Category Archives: Eco

Collecting Seaweed!

This afternoon we went to the Voe to collect seaweed which we are going to be using in our garden to help fertilise the soil. It was lovely to have Dot and Albi, from our community, join us on this trip!

We were lucky to get a beautiful sunny day for our trip and we managed to fill over 10 bags of seaweed!

We really enjoyed looking at the different creatures that live on the beach – from seals, to crabs, to insects!

To finish up we had a stone skimming competition. Everyone picked 3 stones to try skimming… Some people had more luck than others!
Our winners were Jasmine, Hunter and Lee who all managed to get 3 skims!

Global Goals

The eco committee have been learning about the United Nations  Global Goals. They have created presentations to tell the younger children what they have been learning.

P4 and 5 created a rap to tell us about the United Nations and how there are 17 global goals.

The eco committee looked through all these goals and chose ‘Life Below Water’ to focus on this year.

Primary 6 created a presentation about this to tell us more. They explained what sea pollution is and how this affects animals that live underwater. They told us that we should always put our rubbish in the bin and gave us ideas of who we could speak to to learn more.

 

Shoebox Appeal

This year after receiving a presentation at the correct level for the children all about the shoebox appeal, what it does and where it goes, the pupil council took a unanimous decision in taking part in this appeal. They sent out letters to each family and have taken on the responsibility of wrapping, sorting through all the items and filling the boxes. Primary 7 have done a fantastic job of supporting the younger children in doing so.

We have outdone ourselves this year as we have managed to wrap and fill an amazing……41 boxes!! There are a mixture of boxes for babies all the way up to elderly women.

We would like to say a huge thank you to anyone who has donated items to help us with this very worthy cause!

Welcome Back!!

We would like to say a huge welcome back to everyone. How fast did the October holidays go?!

Everyone has grown and had lots of news to share about their holidays which was great to hear. We have had a great first day back with eco work, recorders, holiday writing, learning about Halloween and dancing to Just Dance which worked up a right sweat!

Monica showed us how well she is doing with her recorder. She had been playing over the holidays and learnt 3 new tunes, so a huge well done to her for her hard work!

Heidi was also keen to learn the recorder as she got one for Christmas so she stayed back after school and learnt the notes G, A and B and can now play Hot Crossed Buns which is fantastic!

Miss Nicholson brought us back a present from her holiday in Majorca. It was a variety of different seeds: tomatoes, rainbow rose, rainbow corn, baby water melons and a flower that looks like a monkey called funny monkey!

We are intruiged to see if they will grow up here and can’t wait to plant them as an experiment!

Our busy term

Term 1 has been a very busy term for us here in Cullivoe. We have learnt a lot and achieved a lot too. Here is what we have to say about our learning and our term!

Numeracy

Primary 2 – we have been learning our 2x table and what greater than and less than means and looks like. It was easy!

Primary 3 – We have been learning our 3x table and have worked hard in numeracy. We liked learning about place value.

Primary 4 – we have been learning the 8x table!

Primary 5 -we have been learning the 8 and 9x table. We have been playing beat my score which is really fun!

Literacy

We have all been learning about newspaper reports and the features of these. We have enjoyed learning about this and writing our own articles! We know that a newspaper needs a name, headlines, it has to be interesting, it is written in paragraphs, they have adverts in them, they are written in the 3rd person. We could give you more but that’s enough for now.

P5-7 have also been learning about superlative and comparative adjectives and looking at dictionary skills as well as recapping punctuation and developing comprehension and reading with expression.

Health and Wellbeing

We have been learning about the body and the organs. Here are a few that we have looked at: lungs, small and large intestine, pancreas, heart, liver, kidneys, stomach, bladder, gall bladder, oesophagus, rectum and the brain.

We have done an experiment which looked at the digestive system. It was really fun but also disgusting!

We had a couple of visitors in to talk to us about our topic. The health improvement practitioner talked to us about how to keep our body healthy. We had a scientist come in to talk to us about her work and different diseases/how to keep ourselves healthy.

The younger ones have been looking at throwing and catching in PE whilst the older ones have been learning about netball.

