Category Archives: Topic

Collecting Seaweed!

May 1, 2018 Miss Jamieson Leave a comment

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!

School

Arches Challenge!

March 19, 2018 Miss Jamieson Leave a comment

On Monday 12th February, we were set a challenge!

We began by discussing arches; how they are built and how they stand up. We looked at bridges which are created using an arched shape and where the pressure points are on these.

Then Mrs Kavagnah & Miss Jamieson armed us with a packet of crackers and a jar of peanut butter… and using these, we had to create an arched bridge!

Some groups had more success than others…

Achievements, Eco, JRSO, Pupil Council, School, STEM

Our busy term

October 4, 2017 Miss Nicholson Leave a comment

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.

School

Germ Science – How Clean Are Your Hands?

September 8, 2017 Miss Nicholson 1 Comment

On Tuesday we were learning the importance of hand washing and how to describe that germs may be present even if they are not seen.

Whatever we do, we come into contact with germs. It’s easy for a germ on your hand to end up in your mouth.Washing your hands is the best way to stop germs from spreading.

We think some of the best times to wash your hands are:

When your hands are dirty.
Before eating or touching food you are helping cook.
After using the bathroom.
After blowing your nose or coughing.
After touching pets or other animals.
After playing outside.
Before and after visiting a sick relative or friend.

We undertook an experiment to show the importance of why we should wash our hands. Here is the steps for this experiment:

1. Put a drop of lotion on your hands and rub them together to spread the lotion out evenly.
2. With your hands over newspaper, ask your partner to put a pinch of glitter in the palm of one of your hands.
3. With your hands still over the newspaper, make a fist with the hand that has glitter on it, then spread your fingers out. (We had to say what we saw)
4. Now press the palms of your hands together and pull them apart. (We then had to look at our hands and notice what happened)
5. Touch your partner’s hand. (We noticed that the glitter moved onto our partners hands)
6. Get a paper towel and use it to wipe your hands clean of all the glitter. (the paper towel only took some of the glitter off but it didn’t take it all off)
7. After using the paper towel, try using soap and water to wash your hands. (After thoroughly washing our hands the glitter did come off – some of us had to go back and wash our hands again as we noticed one or two bits of glitter in between our fingers)

The glitter was acting the same way that the germs on our hands act. There are a lot of germs, they spread around easily, and it can be hard to get them off. The difference between the glitter and germs is that germs are so small you can’t see them without a microscope. You have to know when you may have come into contact with germs and then wash your hands.

If we accidently touched our mouth, nose, or eyes while doing this experiment, we may have found glitter getting left behind. Germs travel the same way and can easily enter our body if we touch our face with dirty hands and germs can make us sick. That’s why it’s important to wash our hands before we eat. It is also important to wash our hands after touching something that might have germs, such as when we use the bathroom or play outside. If we don’t, the germs can easily spread to more places and to other people and cause sickness.

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Cooperative learning

August 28, 2017 Miss Nicholson Leave a comment

This afternoon we are working cooperatively to find out more about our organs. We have split ourselves into different groups and chosen an organ to research:

heart
lungs
liver
kidneys
intestines – both large and small
pancreas
gallbladder
stomach

We are researching what it does and why it is important. We are going to make a poster to show all our learning and research. Miss Jamieson and Miss Nicholson has found us videos on Twig to watch linked to each organ to help us, they were really interesting and fun to watch. Each group will then present their findings to the rest of the school so we all know about each organ.

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A scientist comes to visit

August 22, 2017 Miss Nicholson Leave a comment

Today Meilo’s sister in law, Venus, came in to talk to us about the work that she does and a little about where she lives. Venus is a scientist that works for a pharmaceutical company. She lives in New Jersey in America. Her daughter Vicky came in with her to draw pictures to help us understand the work that she does. It was very interesting and Vicky drew some really good diagrams of the body and the cells within it which helped us a lot.

Venus talked of how the body is made up of lots of different cells and these are like building blocks that make our body. The white blood cells fight bacteria but some bacteria can try to fight back. Our immune system is amazing though and it can specifically identify the bacteria so it know to kill the bacteria straight away. Bacteria can get into our bodies through any cuts as they go into our blood stream. So remember to clean and cover any cuts to help you stop bacteria getting in and harming your body.

Venus went on to talk about cancer and how cancer cells are much bigger. Did you know that these are actually our own body cells that are out of control, they keep dividing and growing and do not function properly.

There is many ways to try and get rid of cancer. One way is to remove it through cutting it out. They take a biopsy, taking both the normal cells and the cancer cells to look at them under a microscope to look at the differences and compare them. They also compare them to look at the similarities to bacteria. However cancer cells can change so that they don’t respond to the drugs that should have helped get rid of them. Scientists use antibodies to tell what type of cell it is. They then crush the cells to look at their blueprint which helps them pinpoint how they are made up and they can then try to determine how to fight them.

Scientists are now trying a new approach to help fight cancer. They are using our own immune system to teach it to kill the cancer its self. The immune system gets tired and can’t fight these so the cancer shuts down the ‘good cells’ and stop them working. Scientists look at cancer cells and the changed cancer cells and compare this to normal cells. Therefore they want to try to revive the immune cells so they work again. They can create shapes to attract the good cells and the cancer cells closer together.

