Tag Archives: Curriculum Areas and Subjects

Spanish Dictation Challenge

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Mr Harpe set our class a ‘running dictation’ challenge for our first Spanish lesson of 2018.

He split us into four teams and put up an assortment of sentences in Spanish. We had to run up, look at the piece of paper, memorise one of the sentences, run back and tell our teammates what the sentence was and write it down correctly. It was quite hard but fun. Plus you had to try to spell it right.

In team one was Jake, Ciaran, Christie, Declan, Fearghas and Lily-Jane.

Team two was made up of Michael, AJ, Emmy, Niamh, Ally and Jacob.

Team three had Bertie, Lauryn, Zara, Jemima, Michaela and Cerys in it.

The  final team, team four, was made up of Ayla, Molly, Eve, Carys, Katie and Emily.

In the end Team three won.

We asked some people what they thought of the activity.

This is what they said.

Declan said, “It was good and exciting. It was also fun but a little bit hard.”

Michael said, “I really enjoyed the game. It was a little bit hard to spell the words.”

Cerys said,” It was a lot of fun.

Lily Jane commented, ” It was alright. I enjoyed the game a lot. I found it easy.

“It was very interesting and easier than I thought. I enjoyed it overall,” said Emily.

Written by Jemima and Zara

Below the Hill during WWII

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On Thursday 27th September, Neil Cruickshank came to talk to P6/7 about the development of Sumburgh Airport and the surrounding area during WWII. It was an excellent presentation by Neil, full of interesting and surprising information, supported by a fascinating collection of wartime photographs. The children were surprised to learn that Sumburgh Airport began life as Sumburgh Links and that the first planes landed straight onto the grass.

We learnt that Shetland was of great strategic importance during WWII and that in November 1939 3 Gloster Gladiator fighters (Faith, Hope and Charity) were sent to Sumburgh to defend Shetland and the Fair Isle Channel. Sumburgh became a R.A.F. station and work began on building tarmac runways. There were many interesting visitors to the aerodrome including Beaufort fighters, Spitfires and  a De Havilland Mosquito which landed here on its way back from a raid on the Gestapo Headquarters in Oslo.

Neil told us many sad accounts of wartime crashes in and around Shetland including three Canadians who lost their lives when their damaged Bristol Blenheim reconnaissance plane crashed-landed at Grunay in the Out Skerries (20th March 1944).

After morning break we all set off by bus, accompanied by Mrs Leslie, to see some of the wartime remains still visible today on and around Scholland.

We saw remains of the huge line of ‘tank traps’ which were part of the first line of defence.

Above right is all that remains of an anti-aircraft gun post.

The Virkie school (above left) was used a a hospital during the war and local children had to use the previous school which was built in 1800s.

The Virkie  school in WWII is now used as a store. We tried to imagine what it was like back in the 1940s and the children who went there.

We walked up the old army road alongside what was Goat Camp  which housed soldiers and airmen during the war- there was even a barber, chemist and post office there.

We had a super time seeing lots of interesting things left behind from WWII, including the floor tiles in Dr Aitchison’s house-all that is left of his house which was demolished because it was in the flight path of the newly built runway.

A highlight for many was seeing one of the last machine-gun turrets remaining in Britain, which used to rotate 360 degrees, and now lies rusting in a field.

All of us in P6/7 would like to say a huge thank you to Mr Cruickskank and Mrs Leslie for an excellent morning. We all learnt a great deal about World War II in the Sumburgh area.

 

 

Terrific Scientific Forces

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P6 have had a great day finding out about air resistance. We looked at videos of Olympic cyclists and saw how much air resistance affects their performances. We read about sports scientists and what they do in their jobs to help sports people achieve better speeds in their races.

In groups, we planned and carried out investigations into ways to change the speed at which objects drop and we watched a video about parachutes.

Today we planned and made things to wear to slow ourselves down, using air resistance. We each made a costume. We timed ourselves running a 50m race normally and then we did it with our costumes on to see how it affected our speed. It did, by between 1-4seconds! Here are some of the photos.

Scottish Opera

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On Monday 22nd, all of Primary 6 and 7 went to Sandwick to practise our Scottish Opera performance. Ms Scanlan was really proud of our behaviour and the way that we sang so well. We’re looking forward to the performance on Monday 5th June.

Scottish Parliament visit

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Angela McGarrigle , an education officer from the Scottish parliament came to visit P6/7 and P5/6 today. She explained a lot of things about the Scottish Parliament and how it works. We had a class election. Each group had to decide on their party leader and then write their manifesto. The party leaders then spoke to the class to try to persuade them to vote for their party.

The parties were –

animal welfare

computers

music

save the earth

schools

sporty

Well done to all the speakers, great ideas from all the parties. It was a very close election, but in the end the Save the Earth party won, with Animal Welfare a very close second. Well done everyone!

Story writing and reading groups in the garden area

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Primary 6/7 took advantage of the lovely weather to do a 10 minute writing task outside, starting with ‘It was a beautiful sunny day. I was looking out to sea when all of a sudden…’  There were some very imaginative pieces of writing, we had fun reading what everyone had written.

We enjoyed sitting in our reading groups and reading our books together too.

Tree Identification

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Following on from the Terrific Scientific project, Primary 6/7 made the most of the good weather, to go and make identification sketches of the trees. The trees that we planted a few years ago are growing well. There were lots of birds feeding in the area and bumblebees flying around. We also caught a big ground beetle.

Terrific