Tag Archives: Life and Ethos of the School

3 Cheers for SMUHA!

Recycled Viking by Lucille

It’s been a busy week for all classes this week as we prepared for SMUHA!  We all made torches and helmets ready for today’s procession and galley burning.  Over the past few weeks, we’ve been creating a piece of artwork to decorate the hall.  We used recycled cardboard and paper to create a picture with a 3D look as we layered up the card.  These looked great in the Boddam Hall!

More great examples…

We got our picture taken beside the school galley.

Some P4/5 pupils had their shields chosen to go on the school galley.  Congratulations too, to Sophia and Lauren who had shields displayed on the main galley as well.  (Sadly, no photos were managed.)

Today we celebrated along with Leah, our Jarl, and the P7 Squad.  A great day was had by all!  Only a few photos were taken but we hope they give you a feel for the afternoon!

Until 2025….

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Thanks, John…for everything!

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!
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Da Trowie Sang

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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!

 

AI Assembly ✅

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Mrs Henderson and I would like to thank you all for the amazing support you showed us at our class Assembly today!  It was so lovely to have our families in again to share, and celebrate, our learning.  We are so proud of the Draatsi class for their hard work and continued enthusiasm throughout the year, on what has been an exciting opportunity.  We hope that this came across in their presentations today.  Please look out for the Children’s Parliament video that will be shared with you shortly.  As well as footage from the AI Summit, there will be clips and interviews that our pupils took part in when our class was taken over by Gregory and his team.

If you have any feedback following today’s Assembly, we’d love it if you could leave us a comment.

Sorry for only a few photos.  I was too taken up with enjoying the moment!  P4/5/6 … you have done yourselves very proud!

Three cheers for SMUHA

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!

Max with our galley
Lining up to welcome our Jarl Squad.
A* for costume effort!
Max’s first torch procession!
Watching the galley burn.

Max’s first SMUHA!
It was great to see this P4 Viking and his Dad!
A shield design from 2020!
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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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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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Platinum Jubilee

This week P4/5/6 have been finding out about the history of our school and they have been looking at all the amazing artefacts that have been kept following the Queen’s visit to our school in 1969, when she opened it.  Some pupils were surprised to hear that there were once 5 small village schools in the South Mainland and that these schools were all closed to make the school that we have today….although it’s grown over the years too!

We invited Mary Andreas in to talk to us and prepared questions to ask her about her memories of the Bigton school and how she felt about moving to a much bigger school, out with her community.  She also recalled how the children and teachers prepared for the Queen’s visit and talked to us about her feelings on the day.  We looked at photographs and enjoyed spotting some relations.

Our discussions this week ahead of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations, have definitely sparked an interest in the pupils to go home and ask their older family members about their experiences of school.  Well done everyone!

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