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BOOK REVIEW OF SKELLIG

Skellig is a fantasy book written by David Almond. Skellig was written in 1968. My Favorite quote from the book was,

‘I was sure I saw for a second the ghostly image of her wings’,

because I thought it was a good quote for an ending because wings reminded me of Skellig having wings.

This book has many different meanings. Skellig was based in a new house where Micheal and his family moved, with a shed where a strange person lived with wings called the Skellig. This book is a story about a mythical creature called the Skellig that Micheal found in his abandoned shed. Michael gets Skellig something called number 27 and 53 from the Chinese’s menu. Skellig is dying but Michal needs him to save and help his baby sister.

Michal was a boy who had a mum and a dad that were really stressed because they had a baby with a disease and had a new house to work in. The theme of the Skellig is overcoming stress and fears. Children would enjoy this book because it has a lot of twist and turns and is weird in a way that makes it fun to read. I enjoyed it because it was a weird fantasy that has a beast creature person that is funny, and I liked how Skellig memorized his order 27 and 53 and the fact it was full of mysteries.

Skellig was full of emotions from happy to sad it made me laugh when Skellig tripped other the stone on the way to new hideout and I was sad when I read that the baby was in hospital. I think David Almond achieved making this sort of strange book. This book also reminded me of the enchanted woods because of the wondering what comes next and all sorts of mythical creatures. I rate it 4/5.

Neil P6

Skellig

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No Ballet Shoes In Syria Book Review

This book is written by Catherine Bruton. The characters are Aya the main character, Aya’s mum and Aya’s little brother Moosa! It all started with an eleven-year-old girl named Aya having to flee her home in Syria with her family.

You might enjoy the book from how relatable it is to you or how interesting and spreads awareness for refugees! Personally, I enjoy how interesting it is and how it’s based on real things that could be happening in other people’s lives. As it has war, injuries and death people (people as teachers and parents) might not want a young child reading it, personally I recommend it for either nine or ten plus! Parts of the book were a bit upsetting knowing that Aya knows she’ll never see her friend’s little sister, and her mum and her think they’ll never see Aya’s dad again, this made me sad for Aya and her mum even though it’s just a book.

There was nothing I really disliked about the writing except from when the author wrote a bit too much about the exact same thing. I think Catherine Bruton did a fantastic job at writing this, not only making an awesome book she is spreading awareness about the refugees and the wars.

My Favorite quote from the book is “A mother’s fountain of tears flows forever”-Mrs. Massoud. Compared to all the books I’ve read this is one of my favorites!

By Scarlett P6

No Ballet Shoes in Syria : Catherine Bruton: Amazon.co.uk: Books

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Citizenship Group Nave- Nurture and Rights Respecting

Nave house have been working last term on Rights and Nurture in our school.  We made a plan in our floorbook and then we actioned some of the ideas.  We made a positive pants display for the school, we designed nurture boxes to go around the school with fidget toys in so people can access them when they are worried or anxious, and we planned and sourced a friendship bench for the playground which we are going to paint like a rainbow. Looking after our mental health supports our right to relax and play and to be healthy.

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Texa Citizenship- Eco Group

Last term we were in the citizenship group dealing with Eco matters in the school.  We carried out a beach clean with P1-7, we put up labels around the school to remind people to be eco friendly, for example switch off the light when it is bright and we did a survey of the school grounds to see what improvements could be made.  Our next steps as a group will to be make bird houses and bird food for the animals as we come into winter.

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Blytheswood Boxes

Every year one of the school houses organises an event to raise money for the Blytheswood shoebox appeal.  In this way children are supporting the rights of people around the world by providing them with extra resources they may not have. This year it was the turn of Texa house and then organised a fun sports afternoon.  Lots of money was raised thanks to kind donations from parents and items were purchased to fill shoeboxes- we managed to fill 35 in total!  Well done everybody.

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Citizenship- Orsay Reading Group Term 1

We came up with lots of ideas about how to improve engagement of our Reading Culture within our community.  We then had a vote on our ideas and we chose to put story stones in the woods.  Unfortunately our original plan backfired due to lack of permission from a land owner and so we contacted Mr MacTaggart who is the new owner of Cairnmore Woods.  He is currently in discussion with his insurance company to check if  this is possible.  In the meantime we have been creating our story stones with a partner by drawing a picture of a character from our favourite books and then doing a recording of what we think about the book.  This will then be put on a QR code for the back of the stone so that our community can hear about our favourite books.  We have been working with the Ileach to share our reading news too and also been working with the This is Islay Podcast team to share our learning to a different audience.

