Author: Mrs McHarg

Throughout January, the boys and girls have been busy with some Scots challenges – they had to learn their Scots poem and practise reciting it with great gusto; write out their poem in their best handwriting; and create a piece of artwork linked to their poem.

On Tuesday, Mr John Ross had the difficult and unenviable task of judging the competition – we had a few joint winners, he just couldn’t choose!!

Lots of parents, family members and friends of the school then joined us on Wednesday for our Scot Showcase assembly, to celebrate the pupils’ successes. They were presented with certificates and entertained the audience with recitals and some Scots songs.

A huge well done to all the pupils for their efforts. Below is a list of the winners:

Recitation winners

P.1         Ode tae a spider     

1^st Rebecca Connor  2^nd Stephen Ross

P.2         Twa Leggit Mice          

1^st Carter Henderson 2^{nd equal} Louise Webb & Erin Harbottle

P.3         The Sair Finger         

1^st Cameron McNeil 2^nd Atticus Orr-Ewing 3^rd equal Lewis Mcquillan & Conor Ritchie

P.4         The Bogle        

1^st Rose Santangeli  2^nd Jack Trafford  3^rd Sophia Schofield

P.5         The Wee Kirk Moose  

1^st equal  Maya McNeill & Ava Lily Orr-Ewing 2^nd Ruby Rankin  3^rd Isabella White

P.6/7     Address tae the Haggis  or Willie Wastle

1^st Findlay Thorburn  2^nd Robin McLean  3^rd Finlay Schofield

 

Illustration winners

P.1        Rebecca Connor

P.2        Erin Harbottle

P.3        Lewis McQuillan

P.4        Jack Trafford

P.5        Alba & Isabella White

P.6/7    Lillie Baker

 

Handwriting winners

P.1         Rebecca Connor

P.2         Erin Harbottle

P.3         Tilly Gordon

P.4         Jack Trafford

P.5         Ava Lily Orr-Ewing

P.6/7     Lillie Baker

Thanks to the Portpatrick Community Council, our Eco committee have purchased some new gardening equipment. This will help us set up a gardening club in the summer term, with a view to holding a plant sale prior to the summer holidays. Have a peek at the photo below of our Eco committee pupils displaying some of their new gardening goodies!

The boys and girls arrived at school on Friday dressed in their Christmas Jumpers as part of Save the Children’s Christmas Jumper Day 2019. At lunchtime, we sat down to a delicious turkey dinner kindly cooked by Barbara. We had lots of fun pulling the crackers, wearing our paper hats and telling each other Christmas jokes, with the lovely Michael Buble playing Christmas music in the background! Portpatrick Primary was definitely in the Christmas spirit today and to top it off, P4-7 wrote a poem to sum up the day –

 

The boys and girls of Portpatrick Primary,

Came to school dressed in their festive finery,

At lunch they pulled Christmas crackers and put on their hats,

Then enjoyed a turkey dinner with lots of chat!

It may have been a drizzling, but that didn’t dampen pupils’ spirits as they wrapped up warm and headed outside on Friday with Sian Roberts, who kindly gave up her morning to work with pupils. Sian is a local gardener and parent. They were busy weaving the newly grown willow back into the willow dome to make it stronger – we had been keeping a close eye on the new growth and waiting for the leaves to fall off before undertaking this job. Pupils enjoy sitting in the willow dome during breaks for a bit of quiet space, or using it to play ‘jails’!!! Have a keek below to see them at work!

 

 

Sunday saw a very busy and successful Portpatrick Christmas Fayre, held in the village hall. Having spent all week creating Christmas crafts in school, the older pupils took it in turns to run the school craft stall. On sale were snow globes, gift boxes with peppermints, salt dough tree decorations and wrapping paper. In total, the stall made an incredible £125!

The Parent Council also ran the cafe, selling lots of delicious homemade baking, and raised a grand total of £522.23.

Having been held captive in the kitchen to practise their singing from 3.30pm, the pupils took to the stage at 4pm donned with festive jumpers and cheery smiles, to entertain everyone with some Christmas songs they had been busy learning in school. The pupils sang loud and proud and helped to put everyone into the festive mood!

Well done to everyone involved – the countdown to Christmas is now on!

