Primary 4 classes headed to the Sands of Sound last Friday to explore the rockpools and find out what lives around our Shetland shoreline.

First, we all got tangled up in a food web!

Then we went looking for living things in rockpools.

Before we left the beach we had a sandcastle competition.

Lilly, Finlay and Mia were the overall winners!

It was a fantastic morning and a great way to finish off our topic about living things.

Thank you very much to  Mason and Willows’ dads for coming with us and we hope you all have a very HAPPY HOLIDAY!

Primary 4 classes visited Sumburgh Head Nature Reserve to find out more about our topic, Living Things.  We have been classifying animals and researching wildlife in our local environment so we were lucky to be offered a tour with staff from RSPB as well as the nature reserve. Despite a very wet day, we all had great fun and learned so much more about wildlife around Shetland.

We used binoculars and telescopes to get a close up view of the birds nesting on the cliffs.  We learned about  “pufflings” and “jumplings”!

We visited the Marine Life Centre and found out about sea life around Shetland, food webs and what pollution and climate change is doing to the wildlife.

We made a giant food web!  We were given cards with plankton, fish, birds and sea animals and then we linked together with ropes to see who eats what.  It was great fun! We realised what happens when one of the creatures in the food web is removed.

We were all joined together in our food web.

Thank you very much to Jane and Gary at Sumburgh for showing us so much and giving us a super fun day.

P4N enjoyed dressing up on World Book Day.

P4N has been up to some fishy business this term! We started off at the museum, finding out about Shetland fishing in the past. We looked at a sixareen and learnt how fishermen used longlines to catch fish.  Sixareens were clinker built, open boats with a sail and oars.

In class, we made a timeline to see how boats in Shetland have changed over the years from Viking longships to modern trawlers. We compared old fishing methods and boats with a modern trawler when we were shown around the Antarctic II. There are no oars or sails on this boat! It has a huge engine and massive nets to catch the fish. We were amazed how much technology there was on the bridge to help find the fish and operate the boat safely.

Frankie’s Fish Shop came to our classroom and showed us some of the different kinds of fish caught around Shetland. We had great fun meeting some weird sea creatures, like lobsters and monkfish.  Frankie staff taught us about sustainability and even cooked up some ling, catfish and mussels for us to eat. It was delicious!

All our experiences helped us create an imaginary “toonship” with crofting/fishing characters. We wrote recounts of our tour around the Antarctic II then typed up neat copies on the computers and inserted photos. We created flow diagrams on computers to show the journey of a fish from the sea to our plate and labelled a diagram of a fish.
So, a very big THANK YOU to everyone from the Shetland Museum, Frankie’s Fish Shop and the Antarctic II for helping to bring our learning to life.

P4n had an exciting start to the new school year when we visited Screenplay 2018 at Mareel to see Revolting Rhymes, a film based on Roald Dahl’s book. It was very funny and encouraged us to explore traditional tales more. We even tried to write rhymes of our own which was really hard but good fun!

Our topic this term has been all about the weather. We learned about the different types of weather and how forecasts are made. We measured the temperature, rainfall, wind speed and wind direction for 2 weeks. Then we used computers to create block graphs to show our results and created posters to show what we found out about the weather.

We measured shadows at different times of the day to see how they changed and used a torch at different angles to make a lego character’s shadow grow longer and shorter. We also made a tornado with water and washing up liquid!

As well as doing lots of measuring and recording, we’ve been finding out the difference between weather and climate. We used the internet and books to research what animals do to survive in different climates. We’ve been learning how to take notes and using them to create Powerpoints.

It’s been a very busy term so far and we really enjoyed showing our families all our hard work at our Learner Led Event on Thursday so a  big THANK YOU to everyone who was able to come.

Pupils in P4S have been enjoying the new Read, Write, Count initiative.  Each week they take home a folder with a piece of equipment or a book and an activity card.  It’s amazing how much they have achieved!  Some have used the scales and measuring jugs to help bake cakes, while others have been counting their steps with pedometers or playing dice and card games.  They’ve written stories and produced amazingly detailed drawings, carefully labelled.  They’ve had books to show them how to draw in a particular style or teach a bit about history, or just a good old yarn to fire the imagination.

It’s fantastic to see how much fun they’ve had reading, writing and counting with their families at home.

xin nian kuai le!

Some  Primary 4S pupils helped their Mandarin Teacher, Mr Lei,  to tell the P4-7 classes about Chinese New Year at assembly this morning.  We found out why red is such an important colour – it’s all to do with those scary monsters, the Nian!  Merran and Oliwia helped set the scene with a tree and flowers. Meanwhile Mayah and Paul made fantastic monsters who tried to eat the villagers (Ania, Kian, Kyja and Joshua) but a very wise old man (played by our own Tyler Coutts) advised them to wear red clothes and make lots of noise with firecrackers and drums.  The trick worked and they frightened off the evil Nian.  So every year people in China wear red and chase away the monsters.

The pupils did a splendid job, particularly as they only had 2 rehearsals at lunchtime and one afternoon.  They made or brought in costumes and masks and Mr Lei brought in lanterns and firecrackers.  They had great fun.

A big THANK YOU to Mr Lei for teaching us all so much about Chinese New Year.  We hope all have a great new year!