The Library Group led World Book Day. We had a visit from local author Britt Harcus. The library van timed its visit perfectly! Some folk chose to wear costumes, and some brought in a tattie as a book character.

Active Shapinsay Week took part in February. Sports Committee and Mrs Bews worked to arrange a whole week of different activities; not just for school but for the wider community too. There were lots of things on offer, including cycling, walking, football, basketball, rugby, running, dancing, kickboxing, yoga, rollerblading and even pirates!

Many thanks to all who came and led activities – we couldn’t do it without you!

We enjoyed a lovely Christmas lunch with the Lunch Club, and we also performed to them afterwards. The end of term assembly went well. Fun Christmas crafts took place too!

We raised £205.17!

Our Pupil Committees are up and running, and have been setting their targets for the year.

Sports Committee

Pupil Council

Library Group

Eco Committee

Junior Road Safety Officers

This term the Primary children are learning about weather, climate and energy. The Nursery children have been enjoying playing with farms, dinosaurs and babies.

We enjoyed taking part in some activities through the Orkney Science Festival.

P6 children enjoyed Outdoor Education in Kirkwall.

The primary children have been swimming in Kirkwall each Friday.

Here are some photos from our learning this term:

At Shapinsay School we have a strange tradition of soaking our leavers when they don’t expect it. This year was no exception, and our P7s and Caroline were surprised by everyone at the end of the day.

Well done for being such good sports!

Some of the older children went to the STEM challenge day in Kirkwall. They had to build a vehicle to lay a subsea cable, give a presentation about their learning in STEM subjects and take part in various challenged.

The Shapinsay Science Squad were delighted to be awarded the runners up prize for the STEM challenges.

We went to Kirkwall and met with the children from Rousay, North Walls, Eday, North Ronaldsay and Papay. We took part in rugby, various sports and met Ola the Orca who is the mascot for the 2025 Island Games.

As part of our science topic of forces, we have been learning about air resistance and water resistance. Both are examples of friction, which is a force that slows things down.

To test out air resistance we created parachutes to allow eggs to be dropped from the stage. We found that larger parachutes created more air resistance, therefore the eggs dropped slower.

Then we dropped different shapes into water to test water resistance. We found that shapes with a larger surface area took longer to drop because there was more water resistance. Pointy shapes are more streamlined so have less water resistance.