Fair Isle Primary School, Shetland

There was much excitement in the air as our first trip of the school year approached. These enrichment trips are so important for us here at Fair Isle. Firstly, and very importantly, they give our learners the chance to stay overnight at the Halls of Residence in Lerwick where they will eventually be staying once they transition to Anderson High School. The hostel staff always look after us so well and we love their delicious food and comfortable flat we have the opportunity to stay in.

The trips also give us chance to take part in activities that we do not have access to here in Fair Isle, such as swimming lessons, which again are very important to us. We also love spending time at Sandwick Junior High School, whom we are part of a Shared Headship with and our learners have the chance to sample life in larger classes with more peers of their own age. This is really important for our transition work too. The staff at Sandwick were so kind and produced staff “poplet” sheets for our learners and parents to learn more about the classes before they stepped foot inside them for this first trip of the year.

This trip really was a fantastic one. Jonathan and Hollie were full of praise for the learners as they plunged into all the activities with confidence and determination. There was great progress in the pool, super sprinting around the athletics track and glowing reports from teachers at Sandwick too. We even had time to meet our friends from Foula (the other remote island school in Shetland) for a pony show at Lerwick Marts as well as time in the playpark. Of course, there was a spot of retail therapy and hot chocolate in the Lerwick cafe to warm ourselves up too. Well done to everyone. We are very proud of you!

For those regular visitors to our blog, you will know that we place a lot of emphasis here at Fair Isle Primary School on I.D.L and self-directed learning. Our topic this term has been “lighthouses”, with the children engaging in local trips, newspaper writing and comparison work with other settings across Scotland. As part of this, they selected some self-directed projects they wished to work on as the weeks ticked by.

Our younger learners decided they would like to create “lighthouse lamps” made out of clay. They looked at lots of designs and created some brilliant sketches and decided on the best way to illuminate their creations. Then, it was time to get gloriously messy with some clay as they sculpted their lighthouses, proudly painted them and produced some great final models to take home and light up their houses during the approaching winter months.

Our older learners wanted to “go big” and create a large-scale model of a lighthouse, again with an electrical component. After looking at lighthouse designs across Scotland, the learners settled on their own design, crafted some prototypes and then set to work. Their finished model shows excellent design skills and sits proudly in our creative STEM room.

These projects run alongside our “Skills Ladders” here in Fair Isle, with the children not only leading their learning but also considering what 21st century skills linked to the four capacities they are building on at the same time, such as problem-solving, communication, collaboration and self-confidence.

One of the loveliest isle events, in our opinion, is Harvest. As a school, we always like playing our part in the fundraising as fresh produce is brought to the Fair Isle Hall, stalls sprout (if you’ll allow the pun) into existence, a fantastic raffle takes place and games are played.

We have our own garden here in the school grounds where we grow and harvest our own crops. One feature this year was the most colossal cabbage you have ever seen. We therefore harvested it and decided to invent some cabbage-related activities for adults to participate in so we could raise money to add to the appeal. We had the classic “Guess the weight of the cabbage” alongside “Name the cabbage” and the rather creative “Which animal ate the other cabbage?”

For your information, the cabbage actually weighed a whopping 3.1kg and was given the name “Boris”.

More importantly, the chatty and engaging children raised a wonderful £80.50 on their school stall to contribute to the £1400 raised altogether. The money is being split between Scotland’s Charity Air Ambulance (SCAA) and The Goodwill Children’s Village in India. Two very worthwhile charities.

This week The Great British Beach Clean has been happening around the coastlines and shores of the country. Naturally, at Fair Isle Primary School, we play our part in this event and all the children are passionate advocates for keeping our isle clean. We even have our own designated beach in Fair Isle – Muckle Uri Geo, which we take responsibility for cleaning four times a year.

So, we gathered the bin bags, pulled on our gloves and invited the community to join us. It was a great afternoon and we were able to fill several bin bags. We also understand the importance of recording the rubbish (“bruck” in Shetland dialect) and inputting the data to the Marine Conservation Society. A big thank you to everyone who joined us. Please see the pictures of us before, after and during the event.

Did you know that Monday 21st September 2026 was International Day of Peace? Well, we certainly did here in Fair Isle (where we are very grateful for the peaceful – if not busy – nature of our island). We marked International Day of Peace as part of work as a rights respecting school. We have been focussing in our assemblies on how governments must protect children from war and conflict so it seemed appropriate to take part in this themed day.