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Harvest Topic

P45 have been doing an IDL this term on harvest.  We looked at harvest from the land and the sea.  We made mini carrot cakes using local carrots, we used the graters and peelers safely and responsibly. 🥕 🥕🧅We are learning to use different cooking skills, and we explored two different methods of cutting using a knife. We made soup using a lot of local produce, grown in Port Ellen.

The children met Fiona from Islay Natural Heritage Trust who helped us forage for seaweed in our local environment. We found lots of seaweed and used a key to identify the species. We then learnt that you can cook using lots of different types of seaweed and we made Carrageen pudding, the seaweed made it go really thick, like jelly! lots of use tried our pudding and some fried seaweed, there were mixed reviews!

🤿 Gordon visited us to talk to use about diving around Islay and Jura for scallops. We learnt about what we can harvest from the Sea. Gordon showed us his diving equipment and even allowed us to have a shot of his goggles!🦞We also tasted a range of produce that is harvested from the sea around Islay. We tasted mackerel pate, scallops and lobster. Laurie’s Dad kindly allowed us to see a lobster that he caught in his fishing boat. Laurie showed the class and talked about what his Dad catches and how the boat catches different shellfish. 🦞After tasting we voted on our favourite food and created bar charts to display our findings.

The children worked hard to create lovely invitations inviting parents to our Harvest Lunch on Wednesday 2nd October and we even wrote our own prayer.  Our invited guests, which included the OAP lunch club, came along to eat the lovely soup and crumble we had prepared with local ingredients.  All the classes performed for them and a great time was had by all!

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Beach Clean

We spent the afternoon cleaning the Co-op beach as part of our Eco citizenship groups plan leaning this term.  The children worked as a team to gather all the rubbish and make our beach a safer and cleaner environment for all.

🌎 SDG 6- Access to Clean Water  14- Life Below Water

✨ UNCRC 24 Good health and clean water

 

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Titanic!

P5 have been learning about the Titanic for their topic this term.  We went to the beach to observe boats by the peer. As we study the Titanic, we tried looking at how we might use perspective to help us draw a boat.  Then we went back in time to try and get a better understanding of what it would have been like to be a passenger on the Titanic.  We listened to a survivors story… it is so interesting! Finally the children braved the weather to set their Titanic models free into the sea. Some were slightly more successful at sailing than others… Everyone got soaked but it was so much fun!

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Easyfundraising

Did you know that whenever you buy anything online – from your weekly shop to your annual holiday – you could be raising free donations for Port Ellen Primary School with easyfundraising? There are over 8,000 retailers on board ready to make a donation – including eBay, Argos, John Lewis & Partners, ASOS, Booking.com and M&S – and it won’t cost you a penny extra to help us raise funds. All you need to do is:

1. Go to link  and join for free.

2. Every time you shop online, go to easyfundraising first to find the site you want and start shopping.

3. After you’ve checked out, the retailer will make a donation to Port Ellen Primary School at no extra cost to you whatsoever!

There are no catches or hidden charges and Port Ellen Primary School will be really grateful for your donations. Thank you for your support.

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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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Nature Wands and Sycamores

ELC have been enjoying exploring the different seasons and are beginning to identify the different features of Autumn time as we move in to a new season. We are aware of the different features of Autumn and has enjoyed looking at sycamores and making them fly. We enjoyed going a wee walk this morning to collect some autumn materials we can use to make pictures !🌸 We have also been enjoying learning a song about sycamores.⭐️ ⭐️ I am aware of the different seasons. ⭐️ I am beginning to identify features of Autumn. ⭐️ I can be creative using a range of different materials. 👣We will continue to learn about the different seasons and explore Autumn further over the next term.

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Snail Fun!

P12 have been doing a Julia Donaldson topic and we went on a snail hunt! This week we have been reading Snail and the Whale and wanted to do some snail investigation. We also were kindly given some snail shells from Miss Clark who told us some super facts about them. You can see our Snail floorbook is full of questions.

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Our Floorbooks

Floorbooks are used to record the children’s thoughts and ideas. They can mark make, draw pictures and we scribe their learning. This term we have been learning about ourselves- what age we are and what our favourite thing to do in nursery is.

⭐️ ⭐️I am learning to mark make.

⭐️I can share my thoughts and ideas.

