Category: Literacy

Literacy focused learning

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Trip to Bridgend Woods

P12 from across the island had a literacy filled trip to Bridgend Woods. What an adventure they had! We loved our trip on the big bus, even if it was a little cosy, meeting all our new friends from across the island and having our yummy packed lunches too! Our focus today was ‘Room on the Broom’ and we began by listening to the story in English and Gaelic. We had a witches cauldron to make s’mores, we had to help find all the characters in the story using a map, scavenge for things in a hunt and even made magic wands too!

 

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The Book Festival

It was a normal day in Port Ellen primary but then Nadine Aisha Jassat came in to speak to us, she was speaking about her stories and how every story had a bit of her in them. 

She also said how her parents met, one lived in Africa and one in the UK and they met because both went on a trip to the same place. 

At some point we got to say story name ideas to go on the board then she asked people to come up and one person would say a part of the story the next person would say the next.  She did a thing where she would pick a random story and that was the one they would make up, the story name chosen was the mystery of the mountain, they made it about a tree house on the mountain. 

Then we did a poem thing where we had to say positive things to put in a poem, it went like this “We are here for you, you are always so good at everything you do, so go out and do your best.” 

At the end she sold some of her books that were signed by her.   She was fantastic!

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Philip Reeve and Sarah Mcintyre Visit!

On the 8th of September we got a special visit from someone. They were book authors! Philip Reeve and Sarah Mcintyre came to our school and did some games, talked to us about how to write books, and also joked around with us. They wrote books together like Pugs of the Frozen North, The Legend of Kevin, and many more. We did it in the hall and they had things on the wall where it was like a quest and we had to come up with ideas to make it more exciting to travel through. They also read a bit of one of their books which we all really enjoyed listening to. They came to Islay for the Islay Book Festival. That is where lots of famous authors come to Islay for this special festival.

Over all this was a great afternoon with good fun.

 

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Lari Don P4 to 7 Google Meet

On the Thursday 7th of September 2023 primary’s 4, 5, 6 and 7 had a google meet in the primary 6,7 class room with Lari Don. In the meet they discussed writing books, her style of writing and much more! She read the children a small section of her book Storm Singing and a bit of her favorite fairy tale about a welsh monster. She did the meet for the Islay book festival.

Lari Don is a wonderful author who has written book for all ages here is the blurb of one of her most popular books First Aid for Fairy’s and Other Fabled Beasts.

Helen has absolutely no interest in becoming a vet like her mother she wants to become a musician. So she isn’t the best pleased when asked to help an injured horse. Only this isn’t a horse rather a centor. Helen is thrust into an extraordinary full of mythical beasts and fabled creatures.

Here is a link to Lari Dons website.

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Stickman Wood Adventure!

What an amazing adventure P1,2 had today with our new friends from Bowmore Primary! We had a day filled with stickman activities from raft building to mapping. We loved our packed lunches and were very excited to see what treats we had inside them. We made s’mores and played on the swings. Only a few of us fell asleep on the bus home until we saw a helicopter carrying an electricity pole! Well done team, you were fabulous!

 

 

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Celtic House Fun Reading

This term we have been going tho the Celtic house and looking for books to buy for the school.  Before we go upstairs we do a book scavenger hunt to see what books we can find, we get different categories to try find the book for that category. Then we get to choose a book we want.  When we go upstairs we get hot chocolate with marshmallows with cream, then Mrs Clark reads the first page of two books and we vote for what book we like the most. When we are done voting we get a biscuit and the we get the three books that we voted on.  We all loved reading the books and we want to do it again.

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Book Week Scotland

This week was Book Week Scotland.  For Book Week Scotland we read books and we were doing loads of activities. The first station that we went to was the book quiz with Mrs. Harrison. We  did  some drawing with Mrs. Brown then we drew a picture of Harry Potter. We went  orienteering with Mrs. Hannett and Miss Tate where we had to go round the school and find the name of a book or a person from a book; it was so fun!  In the hall we did loads of things like shades and story making and we all got to play games.  I really enjoyed Book Week Scotland.  It was my Favourite afternoon.

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Reading Club!!

Reading club is on every Tuesday at lunch break for p1/2/3/4/5/6/7.  We  have awards for people who aren’t  being loud or cheeky.   Members of the club read a story. The members are Chloe, Iona, Rachel and Evie. The club is in the Steam room.  We enjoy sharing and talking about books.

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Library Van

We visited the library’s van this morning, this will be our last visit this term. We have really enjoyed going and choosing our own books. We know we must look after the books and return them for others to use. We are learning that there are people in our community that can help us and we must take care of the books as they don’t belong to us and will be shared with others.  We will continue to visit the library van and also learn more about our community and who can help us.

