Author: Mrs McHarg

The boys and girls of Portpatrick Primary have worked incredibly hard over the last month learning their lines and practising songs to enable them to put on a wonderful Christmas show for family, friends and residents of the village.

‘Christmas with the Krackers’ told the story of the Kracker family who were experiencing a Christmas crisis – they lost their ‘Ho! Ho! Ho!’!! The North Pole’s special elf agents, a pair of talking pets and a Christmas fairy race against the clock to help the family find their Christmas spirit again, just in time for Christmas Day.

It was lovely to see a packed out school hall to celebrate the pupils’ efforts. Their hard work definitely paid off and the audience were entertained from start to finish.

Take a look at our superstars in action below!

As part of our Book Week Scotland celebrations, P1-3 pupils all received a Bookbug (P1) or a Read, Write, Count (P2-3) bag this afternoon, as part of the Scottish Government and Scottish Book Trust initiative. Parents/carers popped into school to learn how to use the bags at home to make the most of the learning opportunities that they offer.

After pupils were gifted with their bags, everyone then spent the final 20-minutes of the day exploring and enjoying the contents of the bags. Pupils cosied up and read their new books, some played the dominoes card game, P1 pupils practised writing their name on their new whiteboards, and others put their new measuring tape to good use to measure classroom items.

Please check school bags tonight for the wonderful resources that P1-3 pupils have brought home with them. And thank-you to everyone who took the time to come into school today. Have a keek at the photos below to see the fun that everyone had!

At our most recent Pupil Council meeting, it was highlighted that we don’t have many non-fiction books in the school library. So our responsible pupils wrote to the Community Reuse Shop to enquire about donations of books. They very kindly invited us to pop into the shop to look through the books and pick a selection for our school.

 

Olivia from Kirkcolm, Alexander from Leswalt and Jack from Portpatrick all went on Wednesday morning to browse the huge range of books available. After an hour of hunting (some were hunting more than others – there were times where pupils were lounging on the floor engrossed in a book they found!!), they each left with a bag of books for their school.

 

Thank-you to the Community Reuse Shop for your generosity. We are looking forward to getting our new books into our school library for pupils to enjoy.

Report by Atticus & Lewis –

On Thursday 25th May all of the P6 pupils from Portpatrick went to Operation Safety . The event took place at Stair Park football grounds in Stranraer. There were lots of workshops that we visited. This is a list of the workshops in order:

• Fire brigade to spot the different hazards to make them safe, lie a knife in a toaster or too many plugs in a lead.
• Scottish Power workshop where we spotted electrical hazards outside.
• Stranraer Coastguard for water safety and how to save someone if they are drowning.
• Alcohol and drugs presented by PC McCutcheon where we got to try on beer goggles.

We then had our lunch in the stadium seat and afterwards we visited our last few workshops:

• Anti-social behaviour where we played a song really loudly and the council came and said he was going to fine us £20.
• Ambulance where we learned how to do CPR.

My favourite workshop was the drugs and alcohol one because the drunk glasses were fun and felt weird.

Portpatrick pupils participated in a day of Climate Ready Classroom activities, as part of our ongoing Eco Schools work. This was a whole day event of online sessions and follow-up activities that schools right across Dumfries & Galloway took part in.

During the morning session, we learned all about what climate change is and why it is happening. Pupils went on a hunt around the school for different emissions and Atticus got dressed up in as many items of clothing as possible to demonstrate how greenhouse gases are affecting the planet.

Between break and lunch, the focus was on how climate change affects biodiversity. Pupils went outside and used string to create a food web to demonstrate how everything is interconnected. They then worked in groups to complete a scavenger hunt, identifying things in the playground that breaks down plant waste, things that produce oxygen, etc. Pupils had to stop and use their senses to also find something that had an interesting texture, an interesting sound and something that looked beautiful – to which Lewis identified himself!!!

Our afternoon session looked at how we can take action to help climate change. Pupils brainstormed the various things that we could do at Portpatrick Primary to reduce climate change and we developed a school action plan to take forwards.

We had a fun day learning all about climate change and are looking forwards to carrying out our action plan to help make a difference.

Portpatrick pupils have been busy this week celebrating the coronation of King Charles III.

Earlier in the week, pupils learned all about the coronation of a monarch – from the very first coronation taking place in Bath in 973AD, to what will happen during the ceremony tomorrow.

Today, pupils came to school looking very patriotic, dressed in red, white and blue. Some even came with Union Jack capes, hats, hair braids and head boppers on! In the morning, we put our maths skills into action and baked some delicious scones,  which we enjoyed later in the day with jam and cream.

