One of our P5 pupils brought in their medals from a recent swimming competition. He was also the overall 9 year old boys winner! Well done and good luck in your next competition on the Scottish mainland in the holidays!

One of our P5 pupils brought in their medals from a recent swimming competition. He was also the overall 9 year old boys winner! Well done and good luck in your next competition on the Scottish mainland in the holidays!

Tuesday 14th March
It seems that we have another snow day, Draatsi class. Hopefully you will get a chance to play in the snow at some point today. Remember to wrap up warm!
Here are some things that you can try today.

Have fun if you are playing out in the snow today. Be careful when sledging and walking on slippery surfaces. Hopefully we’ll see you all again tomorrow!
Mrs Henderson
What a really special day we’ve had! An excellent procession and galley burning this morning and a noisy Jarl Squad visit in the afternoon. It’s just a shame that the later celebrations have had to be postponed. Here are some photos from today … including Mascot Max! He’ll be returning to the Children’s Parliament with some amazing stories to tell!









The two snow closure days have stopped us doing some of our planned activities for our Viking themed SMUHA week. However, we managed to prepare torches and helmets on Monday and got our photo taken with our school galley today, before we burn it tomorrow. 🤞



Just in time for SMUHA, the Children’s Parliament mascot, Max, arrived in the post! We have to show him around our school and community so it’s perfect timing to bring him along tomorrow!


In the afternoon, we made Viking heads using clay. The class practised on Monday using plasticine and explored how to add to the base to make it look 3D and used the different clay tools to add texture and detail. This really helped them create Vikings with lots of character!

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:

I’m sure you will have lots of fun playing in the snow today. Maybe you could…
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…”
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?
At the end of the day, we shared some of our favourite books.









Keep reading Draatsis!
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!

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.






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.


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!
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 Well–being
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…

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.

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.



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!





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!