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This term we have been learning Gaelic with Caroline, Caroline is a online Gaelic teacher who teaches kids Gaelic through video call. We have been learning hobbies in Gaelic, food in Gaelic and we also do actions to remember.  We also learned about jumping and sitting down and listening. Some examples are, sit in Gaelic is suidhe, Stand in Gaelic seasamh, jump in Gaelic is leum.

Caroline teaches P12, P234, P567.

On the 27th of January David Wood a member of the RSPB came in to the school to teach primary 5,6 & 7 about corncrakes. He taught them all the need to know facts about corncrakes, and gave them some quizzes on corncrakes. Here are some of the need to know facts :                                                                                Corncrake have two sets of eggs each year.                                                                             Corncrakes are extremely rear and we are very lucky to have them on the Isle of Islay.                                                                                                                                                          Corncrakes Latin name is Crex crex.                                                                                             Corncrake males will call at the top of there voices from midnight to three am in the morning.                                                                                                                                          Corncrakes migrate to Africa in winter then come back and stay from April to September to mate the find there way by following certain stars they also know which direction south, east, west and north are in.

This  year the p7s read address to a haggis by Robert Burns in front of the whole school on the stage. Callie then cut the haggis in half with a knife. We had two weeks to practice it and learn it. The poem had 8 verses and we had to read four of them and we had to stay in sync .  In the poem it was talking about how good the haggis was and was saying it was better than French food . They said that only brave people can eat it. We also had the haggis on our lunch. We then had a great lunch.

Primary 7 give you ‘Address to a Haggis’ by Robert Burns to round off our renditions! pic.twitter.com/535Z2Wbrt6

— Port Ellen Primary School (@portellenps) January 25, 2022

 

Port Ellen Primary did some poems and Primary 5 did up in the Morning Early and put it on to seesaw and the poem is

Cauld blaws the wind frae east to west, 
The drift is driving sairly; 
Sae loud and shill's I hear the blast
I'm sure it's winter fairly. 

Up in the morning's no for me, 
Up in the morning early; 
When a' the hills are covered wi' snaw, 
I'm sure it's winter fairly. 

The birds sit chittering in the thorn, 
A' day they fare but sparely; 
And lang's the night frae e'en to morn
I'm sure it's winter fairly
 
Up in the morning's no for me, 
Up in the morning early; 
When a' the hills are covered wi' snaw, 
I'm sure it's winter fairly.

All the words were hard to learn and the meanings were hard to learn snaw means snow cauld means cold.

Happy Burns day everyone! Here is a reading of 'Up in the Morning Early' by P5. Enjoy. pic.twitter.com/hvUidKIF0d

— Port Ellen Primary School (@portellenps) January 25, 2022

 

Here is the Primary 6 reading of the Robert Burns poem 'Robert Bruce's Address to his Troops at Bannockburn' with artwork🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 pic.twitter.com/cbuu2jJhU9

— Port Ellen Primary School (@portellenps) January 25, 2022

On Tuesday 25th January 2022 P5/6/7 had to learn a poem each.
The p6's had to learn Scots Wha Hae. The scots wha hae poem is about 
the Scottish fighting the English at
Bannock burn. On the seesaw post, we all had to a different verse 
Verse 1 was Finlay and Teddy
Verse 2 was William
Verse 3 was Iona
Verse 4 was Dylan
Verse 5 was Chloe
Verse 6 was James
Here is the poem Scots Wha Hae


Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled, 
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led, 
Welcome to your gory bed, 
Or to Victorie! 

Now's the day, and now's the hour; 
See the front o' battle lour; 
See approach proud Edward's power 
Chains and Slaverie! 

Wha will be a traitor knave? 
Wha can fill a coward's grave? 
Wha sae base as be a Slave? 
Let him turn and flie:

Wha, for Scotland's King and Law, 
Freedom's sword will strongly draw, 
Free-man stand, or Free-man fa', 
Let him follow me. 				

By Oppression's woes and pains! 
By your Sons in servile chains! 
We will drain our dearest veins, 
But they shall be free! 

Lay the proud Usurpers low! 
Tyrants fall in every foe! 
Liberty's in every blow! 
Let us Do- or Die!!!