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Holes Book Review

Holes by Louis Sachar.This book was about a child called Stanley Yelnats. Stanley was sent to a camp for something he didn’t do which was unfair.The Book was great because the author made good tension,such near the end of the book they found a case but there were yellow spotted lizards all over them and you didn’t know if they were going to be bit or not.The yellow spotted lizards are poisonous.The genre of this book was Adventure Fiction.The weird thing is the warden wore poisonous nail varnish.

The main theme of holes was Friendship and Justice.Stanley also made friends at the camp and they all had nicknames such as Zero,Squid,Zigzag,Xray,Magnet,Armpit and Twitch. There was also a weird repeating poem which there were different versions of every where in the book such as

If only, If only, the moon speaks no reply;

Reflecting the sun and all that’s gone by.

 be strong my weary wolf,turn around boldly

Fly high,my baby bird,

My angel,my only

Image result for holes cover

 

By Aidan

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Nicola Davies Visit

Yesterday Nicola Davies came in to talk with us about her books as part of the Scottish Book Trust 20th Anniversary Tour.  She has mostly based her stories with animals in them because before she was an author she was a zoologist and there was a book that she was telling us about and it was about a boy that got his arm pulled of  by a lion, it’s name was The Lion Who Stole My Arm. The  real story that it was based on was about a 5 year old boy who got attacked by a lion and even though his arm didn’t come off he had to get it amputated because the attack was so bad. She was also telling us about animals that she was looking at such as: lionesses, humpback whales etc. When she was talking to us about the humpback whales she noticed when she was studying them that mostly every day and hour of the day the whales would eat then eat then eat again. Also to have a little fun we learned how to sing like a whale.  Nicola Davies also wrote a climate change book called Gaiya and because we are doing climate change as one of out topics that was very interesting. We also wrote climate change poems. We have been researching a lot of different facts and effects that climate change has on the world. We could either write a kenning, a haiku or a free verse poem.  We thought that the visit as very exciting learning about lots of different animals.

By Rebecca and Rowan

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10th Anniversary Burn’s Ceilidh

On  Friday 26th of January Port Ellen primary school had our 10th anniversary Burns Celidh.  We had loads of people from the community coming to join us and we all had great fun.  We had all learned different Scots poems for the poetry competition and the judges came in to hear us read them before we all went to lunch.  At lunch the Primary 7s said their poem,  Address to the Haggis over the haggis and Lauren got to cut the haggis open.  After lunch we went to the hall to celebrate with our family and friends.  We did lots of Scottish Country dancing;  my favourite was the Virginia reel.  We also heard people play their musical instruments; Rowan and Rebecca did a duet on the accordian and tin whistle.    All the winners of the poems read them out:  P1 was Rachael, P2 was Chloe, P3 was Mya, P4 was Kayla, P5 was Dearbhla, P6 was Aidan and P7 was Rowan.  We all had a great time and enjoyed tea and shortbread made by Mrs Holyoke afterwards.  Thanks to everyone who came along.

Listen to two of our poems below:

 

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A Geologist Visits

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Just before Christmas P4/5 were thrilled to get a visit from Miss Heads nephew Luke, who is a geologist.  He answered lots of their questions about volcanoes and earthquakes.  He was also very impressed by the children’s knowledge of the earth’s structure and plate tectonics.

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The Amazing Black Tide.

Black Tide is a book by the author Caroline Clough and had lots of adventure. The main character is Toby and in the book he had to try to rescue his little sister Sylvie and his dad. They had been captured by invaders and held captive. All the people who are invaders had a NC tattoo on their wrist and Toby used that to tell who to stay away from because the invaders were after Toby as well.

btAt the beginning Toby had been captured but managed to escape but he didn’t manage to save his family so all through the book he was making up plans to save Sylvie and his dad. He met a girl called Natasha but all her friends call her Tash. In the middle of the book there are dogs and Toby called the biggest, fluffiest, blackest dog Cerberus after Greek mythology.

The author is Caroline Clough and she came to our class for the book fair. It was amazing when she came in and she told us about her family and her childhood and how she became an author. She said there will be another book called Silver Seas and I am really excited about it coming out!

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Reciprocal Reading

 

This is how you do reciprocal reading.

You read some of your book and  you choose an activity.  Then you write about it after that you talk about it to the rest of your group. The activities are Predicting, Clarifying,  Questioning, Summarizing, Connecting, Visualizing, Inferring, Evaluating.  This is how you get better at understanding what you read.  We are reading Cool by Michael Morpurgo.

 

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