It is really important to keep your immune system healthy! Here are some ways that we knew on how to do so:

healthy diet
drink lots of water
get enough sleep (this is really important!)
and finally…LISTEN to your doctor! If he gives you medicine to take then you should do what he says as it will help you!

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Rangoli Patterns

May 18, 2017 Miss Jamieson Leave a comment

Rangoli Patterns

As part of our Hinduism topic, P1-7 have been learning about Rangoli patterns.

A Rangoli pattern is a colourful pattern used during the Hindu festival of Diwali. They are drawn at the entrance to welcome the goddess of wealth, Lakshmi, into Hindu’s homes in the hope she will bring them good luck.

Rangoli patterns are made up from lots of 2D different shapes. They are often symmetrical and take ideas from nature: peacocks, swans, flowers, etc.

Traditionally Rangoli patterns are made using coloured rice, grains, flour, sand or chalk.

Primary 1-3 used coloured salt to symmetrically colour some well known Rangoli patterns.

Primary 4-7 designed their own Rangoli patterns and coloured them using traditional coloured grains.

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P4 -7 Science experiments

March 29, 2017 Miss Nicholson Leave a comment

On Monday primary 4-7 undertook various experiments about ‘changes’ as this is our topic this term. Here are some of our experiments:

We have placed a white flower into water, with food colouring added in, to see if this changes the colour of the petals. Flowers absorb water through the xylem, which is a tissue of thin tubes found inside the stem. Water is transported to the various parts of the plant including the flower. Because the water is coloured the petals should then take on the colour.

It has been 2 days and the flower in the green water has begun to turn green but there isn’t much change with the other flowers yet. Some of us thought the flower would change within: 5 minutes, 20 minutes, 1 hour or 1 day but we were all wrong with our hypothesis.

We split the stem of a rose into 3 and placed each of these in a different colour, red, blue and yellow, to see if this will give us a rainbow rose.

This hasn’t really changed yet but we know with the other flowers that it could take a while.

We placed eggs into different liquids to see if/how this changes the egg. We have one in water as a control, one is in coke, another in vinegar and the last in fresh orange juice. We discussed our hypothesis on what we thought would happen to each egg:

The water wouldn’t change the egg
The coke would dissolve the shell and make it bounce
The orange juice wouldn’t do anything
Some thought the vinegar would dissolve the shell and make it bouncy

As soon as we put the egg in the vinegar it started to react by producing lots of bubbles, this is because the calcium carbonate in the shell is dissolved by the acetic acid producing carbon dioxide.

We checked the eggs after 1 day and there were slight changes:

The water had cracked the egg and it began to seep out
The coke hadn’t dissolved very little
The orange juice had dissolved quite a lot which was surprising
The vinegar had dissolved lots and made the egg squishy and bouncy

We checked the eggs again today and it was very interesting:

The water hadn’t changed from the day before, it was still split but nothing more has come out
The coke had dissolved very little but had stained the egg further
The orange juice dissolved the shell a little more
The vinegar had made the egg even bigger and bouncier

Below are close ups of the control, orange juice and coke

As you can see the egg in the vinegar is much bigger than the control egg in the water. This is because the membrane around the egg is semi permeable. Whilst it was in the vinegar the liquid moved through the membrane into the egg resulting in the membrane swelling and increasing in size.

We tested how well the vinegar egg could bounce. It bounced from 10cm high so we went up to 20cm and it still bounced so we tried dropping it from 30cm…it didn’t bounce though.

We poured milk into a glass and added red bull. When we discussed what we thought would happen there were a few different thoughts:

it would curdle
it would separate
it would sink to the bottom

You can just about see from the photo there is a layer at the top of the glass. After 5 minutes of pouring in the red bull the acid in the Red Bull causes the protein in the milk to separate. When the milk curdles, a chemical reaction takes place resulting in a precipitate.

We did one more experiment with milk. We placed enough milk on a plate to cover the bottom. Then we poured drops of food colouring into the milk but nothing happened. We then took a cocktail stick and placed one end in fairy liquid before placing this into the milk and food colouring. What happened next was really cool.

The colours began to spread away from the fairy liquid and began mixing together. This is because fat and protein molecules in the milk are altered by the soap. These fat and proteins are super sensitive to change in the milk so when the fairy liquid is added it creates a chemical reaction and causes them to roll around. Once the soap molecules have mixed evenly with the fat and protein molecules the motion stops so we added more fairy liquid to keep the action moving. The food colouring helps us to see this change.

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Amy and Emalee come to visit

March 27, 2017 Miss Nicholson Leave a comment

As we have been learning about living and growing in topic this term, Amy Witt came into school with her baby Emalee today to tell us what it is like to care for a baby. She showed us how to brush her teeth (all 2 of them), change her clothes and change her nappy. It was very interesting learning about everything you need to do and think about when you have a baby. Emalee was really good and a delight to have in school, she liked when Ollie played peek a boo with her. We all got a cuddle at then end too.

Thank you very much for coming in Amy and Emalee!