Today we have been really enjoying a visit from Chris. He’s an astronomer and has been teaching us about stars, planets, moons and our solar system!
We’ve been using technology to learn more about each planet in our solar system, made scale models of our solar system using playdough, learnt more about the night sky and the star consellations we can see and P4-7 have been doing some work using robotic telescopes!
Here are some pictures of a great day full of learning!
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.
This term we have all been learning about newspapers and the features of these. We know there is a headline which is the title of an article; this should be short, catchy and it can use alliteration, be humerous or serious. A byline is who wrote the article and what their job is. Orientation is the first paragraph in an article that grabs the readers attention; it is short and answers the questions: Who, What, Where and When. The main body of the article is written in past tense and uses the third person, it is presented columns and split into paragraphs. It gives you more details about what has happened and how it has happened. They have quotes of what people has said. There is usually a picture of what or who the article is about with a caption underneath that explains what is happening in the picture/who is in the picture and who took the picture. Re-orientation is the final paragraph that brings the article up to date, it is written in the present tense.
Daniel Lawson, who won Young Journalist of the Year in February, from BBC Radio Shetland came in to talk to us about being a journalist and althugh he doesn’t write newspaper articles he did discuss the different forms news takes: newspaper, tv news reports, radio, website, the ii (local). He also spoke of where you find news. We discussed fake news too. He showed us some of the equipment he uses which was cool to see. It was really interesting and we thanked him very much for taking the time to come up to talk to us.
Today Elaine Skinnley and a police officer called Rachel came up to talk to the JRSO’s. They talked to everyone first and explained what their jobs were before Rachel let us have a go at wearing her uniform. She put Miss Nicholson and Thorfinn in handcuffs!
They then took the new and old JRSOs outside to show them how to use a speed gun and let them have shot. Julie drove back and forth so they could all have a shot…people must have wondered what she was doing!
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:
Today we had a visit from Reverend Cooper. He told us of the Easter story and shared what would be happening in the church over Easter. He very kindly gave us an Easter egg that has a little book of the Easter story inside. This was very kind of him!
Thank you for coming in Reverend Cooper!
Today Lauren Peterson, who is the Health Improvement Practitioner, came to visit primary 4-7 this afternoon during topic.
We began by letting her know what we knew about what smoking does to the body. She went over all our ideas before giving us her facts – we had nearly all of them already so she was impressed with our knowledge! Here are a few of the facts:
Did you know that 1 cigarette contains more than 4000 different chemicals.
Lauren had taken some chemicals in bottles for us to see – we had to get into pairs and choose 2 to research. We then had to take a leaflet and find the chemical we chose, noting down how that chemical affects your health. We all shared one chemical that we researched.
She then split us into two groups and asked us to think of the health benefits if you stopped smoking and to put these into a timeline. We share our timelines to each group before Lauren shared a few facts with us:
We really enjoyed Laurens visit and thanked her very much for coming in to see us.
This afternoon Michael Coutts came into school to talk to us about Dogs Against Drugs. They are here to help our community and keep us safe.
There are 2 dog handlers in Shetland and they have 4 drugs dogs between them. They have 2 working dogs (Blade and Thor) and 2 training dogs – Axel and Odin who is still just 8 months old. They start training the dogs when they are 1 year old. Michael had a dog work as old as 9 and a half years old. They use Labradors or Springer spaniels as their noses are bread to be better. Did you know that dogs have 30x better smell than humans?
They take the dogs to the airports and the ferry terminal – anywhere where people can come into Shetland. As well as searching buses, cars, trucks, houses, etc. The dogs aren’t just used to find drugs but are used as a deterrent.
We saw a clip of Thor working and how he shows his handlers that he has found something – they stand and wag their tails.
The dogs and their handlers have to go south every year for assessments.
Michael showed us his uniform and let us try it on. He showed us his baton and let us all hold it. He also showed us his handcuffs and let us try them on too but they were too big and our hands were able to come out as they are designed for adults. So he had Louise try them on!
Michael had taken his dog Thor up with him so we all went outside to see him. We stood in a big circle and Michael took him round for us to pet him. He was lovely and very excited to see us. Michael then took out a ball for Thor to play with as they use this as a reward. So because he was good and let us all pet him he got to play with the ball for a bit. Michael had him sit and wait before throwing the ball up into the air. Thor then caught the ball in his mouth!
Michael very kindly gave us key rings at the end that had their website on it. Here is a link to the Dogs against drugs website if you want to have a look at the dogs in Shetland: http://www.dogsagainstdrugs.co.uk/the-dogs
The policeman came in today to visit the school and say hi to us all because he’s new to the island and wanted to get to know everyone.
It was interesting learning about all the things he has to carry around every day and other items he sometimes uses too!
We even got the chance to try on his handcuffs!
It was a great visit and we hope he really enjoys living in Yell!
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