Other things within the school

Primary 4 have really enjoyed learning the recorder and have picked it up well.

We had our termly concert on Tuesday which was really good. The recorder players, both primary 4 and 5, all nailed their tunes which was fantastic!

The JRSOs have had a visit from a police officer to show them how to use a speed gun.

The pupil council have organised a coffee morning to support the charity Macmillan cancer support.

P4-7 have been learning about the global goals in eco this term. We have been picking topics to look at; life below water.

We have been learning to have a conversation in French and the older children have been looking at food.

Our feel good song we learnt this term was ‘Always look on the bright side of life.’

We focussed on article 24 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child which is: You have the right to the best possible health.

We took part in a STEM challenge to make a bridge for the three billy goats. We were in groups and had to design and make a bridge that would hold the 3 billy goats and the troll! It was really fun and we worked really well as a team. The bridges were all successful and held a lot of weight!

Out with school

We took part in the Harvest service and performed our Harvest Samba.

We had a lot of prize winners at the Yell Show AND Cullivoe Primary School have been awarded a trophy for the most prize winning entries!!

A few of the children have made the achievement wall this term due to passing their deep end test, winning medalsat various things. So a big well done!

 

Only 2 more days of school everyone! We are excited for the holidays and for Halloween.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mysterious item found on beach.

When we were cleaning up the Breckon beach there was something that was washing up on the shoreline. Mrs Lawson only had walking boots on so Miss Nicholson, who had her rubber boots on, went to fetch it for us so that no one got their feet wet. This is what we found…

We didn’t know what this was but we knew it was something growing on a buoy. Miss Nicholson took a photo of it and asked her ‘fishing’ friends to see if anyone could help us identify what this was before throwing it back in the sea as it wasn’t rubbish but something living so it was only fair to return it. Do you know what this is?

It turns out it is goose barnacles! Another name for them is stalked barnacles or gooseneck barnacles but their scientific name is Pedunculata. They are a filter-feeding crustacean that live attached to hard surfaces of rocks or on flotsam that have become dislodged from the sea bed and washed up on shore. They are usually found in quite deep water and live up to about 3 years! Apparently they are the unquestionable secret gem of Spanish seafood!

Cleaning up Breckon Beach

Yesterday we went to Breckon beach to clean up any rubbish lying around the beach. We walked there and then were given bags and the older children were paired up with the younger pupils and then set off to different parts of the beach so that we were spread out. We had 10 bags and although not all of them were full that was the most rubbish we had found in a couple of years. We all worked really well together and did a good job of cleaning up the beach. Andy Gear was there looking for dead birds as every month he does a survey for the RSPB so we spoke to him for a little while. There was a huge pipe that was just too big to carry so we had to leave that and will talk to some strong men to collect it. When we were about to leave a seal popped up to see us. We think he was come to say thank you for cleaning up his beach.

 

Celebrating Our Achievements

Today we held a coffee morning to celebrate our achievements over the year! We have achieved our level 2 Rights Respecting School award as well as our 3rd eco flag! We are very proud of these achievements as well as all the others displayed on our achievement wall for you all to see! We would like to thank the community for coming along and joining us to help celebrate, there was a great turn out and it was great to see everyone.

Eco Committee present their findings

This morning the Eco Committee presented their research on transport and sustaining our world. Each member of the committee has been looking at different topics within this. Here are a few that we learned about today:

  • Fairtrade
  • air pollution
  • where food comes from/how far it has to travel to get from the farm to your plate
  • ferries
  • how transport has changed over time
  • wind turbines
  • how they travel to school (2015-2016, before and after they were born)

They all researched their topics and created a PowerPoint presentation/poster or talk on these topics. They all presented well, talking confidently and clearly, giving us lots of information.

We look forward to hearing the rest soon.

Climate Change

This term we have been learning about climate change.  We have been looking at how climate change has affected people in different parts of the world.  We made up our own news channels and each had a role to play – these were presenter, reporter, scientist and local person.  We will upload our videos to show you, we hope you enjoy our news reports!

Primary 4-7