As part of our leadership on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths), we designed floating vessels using only tinfoil.  The challenge was to see which design worked best and how many cubes could the vessels hold (cargo) without sinking.

We used our counting skills and some of the class re-designed their vessels to hold more cargo and stay afloat longer.  We collated our results and following discussion, vessels with higher sides worked best and those with thicker layers of foil.  Cube cargoes ranged from 12 to 680!

We also used our critical thinking and creative meta skills.

These are some of the ‘one word’ responses from the children:

The activity was exciting, fun, fantastic, interesting, creative, teamwork, incredible, amazing, amusing, inspiring and hard.

We visited the Lerwick Fish Market and NAFC Scalloway, as part of our inter-disciplinary learning this term.

We used our curiosity and communication meta skills.  We had a lot of fun!

Thank you to Laura and Miranda for helping to organise our visit and everyone else involved, including Jenni and Kate, Mrs Leask, Mrs Manson, Sadie and Mrs Work.

As a follow up activity, we’ve been writing personal accounts of our trip and our learning.

It’s great that Izzy can visit the class for 3 sessions this term.  We’ve just had our first one together and the class are so enthusiastic and looking forward to Izzy coming back the next two weeks.

We used our collaborative and creative meta skills.

We headed outdoors recently to consolidate our learning on ‘perimeter’ so far.  We worked in pairs/groups and used different equipment to measure the perimeter of shapes we could find in the playground.

We used our collaborative and sense-making meta skills.

We visited the Centre recently to take part in some sports activities, organised by S3 pupils from the AHS.

It was a lot of fun and we used our collaboration meta skills.

Ryan Dalziel visited the class recently to talk about his job and show the class some fish specimens and equipment.  Thank you to Ryan for taking the time to  come along.  Thank you also to the children that helped carry some of the equipment!  As a follow up activity, the class have written thank you letters to Mr Dalziel.

The class used their communication meta skills and asked lots of questions!

We were invited by Shereen, Rosie, Layne and Stacey to join the service users to make St.Patrick’s Day shamrock crafts and Easter colouring pictures.

The class had juice and biscuits, chatted with the service users and staff and made some beautiful shamrocks as well as joining in colouring fun.

We used our communication and creative meta skills.  We hope to go back again soon!

This term P5 have been learning two Shetland songs, both connected to the sea. The first is the oldest tune that Shetland has – The Unst Boat Song. The class have learned the song, singing in the ancient language of Norn and they have also use tuned percussion to add an instrumental section to the piece. We’ve learned about dynamics and timbre and in the last verse, they decided to add a thunder maker and a rain maker for extra depth to the dimension of the song.

We have also learned about the story of the whaling ship, The Diana. The late Ronnie Cooper, one of Shetland’s finest composers, wrote the waltz ‘Ronas Voe’ which tells the story of the ship coming into the Voe on her long voyage back to Shetland from a whaling expedition. We have learned the lyrics of the song and we are looking forward to performing both the Unst Boat Song and Ronas Voe at our Stories of the Sea exhibition at the end of the term.

We did 4 weeks of badminton in PE.  The main focus of the block was to develop our ability to hit the shuttle.

As part of our topic work this term, the class have created lovely whale pictures to accompany their learning on the historic whaling industry in Shetland.  They’re beautiful!  We focused on our creative meta skills.