After we had enjoyed our delicious buffet lunch kindly prepared by Kim, we made some dazzling crowns and Union Jack flags. We coronated our very our King and Queen of Portpatrick Primary (Jack and Katie!). After they both gave an oath to look after everyone in Portpatrick, the Archbishop of Canterbury (AKA Lacey) anointed the King and Queen with some Portpatrick holy water; they were given the sceptre and the orb; and then they were crowned. The whole school then headed through the village in a procession, waving at locals and visitors as we went!

To end the day, parents were invited to pop into the hall to watch our special performance of “I Just Can’t Wait to be King!”

We had a brilliant day full of Coronation fun!

The lovely ladies from Lighthouse Musicians, Gillian and Helen, popped back to Portpatrick this morning to work with pupils in P1-4.

The boys and girls had a great time playing games that involved being a conductor and singing songs. They then learned about rhythm through the use of beanbags, hoops and cones which were given various values and pupils had to clap out the correct rhythm in time. Gillian taught pupils the names of some musical notes and pupils started reading music to clap out a basic rhythm involving 1 and 4-beat notes and rests.

We then got the musical bells out and played Twinkle Twinkle Little Star – this took lots of concentration but we managed to play all 6 lines successfully!

Finally, we recapped some Italian musical terms describing the dynamics of music and played a game to help us remember these.

Thank you to both of the ladies for coming into school today – we had a great morning of music and can’t wait for your next visit!

 

Portpatrick pupils celebrated World Book Day on Thursday 2^nd March. We started off the day by talking about our favourite books, sharing why we loved them and who our favourite characters were. We then took part in a school competition ran by our librarians, Katie and Louise, to draw a picture of our favourite book character – we had pictures of the Worst Witch, Horrid Henry and the Ice Monster.

After lunchtime, P1-4 pupils took part in a World Book Day scavenger hunt where they had to hunt inside and outside for pictures of well-known book characters and find the clue written on them. Afterwards, we had a chat about the books these characters are from and pupils were able to share their knowledge of familiar stories. At 2pm, we snuggled up with a hot chocolate to enjoy the live David Walliams’ Storytelling Spectacular online event. David entertained us with excerpts from some of his famous books, including Gangsta’ Granny and the Boy in the Dress, and he even gave us a sneak-peak into his new book ‘Robodog.’

We then spent time looking online at the books that are available to swap our World Book Day tokens for at WHSmith – younger pupils liked the look of the ‘Dave the Pigeon: Bookshop Mayhem’ and older pupils were keen on ‘Boot It!’ and ‘A Dragon Realm.’

We finished the day by spending time enjoying our favourite books and some pupils were able to sit an Accelerated Reading test. Everyone left school with an appreciation of the importance of reading, the knowledge of some new books they might like to read, and a book token in hand to put towards a new book.

Tomorrow, our librarians will draw our reading raffle for February and select the winner of the drawing competition.

Pupils in P5-7 at Kirkcolm, Leswalt and Portpatrick Primary Schools headed off to Abernethy Barcaple Outdoor Centre on Monday for an overnight residential stay.

The boys and girls participated in a range of activities whilst there including archery, abseiling, a challenge course, climbing wall, and team problem solving challenges. Pupils overcame fears and developed their team-working skills throughout the course of our trip. 

After a fun-filled day of activities, everyone enjoyed an evening game of hide and seek in the dark – at which point the staff watched as 50 children ran off into the darkness at a location they had never been before; cue panicking teachers! But thankfully all returned safe and sound, and no one was left to spend the night in the great outdoors! 

We then headed to our rooms to settle down for the night – and despite a lot of sugar being consumed, everyone was asleep by midnight much to the staff’s relief! 

The next day started bright and early with some pupils rising at 6.30am. After breakfast, we finished our final group activities and hopped onto the bus just after lunch time. It was a very quiet journey home with lots of tired little people catching 40 winks to make up for the lack of sleep the night before! 

Everyone had a brilliant time away and enjoyed mixing with pupils from all of our trio schools. 

P5-7 pupils attended the MV Princess Victoria memorial service at Agnew Park today, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the tragedy.

The service was opened by a piper and then speeches were given by Lord Lieutenant Aileen Brewis, who told the pupils all about the disaster, and Mr John Ross, who told of his memory of a fellow class mate finding out about the death of his mother who had been on board the ferry. The pupils were surprised to learn that 135 people died and that no women or children survived.

Wreaths were laid at the memorial and a one-minute silence was held as a mark of respect.