👣 The children wanted to draw and talk about their families. Please can you send us a family photo. This could also be airdropped in the morning if you are unable to post it to seesaw.⭐️

✨I have the right to a name. (Article 7)

✨I have the right to an identity. (Article 8)

✨I have the right to an education. (Article 28)

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NAVE BEE RIGHTS RESPECTING GROUP

We are the rights and nurture group and we are working on supporting the children in the school to meet their right to good health (24).  We have decided to make a friendship bench and a happy boxes and then put them around the school.

People are voting for different  types of bench designs:   flower, Dinosaur, fish, boats, rainbow.

People had paper and there where righting out different ideas we were in groups of three. We also had to write ideas for where to put the boxes around the school or the playground.

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Bee Readers Citizenship Group Meeting

We are the Bee Readers group.  Today we recorded for the Islay podcast to say about what our favourite  book is and why.  Also we wrote a letter to Laphroaig and Mrs Mcgilvery to ask if it is OK to set reading rocks so when tourist or locals come over there will be a QR code for them to scan. So they can listen to our stories and our amazing podcasts!.

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Bee Eco Citizenship Group Meeting

Today we had a eco group meeting to start working on our action plan.  Our plan today was to save water because one of our rights(24) is the right to clean water.   Water uses a lot of energy to be made safe to drink so we should not waste it.  I learned that hoses use lots of water so when washing a car we should use a bucket of water and a sponge.  We learned to reuse the  water in our school water bottles rather than throwing it away.

Next time we will be planting fruit and vegetables so we can grow them in school instead of buying them.  Here are some potatoes we grew in our garden this year and we had them for lunch!

By Finlay.

 

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Endeavour Competition with Kew Gardens

During the holidays we received great news, that Port Ellen were a commended school in the Kew Gardens Endeavour competition!  The competition was to find out about the secret life of trees in your local area and write about them.  P67 had learned about how Islay has actual rainforests! They are some of the last temperate Rainforests in the UK. They visited one of the places at Olistaidh, where they did observational drawings of the trees.  They then researched them and created presentation fact files about the rainforests and where they are.  One of these files are featured on the winners page on the Kew Gardens website.

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Scottish Water

On 2nd of September 2024 the Scottish water came to our school and two of them were dressed as a tap and a toilet! They were talking about how they were doing a bunch of roadworks in Port Ellen because the pipes were getting old and rusty which would have meant we would have gotten rusty and dirty water. 

 Some pipes were bursting around Islay and Jura. They showed us the new plastic pipes that they were putting in. They told us the 3 Ps to put in the toilet; pee, poop, paper!  

They came in to show us what they have been doing around our village. They set us a mission called H2O and it basically is we got a card, so we must fill it in and at the end of the week we show our class what we have done to save our water. 

They told us about the water cycle and in the summer whem its really hot we start running out of water so that’s why we need to save as much water as we can. 

At the end we got to stay and try on the uniform, tap and toilet outfit so we could take pictures. Altogether, it was really fun and the whole school had a blast! So, save your water everyone because it is not unlimited. 

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Kildalton Trip

Monday the second of September 2024

We visited Kildalton cross with a few more people following which are 2 people from a computer science university named Saint Andrews and a person from Islay museum.

We and the scientists visited the Kildalton cross because of a school trip to investigate the cross because a fungus called lichen was eating away the carvings of the cross, that was made in the 8th century. The cross is about Christianity and had carvings about a lady holding a baby and had more cravings which looked really interesting which people think is Jesus.

We were split up into groups for different things like, making a little clip about Kildalton, taking photos, drawing anything at the place and 360 degree photo which was really fun because we had to hide from the camera when it takes a photo. After everyone finished each group we went back to the school a few kids that was: Hannah, Brody, Ella and Freddy. Went to take more 360 photos around the school, but unfortunately we couldn’t do much pictures outside because it was raining. But we still had fun! And that’s the end of our amazing and interesting trip Kildalton trip! Hope you enjoyed reading this!

 

 

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Stem Day At High School

On Thursday 29th August we went to Islay High School for a STEM day. There  was workshops about different stuff. The opening speech was a lady from a stem company encouraging STEM for young people. The next speech was a worker from the SSE that was talking about the SSE. Then there was an SSE graduate that moved from the Philippines talk about his time in the SSE.  The first workshop we went to was a coding workshop. The little bright lights on the bots were glistening like a stars in the middle of space. The main thing about this workshop: Coding spheros. We got to make spheros weave in and out of cones and do challenges with it. The next station was outside in a polytunnel.  It was about bees and other animals. We got to make paper Mache balls. During lunch we asked to get raffle tickets. and the final workshop was about birds. We went to see birds outside with binoculars. We didn’t see much birds. nor variety. But we had a great time!

