Today we had our final day with Janny John! We have written lovely, heartfelt messages to him along with the rest of the school. We enjoyed his company in class where we played Hangman together and then ended up with a game of Toilet Tag in the hall. The best part of the day was when we all gathered together in the hall to watch him carry out his Taskmaster style challenges. He will be a huge miss. We have all been very lucky to have him. Best wishes John!
Happy October holidays to you all!
Locking up for the last time.
Some interesting costumes on John’s last day! (5 votes, average: 1.00 out of 1) Loading...
It’s been a week full of active learning and creativity this week!
In Art with Ms Burr, the children have been painting butterflies from the rainforest. They have been thinking about the colours they see in nature and recreating this in their work. They have been working with concentration and care. We have also created beautiful Christmas card designs which you’ll be able to see when you visit for your parent appointment shortly!
In Topic work this week, Mrs Henderson found an active way to help illustrate how food webs work.
We had another visit from Gregory and Frances from the Children’s Parliament who came to meet our new P4/5 pupils who have joined our class and introduce them to the work they do and to begin talking about AI. There were, as always, some great ‘Getting To Know You’ games and we spoke some more about the UNCRC.
We were delighted to receive our MCP lanyards!
Getting To Know You Paper bag introductions!
Group work is at the centre of all that we do in the Children’s Parliament. In groups, we had to choose an animal and think of statements about it that would allow the rest of the class to guess our creature. We had to agree on the animal and statements before ordering these from most difficult to easiest.
In groups, we drew around a life-size body and wrote inside it about the kind of person we’d like to be and our hopes and dreams and how we’d get there in the future. Again, team work, discussion, listening and sharing was needed to make this task a success.
Then we started to think more about AI and where it can be found in daily life. We also recapped on how data is collected for AI and introduced our new pupils to the ‘Cleaning Up The Ocean’ online game.
On Thursday, Gregory returned to help us think more about fairness in AI. He gave us a challenge! A school has over 300 pupils and for the upcoming day trip to the Golf Course, there can only be 100 children chosen! Who gets to go? We were introduced to coding using ‘Python’ which uses simple words and numbers to instantly sort and analyse data.
The challenge was to build an algorithm that decides who gets to go on the trip by using a points system. Points had to be allocated under certain headings – pupils who are always late, those with best behaviour, age of pupil, those performing best in a test etc. When the numbers were input, the computer made the decision for each pupil as to how many points they were rewarded.
After a list of names was produced and we found out who the 100 tickets would go to, we then heard about some of the personal stories behind the pupils. This made us realise that selecting pupils in this way was unfair and sometimes, you need to know more information. Our investigators will pass on our thoughts at their next online meeting.
Thursday afternoon saw us drumming with Joy again and I was so impressed with how quickly the class have built up some complicated rhythms and combining these together. I love watching the concentration on the faces as the pupils follow Joy’s lead!
Friday saw us learning about the Spanish Armada and the wreck of the El Gran Grifon which sank off Fair Isle in 1588. This gave us some background knowledge before listening to music from this period of time from the Chroma Music Group.
The afternoon saw Nora and her violin and Rory with his accordion, creating music with others pupils while we learned a dance in the hall. It was a war dance between the Spaniards and Elizabethans. It was a very different and enjoyable Friday afternoon!
Over the past few weeks, P4/5 have been working together to create our class charter. We looked together at the Articles listed in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and picked out four that we felt were important for our class. We chose Non Discrimination…Be Ourselves, Be Respectful, Be Safe and Be Healthy.
Our next job was to identify our responsible behaviours under each heading. Once agreed, we voted on a theme to display our charter and the most popular idea was a Rainforest theme!
It would be really great if you could spend time talking through the responsible behaviours we have decided on at home too.
Be Ourselves
We understand that we all have similarities and we will respect our differences too.
Be ourselves…don’t change being you for other people!
Take interest in everyone and what they like to do.
Include everyone!
Be Respectful
Be kind and fair to everyone.
Listen to all ideas, even if different from your own.
Talk in a polite way to everyone.
Treat others how you would like to be treated.
Be Healthy
Keep our brains active and our ideas healthy.
Let staff know how we are feeling.
We will notice if our classmates are struggling and help.
Be active!
Be Safe
Use equipment at school sensibly.
Wear a seat belt on the bus.
Follow all the school rules.
Treat others with care.
The Duty Bearers were also given a set of responsibilities too. The children felt these were important to include.
Encourage us.
Help us to sort out any problems we have.
Help us in a small group if we find something tricky.
Take us to new places and let us try fun activities indoors and outside.
There will be much excitement tomorrow! We have been gifted four stick insects to look after and care for! We look forward to learning more about them and will keep you updated on their progress.
Please see below, the learning that is planned for the Draatsi class over the next two terms. As always, this is subject to change to allow for pupil interests and our learning taking new directions and paths as we go. 😊
This week our new Investigators have been announced. They have been given their welcome packs and will be preparing to meet the children they will be working alongside on their first online call shortly. We wish them luck in this exciting opportunity.
Our new Investigators!
We’ve started our class novel, “The Explorer,” which ties in with our Rainforest and Biodiversity topic.
We have learned about the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and have used some of the most relevant Articles to help us form our Responsible Behaviours Agreement for our class. We plan to create a rainforest theme which we’ll share with you in time!
Any pupil wishing to represent their class in the Pupil Council had the opportunity to think about what would make them a suitable member and we’ll take a vote on this next week.
For writing this week, poems created in Week 1 were rewritten for display in class and there was a big effort with handwriting. Well done!
Maths this week was based around problem solving activities with pupils choosing from a wide range of tasks that involved them using strategies such as trial and error, act it out and look for a pattern. Lots of paired and cooperative group work was also needed to succeed!
It’s been lovely to see all our pupils back this week! The Draatsi class have been kept busy.
Last year’s P5s helped our new pupils to get to know both of their teachers by introducing them to one of their favourite games on the laptop, Blooket. It was fast and furious fun!
They have also been looking carefully at their reflections and have drawn amazing self-portraits. These will be displayed beside a Bio Poem they have been creating to help us get to know them better too.
They have been introduced to our class topic, Rainforests and Biodiversity and have listened to the blurb on our class novel. The title yet has to be revealed but it’s a good one!
Time was spent thinking about our school rules – Ready, Respectful and Safe and the class worked on T Charts to help them record what this would look like and sound like in our class.
The good weather meant that we could spend time outside playing team building games together so we can get to know each other better and begin to work well, collectively, as a class.
Over the past few weeks, the upper stages pupils have been supporting Mrs Inkster in her Music classes when she teaches the younger pupils. She has been so grateful for their help and we’re sure that all the children, both young and old, have gained from this experience. To tie in with our local history topic, we have been learning ‘Da Trowie Sang’ which is sung in Shetland Dialect. Some of our pupils have taken to this so well, Mrs Inkster asked them to perform it for the Orca class today. They did an amazing job!
This week saw our final online call with the Children’s Parliament, Alan Turing Institute and our fellow pupils at Oakwood, Doune and St Mary’s. It was a very positive call where achievements were recognised and celebrated. The Investigators had to think about what they had got better at by being an Investigator, what surprised them about their time as an Investigator and what they were most proud of. They then had to be creative, showing their thoughts in drawing form. (See Self Portraits below)
Sharing our ideas and thoughts during the meeting this week.
The Investigators for 22/23 are now in discussions as to how they can support the new Investigators for the next school year. We are currently thinking about who this could be and how we can involve past, present and incoming pupils in our AI work in the future. There are some exciting plans afoot so please look out for more details in August!
If you have not had a chance already to view the final report for the year, please see below.
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