On Wednesday we took part on a Edinburgh national art gallery competition. We have been doing a topic on observational drawing with Mrs. Brown that I really enjoy! Observational drawing is were you look at something and draw it.

First Mrs. Brown set up fruit and plants on a table. We all put our tables round the fruit like a bonfire so we could all se it at different angles. We first got to practice our shading on a wee set up of fruit. Then we got A2 paper to do the real drawing on. I sketched all out. Then I started to paint with water colors. Then did some shading with pastels. I finally finished after a long two days.

I waited till I forgot that we did it! Then Mrs. Brown announced that someone in the class won! We all gave a long drum roll then she said “Katie won!” I was over the moon with joy!

 

Well here it is, P1/2 class of 2021 Christmas Nativity. The children have worked so hard to create this for you and hopefully have had some fun along the way too! Thank you to all of the other classes for their contributions, we really appreciate it! We hope you enjoy it!

Sorcha won the Marine Design a fish Competition. She drew a picture of a imaginary fish and won the Competition.  The fish was very colorful and creative.

First you had to draw the fish on a piece of paper. Then you need to send it in a email to the Marine Design a fish competition leaders.  Finally they pick a winner and turn the winners designs into a toy.

Here is a picture of Sorcha’s fish.

We have been learning about COP26 and what it is about. It started on the 1 of NOV to the 12 of NOV and it is held in Glasgow. There are 30,000 people going to attend at COP26, and 198 of them are very famous people from all around the world. Some of the famous people going are Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and Greta Thunberg and many more will be there at COP26. COP26 stands for conference of the parties.

COP26 are going to try and solve the problem of CLIMATE CHANGE! Some major disasters, that might happen if we don’t try to stop climate change, is that the temperature might rise up 1.5C and the water levels might rise 1.1 meters. But if we don’t do anything until 2030, the water levels might rise up to 5 meters. WHO WAN’TS THAT TO HAPPEN! What the Scotland is trying to achieve is to be net zero by 2030 and to make all cars electric, and to make the cheaper.

The reason why they are doing it is because everyone needs to help solve the problem of climate change.

James= I think that the people at COP26 have not done enough because I don’t think that any of them are going to do anything about it.

Dylan= I think that they have done enough because they have discussed that what they are going to do and what is going to happen.

 

 

The Message in a Bottle project was created for COP26 and involves school children from islands around the world. The idea came about when a film-maker on Uist found a message in a bottle from a local man in Greenland that had been buried in the iceflow that then melted; the message was about his worry about the effects of climate change on his island.  We decided to take part as we live on an island and are worried about the effects on our island and others around the world.  Islands are more likely to be affected by rising sea levels.

The whole class did it and went on the beach and Mrs Clark filmed us. We sent them to Andy McKinnon. Andy made a three meter bottle and he made videos of us then he sent them to COP26 where anyone can see.  We are very proud to be involved in this project.

 

Primary 5/6/7 have had some google meet’s with people from Lewis and know Gaelic very well and were teaching P5to7 Gaelic  and all the essentials in Gaelic. So P5/6/7 are getting good at it the person’s name is Caroline she is very good at Gaelic and today we were learning about family.

Remembrance day is a day to respect fallen soldiers. People wear poppies  because a soldier stood in a field were war happened and poppy stood  tall and a wrote a poem and that give people to wear a poppy.  Mostly every person on earth at the 11 month the 11 o’clock people have two minutes of silence. Poppy are different every where. At school we had one minute of silence at eleven clock.

 

We got out to the library van today and got to choose a book to bring in to nursery. Charlotte enjoyed looking through the books and chose “A Piglet Named Mercy” 📚 🐷 ⭐️ I can explore and choose books to read and listen to. 👣 We will look at and read the books we chose from the van in nursery.

We are pleased to announce that 3 of our pupils have achieved the highly Commended place in the Scottish Civic Trust’s My Place Photography Competition this year in the primary category.

The theme this year was climate change and the pupils had to take photos of their local environment that reflected this theme.

Katie took a photo of an abandoned house with the maltings smoke in the distance and called it Distant Threat.

Caillin took a photo of the electric charging point at the pier which looks very rusty and called it Charge Up!

 

William took an interesting photo of different building materials and called it Green Build- Stone, Metal ,Wood.

Well done to our three photographers!