However, it was over to some of our older pupils to lead us in our learning, who planned out the afternoon. They wanted to explore some videos, look at peace symbols and go on a nature “peace” walk to the plantation (where the Bird Observatory keep watch for rare birds) and that was exactly what we did. We found a lovely clip of Fair Isle folk in the past talking about how peaceful our island is, decorated a peace symbol and went on a two mile wander as well, pausing for some peaceful reflection along the way. We even met the rangers who had caught a grey wagtail too.

We wonder what you do to feel peaceful or find peace in your everyday lives…

You may have read in our last blog about how we have been out and about in the community – this time being involved in a fascinating “time capsule” project at The Kirk. Marie, one of the island’s custodians of Fair Isle knitwear and who recently bought the Kirk, got in touch with us to launch the project. The stonemason, Magnus, working for Marie had the idea of planting time capsules in the newly rebuilt stonework for people in centuries to come to discover.

The school and Marie invited the Fair Isle community to put two time capsules into the stone gatepost pillars leading into the Kirk. We completed some lovely written work telling people who would open them in the future about who we were, what we love about Fair Isle (and our school) and what we thought life would be like in the future.

A good number of folk came down to the Kirk to help place items in the capsules, sign a Fair Isle tea towel with names and place the capsules inside the stonework. It was a lovely, collaborative and very meaningful morning. Please do have a browse of the pictures.

What a busy week it has been at Fair Isle Primary School. Carla, the ranger from FIBO (Fair Isle Bird Observatory) started off her sessions for the new school year with some fascinating biosecurity work. The children learned all about how the Obs team keep the island safe from rodents, who could have a really negative impact on our important birdlife here. We looked at how the data is collected and presented and then took off into the outdoors to aid Carla in checking the biosecurity boxes.

Another member of the community, Marie, invited us down to the Fair Isle Kirk. Marie is one of the island’s custodians of Fair Isle knitwear and has recently bought the Kirk to turn it into a community hub and space for people when visiting the island as part of her knitting holidays. The stonemason working for Marie had the idea of planting time capsules in the newly rebuilt stonework for people in centuries to come to discover. We had a fascinating chat about what life might be like one hundred years from now and had a think about what was important to us and what we would want anyone discovering the capsules to learn.

And finally, we had some very important visitors here this week who came to see our school. We loved having them in our school, showing them our learning and chatting to them about our unique context. Christie, our Shared HT from Sandwick, came with them too. Here is a picture of us waving goodbye to them on the plane (along with other photos relating to the first two paragraphs).

Our I.D.L topic this term is “Lighthouses”. Unsurprisingly, this features our local context, as we live in an island surrounded by notoriously choppy waters meaning these beautiful buildings are essential for seafarers who voyage near our shores.

There are two lighthouses in Fair Isle, one at the north and one at the south end of the island. We were particularly fascinated by South Lighthouse, which is closest to where we all live. Deryk, who has lived in Fair Isle for twenty seven years and who works for the N.L.B (Northern Lighthouse Board), kindly got permission from them for us to have a tour of the building and to ascend all 106 steps to see the light itself at the top. It was such as brilliant trip and we were able to learn a lot that will complement our learning.

Did you know?
South Lighthouse was the last lighthouse in Scotland to be automated in 1998.
Every lighthouse and its light has a special way of blinking during the night so seafarers know exactly where they are.
The Northern Lighthouse Board looks after 203 lighthouses across Scotland and the Isle of Man.
This particular lighthouse is 26 metres tall.

What a fabulous week it has been. We were fortunate enough to conclude the artistic element to the week by participating in “large” knitting with Marie, producing a beautiful blue masterpiece to hang proudly in the Fair Isle Community Hall.

Then, it was time to hear the pieces we composed being brought to life by the fabulous musicians of CHROMA. What was fascinating to observe was how the musicians involved our children in the editing process, allowing them to feed back on how their pieces sounded and make adjustments and tweaks.

It was then time for the Saturday night concert, where the pieces were given their “world premiere” in front of the island community. Naturally, we had to have a bow at the end of it in front of a rapturous audience. We would like to say a massive thank you to CHROMA for all their energy, hard work and thoughtfulness and the impact on our children in the arena of expressive arts is evident to see. We produced some personal thank you cards to send them on their way and look forward to welcoming them again into the school when the next project comes around.

CHROMA continues with yet more fabulous creativity and musicality. As well as composing our own blues music (more of that in coming blogs) using notation and knowledge of chords and scales, the children have been linking themes of blue in music to themes of blue in artwork.

Inspired by the artist Anna Atkins, we have learned about the chemistry behind cyanotype printing (did you know the word blueprint originates from this technique?) The community were invited to join us on a beach-combing expedition where we found items that we thought were curious. We then arranged them on special cyanotype paper to create our own beautiful prints.