As part of our Book Week Scotland celebrations (which runs from 18^th-24^th November), P1-3 parents were invited into school this afternoon as part of the Bookbug (P1) / Read, Write, Count (P2-3) initiatives. Parents spent time exploring the contents of the bags and discussing ways in which the resources could be used to develop pupils’ literacy and numeracy at home. We also had a look at the ‘Parent Club’ website which gives further examples of activities to do at home using the resources.

An excited bunch of P1-3 pupils then joined us and were gifted with their bags. Pupils were desperate to get into their bags and see what it contained! Having sat patiently, we then headed to the classroom where pupils explored the goodies they were given – some were reading books; others were playing games of rockets & meteors or top trumps; and some were using story cubes to create imaginative silly stories!

Later in the week to continue the Book Week Scotland celebrations, P4-7 pupils will be doing some paired reading with P1-3, as suggested by the Pupil Council, and some pupils will be watching the Authors Live event which tells the story of the Gruffalo in Scots. We are all looking forward to getting together to enjoy some stories and share in our love of reading!

On Wednesday, our new playground toys arrived!! Huge thanks must go to all the friends of families of the school who participated in the Kirkcolm Mini Walk to raise funds which went towards this.

We have loved having toys to play with at break times, and our responsible playground monitors (Alfie and Lewis) are ensuring that we are taking care of them.

More photos to follow…

Pupils have had a busy start to the year, applying for various jobs in the school and demonstrating they are keen to take on positions of responsibility. We received lots of applications for Pupil Council and monitor jobs; several pupils were keen to be interviewed for the Eco committee; lots of boys and girls in the senior class applied via the online application for Digital Leaders; and P6/7 pupils said their House Captain election speeches at assembly.

This year, we have decided that pupils will earn a ‘salary’ (in the form of merits – not cash!) for undertaking their job to give them further experience of the world of work.

After a difficult decision, we have selected our new committees for the year.

Our new Pupil Council members are:

As a new addition this year, we have introduced House Captains. They will help to motivate and lead their house to gain as many merit as possible throughout the year, and will help with the organisation of events such as parties. Our House Captains are:

 

Our new Eco Committee, hoping to take forwards our current action plan and achieve our Green Flag next year:

And finally, our new Digital Leaders who will help to develop ICT in classes and provide technical support in the school are:

Maya, Rose Findlay and Lillie (photo to follow)

Tuesday saw all 3 of our North Rhins partnership schools come together for a morning of exploration and an afternoon of inter-school sports fun. Pupils from Portpatrick and Kirkcolm travelled to Leswalt, who hosted the event for the first time. After arriving, the boys and girls made their way up to the Aldouran Wetlands for some fun in the gardens.

They then made their way back to school for a picnic lunch outside, and enjoyed getting to know and play with pupils from the other schools. Just as we were ready to head to the village park to begin our sports, the rain started – but it didn’t damped our spirits! Thankfully, the shower passed and it was a lovely warm afternoon for the boys and girls to cheer on their own schools – they were all getting very competitive and were keen for their school to be the overall winner of the afternoon!

There were various races for pupils to participate in, including sprint, skipping, sack, egg & spoon, distance and a relay. After counting up the points and working out the scores proportionately given the differing numbers of pupils in the 3 school, Portpatrick were the overall winners of the afternoon, with Leswalt in 2^nd place and Kirkcolm in 3^rd.

A huge thank-you must go to Lidl who supported the event for the 2^nd year running, by providing water and fruit for the pupils to enjoy – they were well in need of this after the distance race! Also to the Brown family, who transported the equipment from the school to the park for us. The pupils had a wonderful afternoon mixing with other boys and girls in their year group across the 3 schools and are looking forward to our next get together already!

P4-7 pupils headed to the Ryan Centre along with other local primary schools on Friday afternoon, to be entertained by the brilliantly talented ‘Music for All’ musicians – “Trio Ecossaise.”

Between performing as a trio, the musicians took it in turns to explain to the audience a bit about their particular instrument (clarinet, piano and cello) and then performed a piece of music so we could hear how it sounds. Pupils were encouraged to consider how the music made them feel as they listened and picked an Emoji to represent this.

Pupils learned lots about the various instrument and had a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon at this musical extravaganza!