For Maths Week Scotland this year the school took part in the Maths Inside photography competition.  Maths inside is a photo competition open to everyone in Scotland and asks people to take photos and then comment on the maths that relates to those photos.

There are three categories-  in the home, in the wild, and climate change.  We have 2 children who have received a Second Level Commended Entry and certificate; Iona for her picture of the logs from chopped down trees on the Oa in the ‘Climate change’ category and Connor for his use of maths to estimate the number of words he read in a book in the ‘In the home’ category.  We also have a highly commended at Early Level for Elana’s photo of the sea and questions How many fish are left in the sea?

Even more exciting we have an overall winner at second level; Finlay for his photo of fishing boats in Port Ellen- he talked about the different maths you needed to be a fisherman in the ‘In the wild’ category. He gets a certificate and £20 Amazon gift voucher.

Even MORE exciting we have the Overall Category Winner for ‘Climate Change’; Evie for her photo of one a locally caught fish we filleted for our food topic. She wondered about the maths needed to calculate how many fish and other creatures are left in the seas and how we know if we are overfishing. She receives a £50 Amazon voucher and certificate.

We also were a highly commended school for the number and quality of our entries.

Congratulations on your success in the maths inside photo competition! This really is an enormous achievement!

Earlier in the year we had Fiona from the INHT taking us out and about around the Ard and teaching us all about peat.  As a part of this project the children in P567 wrote peat poetry.  The winners and runners up of the poetry competition can be read below.  Well done to those who took part.

 

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7 weeks ago Ben and William planned the dodge ball tournament. 3 weeks ago they started it because they are in the healthy group and have been wanting to do a tournament for a while, they had a vote so that it was fair and everyone voted for dodgeball the scores were Orsay won nave came second and Texa came third the points were Orsay 49 nave 46 Texa 33 it was very close.it was played on the school pitch .

We done a football tournament and Nave came first, Texa came second and Orsay came third that was the scores for the football tournament. We are going to do a basketball tournament next time we do a tournament. And we had a referee just in case there was a foul and the referee kept the scores and Nave had a total of 48 goals and then Texa had 39 goals and Orsay had 33 goals and that was the scores for the football tournament.

In the be leaders group I am the leader for Texa with Dylan  as a vice captain, Callie for Orsay and Iona is the vice captain, Mya for Nave, and Finlay as the vice captain. As captains and vice captains we have to count up the house points every Friday. We also have to make the notice board look nice. On the notice board there will be a large sign saying Texa Orsay and Nave with a golden eagle next to Texa , Orsay with a stag and Nave with a salmon. Also we have to do a activity on Fridays were we tell Mrs. Clark who is here and what we have done in that afternoon. After the October holidays we will change the captains to other people for 1   term  and then there will be 2 different captains.

We have had a mathstastic week in Port Ellen primary!  All the classes have been busy outside snapping pictures for the Maths Inside competition, where you have to take photos of the maths you see in the world around you.  P567 have been baking cupcakes this week using their maths measuring skills and had a masterclass online from Peter Sawkins from the Great British Bake off.  P234 had to find their way out of a class escape room using their maths skills, it was very tricky but we can report that they all managed to escape!  P12 have been using the story Cuthbert goes on and on to learn all about infinity! 

P567 have been learning all about sustainable food choices this term as well as developing their cooking skills.  They have looked at food miles and created their own low food miles bramble jelly and rosehip jelly from foraged local produce.  We also made harvest chutney from locally grown vegetables.  After learning some key chopping skills, how to make bread and how to scale, gut and fillet a fish they chose and cooked healthy meals from around the world.  During maths week Scotland they used measuring skills to create a range of cupcakes: bramble, rosehip, citrus, chocolate orange and bubble-gum flavour.  Finally they chose to give a gift of the products they had made to the people in the community who helped during Covid.

Primary 1 and 2 had already collected and distributed food for the senior citizens in the village.  On Tuesday we delivered the 6 gift bags we made up to say thank you to our local covid heroes​.  Each bag contained jars of the jellies and chutney and a selection of the cupcakes.  P234 made lovely harvest loaves of bread to share as well.  They delivered the bags to the Co-op, the Post Office, the Ferry, Local Carers, the Doctors surgery and the School.  As a community school we feel it is important to support and say thank you to our wonderful community for supporting us!