  Half the class have used just water and half added fertiliser to the water. We predicted what we think we might observe over time.  Some think the plants will grow to the same height and some think the fertilised water plants will grow taller . We will monitor the growth over time, then apply our data handling skills to produce a graph of our results for comparison. We might even throw in a few mean, mode, median and range calculations while we’re at it!

Watch this space!

UCNRC  Rights of the Child:

Article 24: Health, Water, Food & Environment, Article 29 – Aims of Educaton

 

Whilst our shiny new smartboards were being fitted, both classes took advantage of the fabulous weather to get outdoors for some learning activities.

P5 – 7 went ‘unplugged’ to carry out some computational thinking combined with physical movement.  The children had to collaborate to solve a coordination and sequencing challenge using the following skills:

• Decomposition – The breaking down of a complex problem into smaller, more manageable parts
• Pattern recognition – The analysis of similar ideas to extend or create patterns to better understand a challenge
• Algorithm design – The development of steps used to solve a challenge, often a sequential set of rules that are followed
• Debugging – Identifying the issues and creating solutions to problems

We had to work out how to set out our hoop array to enable everyone to travel from one side to the other without colliding, using coordinated step movements.  The children had a lot of fun, with purposeful discussion and teamwork to successfully solve the challenge!

 

P1 – 4 explored what living things need to survive and thrive.  They planted sunflowers and will be caring for these over the next wee while to ensure the plants stay healthy and grow.

UNCRC Rights of the Child:

Article 29 – Aims of Education

Our newly appointed Eco Committee met for the first time today.

• P7 – Lewis
• P6 – Lacey (absent)
• P5 – Rebecca
• P4 – Adam
• P3 – Adam
• P2 – Josh
• P1 – George

After a successful interview process, our new members were happy to join us for our first meeting to agree our targets for our next Eco Flag application.  After carrying out an PP environmental-review-2023 – 2024, the group agreed that the targets we will focus on for the next two year action plan will be:

• Litter and Waste
• Global Citizenship
• Climate Action

The members were keen to get cracking and have already organised today’s litter survey in our school grounds, followed by a litter survey.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our older members visited both classes to explain what has been agreed and chatted about how everyone will have a role to play in helping us achieve our eco-friendly goals.

UNCRC Rights of the Child:

• Article 12 Respect for children’s views
• Article 13 – Sharing thoughts freely
• Article 15 – Setting up and joining groups
• Article 24 – Health, water, food and environment

Welcome Back Portpatrick Primary!

It’s the start of our school year and everyone arrived looking so smart in their school uniform.

We are very happy to welcome our new pupils who joined us today.  George, Layo and Lilly are our lovely new Primary 1 pupils, Ella has joined us in P3 and Bradley is our shiny new Primary 4 pupil.  They had lots of fun making new friends.

UNCRC Article 15 – Setting up or joining groups

What a year it’s been!  It seems to have flashed by in the blink of an eye.

Today, we said goodbye to Jack and Katie as they embark on their next adventure at Stranraer Academy.  It was a bittersweet day as we are happy for them, but we are also sad to see them go.

To celebrate our dynamic duo, and indeed the rest of our school community, we held our annual awards ceremony.  We were delighted to welcome so many friends and family members to share the event with us.

There were songs and celebrations for all with awards and recognition for a wide range of talents, effort and skills from our wonderful pupils.  We took a moment to look back on all the experiences the children have enjoyed as part of their learning and teaching this year. Why not have a look for yourself here:

Portpatrick Primary celebrating our year together June 23 – YouTube

 

We said goodbye to Miss Lammie too. We all wish her well for the future and are sad to see her leave.

Later that day, P6 & 7 received their level 2 certificates for their Bikeability training.  Thank you to the Bikeability team for their great input teaching our children how to be safe out and about on their bikes.

 

The afternoon saw us make the most of the dry spell as we popped down to the park for some social time before we head off for our holidays.  Everyone was treated to an ice-cream, paid for by kind donations from Steve, Kim and Mrs H.

It was back up to school for a Primary 5 – 7 water fight.

At the end of the day, everyone formed a guard of honour to say goodbye to Jack and Katie.  We wish you both all the very best of luck on this next step.

 

Happy Holidays Everyone!

Mr Shingleston joined us today to tell us all about his very interesting job as an Open Reach Engineer.

It was fascinating to find out how our beloved broadband service reaches our home using fibre technology.  Mr Shingleston demonstrated the process of splicing and joining fibre optic cables that are the width of a human hair.  He showed us the equipment he uses to detect underground cables and waterways as well as showing us his air monitor to ensure that the air quality is safe before he ventures into underground spaces which are sometimes over 15 metres deep.

He discussed his day to day role managing a team of engineers across the region. He has to use a wide range of skills in his job.  He uses maths and english and he must be able to cooperate and communicate effectively with his team who can be spread across the region at any one time.

The children had many questions to ask to satisfy their curiosity about his career.

Mr Shingleston explained that there are many females in his industry.  Open Reach are celebrating females engineers in their organisation this week.

UNCRC Rights of the Child – Article 17 : Access to Information

Lucy from Skills Development Scotland joined us today.  She was here to offer advice on finding out what our interests are and matching this to a future career choice.

She talked to the children about her role as a careers advisor whilst the children interviewed her with questions to find out more about the work she does.

Lucy set the children group challenges to think about all the different careers that match with production.  The boys and girls were given three objects and a list of job roles.  They had to identify which were needed to produce chocolate, books and milk as a stimulus.  It was surprising how many different jobs it takes to make just one product.

Our pupils thoroughly enjoyed the session and were delighted that Lucy was able to join us.

UNCRC Rights of the Child – Article 17 Access to Information