Wednesday 8th March

Following further snowfall overnight, which has results in difficult road conditions, we have another day at home    It’s a great chance to get outside, in the fresh air and enjoy playing in the snow!

Here are some things we would like to try today: 

  • Practise the Up Helly Aa song in preparation for Friday  The following link will remind you of the tune and lyrics.  You only need the lyrics for the first minute  Up Helly Aa – The Up Helly Aa Song (with lyrics) – YouTube
  • Sumdog Maths Challenge 
  • Make your own comic strip about being home on a snow day.
  • Take time to snuggle up and read a book.
  • EUROQUIZ TEAM – Please try to use this time to study for your quiz, which is Tuesday 14th in Lerwick.  You could find out about the European Union and who that involves.  Also, use your little blue Europe books to study the culture,/traditions and food from each country,.  Ask a family member to quiz you on some facts.

 

I’m sure you will have lots of fun playing in the snow today.  Maybe you could…

  • Build a snow sculpture.  It doesn’t have to be a snowman!  Can you take a photo to share with us?
  • Go sledging – be safe!
  • Write words in the snow with a stick.  Can you think of words to describe the weather?
  • How deep is the snow at your house?  Take a ruler and put it in the snow to measure the depth.

Whatever you do, have fun and be safe!

If schools are open tomorrow, Mrs Smith will be there to help you all get ready for SMUHA.  “From grand old Viking centuries…”

 

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World Book Day

Today we celebrated World Book Day in a number of ways.  Last week, we talked about the importance of listening to books, especially from a young age.  We talked about books that would appeal to younger children and how the reader has an important part to play in the enjoyment of a story.  With this in mind, each child chose a book that they would like read to a pupil in the ELC department or P1/2.  They rehearsed reading it and thought about stopping to ask questions or point out details in the illustrations.

Our class really enjoyed it and were super role models!  When the books were done, it was great to see the younger pupils rushing to get their books to read back!  We even had a little time to watch them paint.

Back in our class we played a World Book Day game where they were shown a cover, title and blurb.  Each team then had to create a believable opening sentence, thinking about recent class work done on different openers.  When all were written, we read them all out, including the real sentence.  Each group got 2 points if they correctly guessed the right sentence and a bonus 5 points if their sentence was chosen instead of the actual one!

Here are the made up sentences for the book ‘Jelly’ by Jo Cotterill.  Can you tell which is the right one?

  1.  Angelica, nicknamed Jelly, was the comedy queen of the classroom!
  2.  “Do it now, Jelly! Please!
  3. Angelica, also known as Jelly, was the class clown.
  4. ”Angelica, stop that noise,” said Mrs Brown.
  5. Angelica was shocked that her Mum had a new boyfriend and was going on a date!

At the end of the day, we shared some of our favourite books.

I really like the Wimpy Kid series. I like all the characters. Each story is new but the books link up a bit.
I really like The Call of the Wild and I have watched the movie. The book has lots of twists and turns in it!
This book is split into stories about each pet. So far, my favourite is Picasso the Horse because Molly gets rich when she finds out the horse can paint!
I like this book about animals. My Mum reads it to me. I like learning about animals like the poisonous dart frog.
We had some dressing up characters today too! We had a ballerina and Baby Yoda. 🙂
I like the Rainbow Grey series. They are good to read.
I like horses and ponies so this is the book for me!
I like this really funny book! It has good descriptions. Tom Gates writes little stories and puts them in the book.
This is about a cat that can turn spells on dogs. The spells can make them invisible and talk! Anyone who likes cats and magic would like this book.

Keep reading Draatsis!
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Our week so far…

We did it again! Everyone has worked hard to earn pegs for their super effort, perseverance and kind actions.  This week we managed to reach our goal and have planned to have a disco on Monday 20th in the school hall as our class prize.

We have begun learning about Fairtrade and what it means.  We worked in groups to sequence the different stages of making a chocolate bar.  We were surprised by how long it takes to go from planting cocoa trees to buying chocolate in the shop!  We are finding out just how important it is that these farmers are given a fair price for their hard work.

On Wednesday, while we were getting ready to go home, we were treated to some fiddle tunes.  We love to hear music in P4/5/6!

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Monday 30th January

Our class had fun exploring the human body with the visitors from The Glasgow Science Centre today.  In the morning we were given the chance to play with different interactive exhibits relating to different parts of the body.

The girls were looking to see if they could spot when this patient needed an x-ray.
These boys learned about the different organs in our bodies and where they are.
Putting the brain back together wasn’t very easy!
Can you see which parts of their bodies were the hottest?
All the images are in the correct order! Well done!
This memory game was very competitive! We had to remember the correct sequence of flashing lights and try to repeat it.

Later on we took part in a Disgusting Digestion interactive show.

It was great fun and we learned about the journey of food throughout our bodies.

We learned how long our intestines are…up to 7 or 8 metres long!
What is going on here? Can you have a guess based on their facial expressions?

Somehow, we also managed to squeeze in a session with a local musician today!  We were treated to some dialect singing and fiddle playing by Claire White.  She planned a busy session looking at some interesting local stories and how she managed to turn these into songs for people to remember.

Then we split into groups to write our own stories and eventually turn these into songs.  Some groups chose their own local stories to develop.  These included the St Ninian’s Isle treasure, The Queen opening our school in 1969 and the Braer Disaster.  It was a lot to do in the short space of time, so we didn’t quite manage to finish this today.   Next term we are looking at local history, so we will save what we have achieved for now and build on these again at a later date.   I look forward to seeing what we can produce!

Well done Draatsis!

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Da Week Dat’s Awa!

