Tag Archives: Outdoor learning

Our last P7 John Muir Day with Pete Richardson

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We had the most amazing last day out with Pete Richardson and his colleague Matty today. We set off to Garth’s Ness and as we approached the end of the road, Pete spotted the fins and we all got to see a pod of orcas, it was really exciting. We watched from the cliff edge and then decided to go across to Scatness, to have a day of scrambling and climbing on the rocks there, and maybe seeing the whales again. Sure enough, as soon as we arrived at Scatness we saw them again and then later on too as they came back past us. Ms Scanlan had taken our new binoculars, so we all had a chance to see them clearly. P7 have been so lucky this year, on the first trip w e swam with porpoises, on the second trip we watched an otter swimming and catching fish and now killer whales! John Muir would have been very impressed with that!

Here’s what P7 said about our three John Muir days:

Logan – I really enjoyed when we were jumping off ledges in Cunningsburgh and swimming in the sea.

Ben – I really enjoyed jumping off a small cliff in Cunningsburgh, because of the thrill of jumping down.

Kyle- I really enjoyed Cunningsburgh swimming. It was great to be in a lot of space and to use that space for swimming.

Victoria – I really enjoyed watching all the wildlife, especially the killer whales and the baby seals. I have also been adventurous with all the challenges. But most of all, I have loved all of it!!

Shaina – I really enjoyed todays John Muir trip. We were rock climbing at Scatness. My favourite part was when I climbed up a really tall rock, I didn’t think that I could do it, but I did!

Layla – I have really enjoyed the John Muir trips because I saw killer whales, an otter and three baby seals. I also really enjoyed jumping off the really high rocks.

Lauren – My favourite part of the John Muir days are that you get to enjoy and appreciate the outdoors. My favourite bit was when I jumped off a rock into the sea.

Ella – I really enjoyed this John Muir trip, mainly because there were killer whales and baby seals. All of the John Muir trips have been really good.

John Magnus – I really enjoyed the John Muir days. I liked the coasteering at Cunningsburgh and seeing the baby seals and killer whales at Scatness.

Terrific Scientific Trees Investigation

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Today we took part in our fourth Terrific Scientific investigation. This time we are investigating trees. We have to survey the 🌳 in the school grounds and record how tall they are and the circumference of their trunks. We will then use a carbon calculator to work out how much carbon each tree is storing. We will then calculate the total amount of carbon stored by all the trees in the school and learn about why trees storing carbon is important and where the carbon comes from.

This time we are sending our results to Leeds University and they will analyse the results from all the schools in the U.K.

If you want to see our results so far, you can look online at the Terrific Scientific website. There are lots of other activities on there too that children can do at home. We have also tried the ‘bouncing eggs’, which was a lot of fun.

Learning to measure trees

RSPB Big Schools Bird Watch

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On Friday afternoon Matthew Smith, a volunteer from the RSPB came to help us with our hour of birdwatching. We took it in turns to go out in groups, while the rest of the class made fatballs to feed the birds and did some drawings of some of the birds that we are likely to see from the classroom.

We have started to see quite a few species, since we have been putting feed out. We also saw a lot of waders starting to come through after all the wind this week. We’ve all seen redshank, curlew and oystercatchers and we’re learning to identify a few of the gull species too. There are always lots of starlings around and house sparrows and a robin came to feed a couple of weeks ago.

Ms Scanlan is going to upload the species that we saw onto the RSPB website.

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