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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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Glasgow Warriors Rugby

On August  the 28th P5,6,7  went to Bowmore football pitch and played rugby with 4 people from Glasgow Warriors. We played a passing game  and after we passed to 4 different people and then make a Pyramid and we had to make it 3 people then 4 and so on and so on  .Then we played a wee game of touch rugby. There were 3 teams blue, orange and non bibs and we had to try and score a tri at the other side of the pitch. We also played a skills game and had to circle the ball around our back as much times as we can, and had to put it through our legs in a figure of eight. At the end we all felt exited because they said they would sign out shirts and it was really good and I would recommend it to people who like different sports and being outside doing sports.

 

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Saint Phnx

On Friday the 22nd of August we visited Bowmore high school and met Saint Phoenix. Saint Phoenix was a band of two men who sang the song happy place. All of Primary 5 and upwards from Port Ellen, Port Charlotte and Bowmore primary came with us. P56s went on the Mundell bus while P 7s went on the mini bus that we use for the school bus. They showed us how to practice our vocals and it goes like “mmm” they also showed us some exercises they do like wiggles and wobbles! Their icon was a blue feather and they told us a story about why they choose a blue feather as there logo. The story was, he was scrolling through TikTok at night because he couldn’t get to sleep but he found this video about a blue feather and he watched it and it was quite interesting and it made him fall asleep. as he woke up to go to work he told his wife about the video his wife didn’t really believe it but when he went out the front door, she shouted stop to him so looked around and when he looked down he saw a blue feather and that’s how it started! After that they played us their song happy place.  It was really helpful.

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Leavers Assembly

We said an emotional farewell to our P7 pupils on Wednesday with our leavers and achievement assembly.  After a great musical introduction from Mr McDermid’s musicians, Rachel, Evie, Freddy, Brody, Ayla and Ella, we watched the P7 memory videos.  We had a lip dub in the middle and then the final song.

After it was the achievements:

  • Ayla and Thomas were sport champions
  • Evie won the Drew Brown Memorial trophy for maths
  • Hugh won the Endeavour Shield for his Hydraulics project
  • Rachel won the citizenship trophy

Good luck P7!

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Port Ellen Primary School’s Endeavour Fair

On the 17th of June Port Ellen held their Endeavour Fair. The Endeavour Fair showcases everyone’s endeavors, from healthy tuck to a guideline on paddle boarding safety. This fair is held every year with primary six and seven in the hall and all of the other classes showing their work in their class rooms.

Endeavor is a personal project that we do every year, where you pick a topic to research and to produce something at the end that’s physical not just a power point, or presentation. Every single class takes part in endeavour, from primary one to seven. At the endeavour fair, you are expected to have a main thing that you have done, like something to sell or to showcase that has been your focus. You should also be able to answer some simple questions and know about the history of what you are studying. Say your endeavour was hatching and raising chickens, you would need to know about different breeds of chicken, the rarest and most popular chickens and maybe even about the native breeds of chicken.

Some examples of Endeavour in P67 were Hydraulics-building of hydraulic bridges and a website, Coopering- making crafts from whisky barrels and learning how to be a cooper, Bird and Bat Boxes- making them to sell and finally creating a school newspaper.

In P12 we had a pancake palace, an ice cream stall, all about the Titanic and Tree frogs.  In P34 we had baking, squirrels and bath bombs.  In P45 we had sewing cushions, digital art and a nail salon.

Lots of enterprising Endeavours throughout the whole school!

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Sports Day

On Friday the 14th of June Port Ellen Primary school hosted our sports day where there were races for nursery all the way to primary 7. The winner of the inter house relay was Texa, second place Orsay and third was Nave. The winner of the sports champion boys was Thomas Edwards in 1st Freddy Munro in second and third was Hugh Mackinnon. For girls it was Ayla Denby in first Evie Wood in second and third was Ella Barford. The winner out of all houses was Texa.

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Trip to Olistadh Archaeological Dig

On Wednesday the 19th of June, we went on a school trip! When we parked the bus we walked about 15 mins up to a beautiful landscape full of old ruins of buildings. The first thing we did was get introduced to our tour guides, and then sorted into groups. They took us around the whole area and showed us everything they had been doing. We got to clean things we found in the dirt, guessing what the old things used to do, digging in the ground, it was so much fun. Hannah found a big piece from an old pot and Jacob found some clay pipe.  We learnt lots of things and it was really interesting. Then we headed down to Port Mor and got to eat our packed lunch, and then we got delicious ice cream. A really fun day!

 

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