It’s been a very busy week in the Draatsi class!  We’ve even managed a photo and interview with the local media so keep your eyes peeled in the Shetland Times for news of our AI work with the Children’s Parliament!

Here are some of the activities we’ve been involved in…

Language

We have moved on to Target 2 in our Writing Challenge.  With Mrs Henderson the pupils started a longer story which they will build on over the coming weeks.  They need to try to include carefully punctuated sentences with interesting openers.  Today saw us looking in more detail at openers that begin with -ing words.  The pupils were given a sentence ending for them to decide on suitable beginnings.  We also looked again at using speech marks.  There’s so much to remember!

Maths

Various Maths topics have been worked on this week.  These include addition and subtraction methods, multiplication, fractions and work on area.  They have been working hard and developing the skill of explaining their answers in words.

Health and Wellbeing

Class PE is always really popular so we took advantage of the fine weather on Thursday to go outside and play some of our class favourites!  We love Capture The Flag and Rock, Paper, Scissors!

Last week, we watched the Oscar nominated animation, ‘The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse.’  This week we created our own charcoal drawings in the style of Charlie Mackesy and wrote quotes that mean something to us.  Some examples are below…

Work by Scott, Jasmin, Rory, Scarlett and Alec.

Wednesday saw our class taken over by the Children’s Parliament.  We were joined by Gregory and Sophia who have visited before but were also joined by Cathy who is the founder of the Children’s Parliament in Scotland and Rona who is Head of Projects.  They were so impressed by the knowledge of the pupils and how they can articulate themselves.  😌

They helped us with our next Mission.  Each group was given a case study which used a different aspect of AI.  The children had to read these through and decide on how the AI was being used in a positive or negative way.

This group’s case study was about the use of online video games. They found more cons than pros in their story.

The next task was to illustrate how these pros and cons could be shown using plasticine!  This was a hard task but we were all amazed  at the imagination each group showed.  Each plasticine model had a detailed story behind it.

 

This group’s story was about how AI can be used when diagnosing illnesses and injury.
Models were created to show how people left out of facial recognition would feel.
We had to explain what our models showed.

The culmination of the day was creating a news report with each person taking on a different role…Presenters, Interviewers and Editors.  The pupils had to write a report about their case study and ask questions about the type of AI used in their story.  Joining us live, online, was Mhairi from The Alan Turing Institute.  She was able to answer all our questions while the editors quickly noted down her responses.  The children ALL rose spectacularly to the challenge and were not put off by the bright lights or Gregory’s dictaphone!

Our presenters were not fazed by the bright lights!
A career in the making…
Interviewers patiently waiting for their cue…
Delighted to be asking The Alan Turing Institute the cutting edge questions!
Presenters Fruit Cake, Sponge Cake and Chocolate Cake!

It was a fantastic day of learning and team work.  Thursday saw each pupil being interviewed by Gregory to tell him what they understand of AI and how they are finding being involved in this two year project.

We are very proud of each and every Draatsi!

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Tuesday 17th January

Hello everyone!  I hope you have managed to enjoy the gorgeous snowy weather.  Have you been sledging?  Built a snowman?  Snuggled up and watched a film?  Read from your book?

As we have been working on our 5 sentences with correct punctuation in class, can you write down what you have been doing with your days at home?  Remember…5 sentences with capital letters and full stops/exclamation marks/question marks.

If you are not venturing outside today, I have set some Sumdog tasks online.

This week in Maths we are starting to look at Multiplication and Division, so the following websites could be used for practice.  We are looking at the 3x and 6x tables first, so this would be a good thing to work on at home.

Multiplication Miner – Mathsframe

Hit the Button – Quick fire maths practise for 6-11 year olds (topmarks.co.uk)

Dartboard Multiplication – 7-11 year olds – Topmarks – for some challenge!

We were planning to look at the next part of Mission 3 for The Children’s Parliament this week, so you could start thinking about this at home, in preparation for returning to school tomorrow.  Please note down your ideas to bring into school.

  • What does Fairness mean to you?  
  • What is Fairness in AI? (Artificial Intelligence)

Hope to see you all tomorrow!

Mrs Henderson

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Please save us from the bottom of your bags!

The recent snowy day closures have meant less time to work on our concert and Christmas crafts this past week.  However, please look out for these gorgeous Christmas cards coming home next week and rescue them from the bottom of bags!

We talked about how lino cut paintings are created and then designed a simple picture that we could draw into polystyrene before using ink and rollers to create our prints.  We hope they help spread some Christmas joy!  🎄

Which one of these gorgeous cards will you be receiving?
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Writing in the Draatsi class

Mrs Henderson and I have been given the chance to take part in an Improving Writing Course run by CYPIC – The Children’s and Young People Improvement Collaborative.  We gathered views on writing from the class at the start of the project and used a piece of written work to help us assess where our writers need most support initially.  We aim to write three times a week and our focus just now is on improving our understanding and use of punctuation.   The class write for just a short 15-20 minute slot before having time to edit and improve their work.  The pupils also help each other in this process too.  😊  Their writing jotters are filling up fast with a variety of writing topics across the curriculum!  Most recently, we have linked our writing to work going on throughout the class and school.  Some examples are…

  • Write your top tips to cope with bullying during Anti-bullying Week
  • How do you use AI in your daily life?
  • Describe the ‘den’ in our class novel
  • Persuade Santa to put you back on the good list OR employ you as his elf for this Christmas season OR keep his beard…don’t shave it off!

We contine to share the success of the class with the pupils and they are keen to see the progress they are making.  We hope to reach our target set in the new year before moving on to the next element of ‘Tools for Writing’ to be improved.

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