Last week 5B were fortunate to have a visit from Claire White as part of our topic ‘Stories of the Sea.’
Claire White is a fiddler and singer-songwriter from Shetland. She has toured the world performing music, and is a proud ambassador for the Shetland fiddle tradition. Her most recent album, Lasses Trust in Providence, is a collection of ninth to twenty-first century women’s tales, celebrating the ‘She’ in Shetland. Claire came to tell our class all about the incredible story of Betty Mouat and she explained how she’s celebrated her heroine in song and film.
There’s a link to the Shetland.org website for Betty’s full story and a clip of Claire’s short film at the end of this post. If you don’t know the story of Betty Mouat, it’s worth a read – she wis some lass!!
We had a brilliant open day where all the classes in the school were invited to see our models. Pupils and staff had the opportunity to ask lots of questions about our creations. Hopefully everyone learned a lot about how we made our models and about the different types of 2D and 3D shapes that we used to create them. We had super feedback from our audience. So much so, we’ve invited parents in to see our creations next week!
We had a chance to do some activities today provided by the NHS. The activities included learning how to do CPR on dummies, teeth brushing and guessing how much sugar is in different food and drinks with Child Smile, Safe use of medicines and a working with models of the body where we took out the organs, labelled them and put them back in the right places!
We have been learning about a man called Arthur Anderson who is a significant individual from Shetland’s nautical past.
He was born in the Bod of Gremista in Lerwick on the 19th of February 1792. His father was the manager of a fish curing station and he came from Unst. Arthur was captured by the Press Gang at the age of 15 who tried to force him to join the Royal Navy but he promised to join the next year so they let him go. He kept his word and joined when he was 16. He fought in the Napoleonic Wars and he survived. In 1833 he was living in London and he was a co-founder of the Peninsular Steam Navigation Company which became P&O in 1837. He introduced the idea of cruising for pleasure rather than just a way of transportation. He was a Member of Parliament for Orkney and Shetland from 1847-1852 and he also helped to build the Anderson Educational Institute which opened on the 4th of August 1862. He gave the institute a statue with the words ‘Doe Weel and Persevere’ which the Anderson High School now use as their school motto. Arthur Anderson also built the Anderson’s homes in Lerwick and they were intended for women who had lost their husbands at sea. Arthur died on the 27th of February 1868 at the age of 76.
Michael Coutts came in to tell us about his job with the Dogs Against Drugs team in Shetland. He let us try on his high-vis jacket and use some of his equipment. The best bit of all though was meeting one of the drugs dogs.
Shetland used to belong to Norway many years ago and it was gifted to Scotland as a dowry by King Christian I. Even to this day, Shetland still has many links to Scandinavia and the Vikings. Even some of our place names come from Viking times! Did you know that Lerwick means muddy bay? And in Unst, there have been approximately 60 Viking longhouses discovered along with different artefacts from Viking times. It’s incredible!
We made Viking longships as part of a technology task and we wrote Viking poems using adjectives and alliteration. Here’s an example:
Above is the link to our space topic homework task.
We had to design a space ship and label all the different parts. If we wanted to, we could make a model of our space ship. We presented our short talks to the whole class and showed them our designs and models.
Mr Rose has been coming into our class this term to share all his knowledge and expertise about space. We’ve been very lucky to have him and on the last day of his visit, he took us into the planetarium which he’d set up in the Sound Hall. It was an inflatable dome which we sat inside of and when he turned off the lights, we could see the night sky and all the stars and constellations. He told us all about them including some of the Greek Mythological stories which are connected to the stars.
Our writing this term has been based on our space topic. We have written poems about the moon using metaphors and we’ve created simile poems about The Iron Man (a space themed short novel by Ted Hughes).
We’ve also created our own alien character and written a descriptive letter from them to planet Earth. That inspired us to find out all about our own planet and make notes to enable us to make an Earth information leaflet. Our aliens thought that our leaflets were so good that they decided to come and visit us and our final imaginative piece of writing this term was the story of their trip to Earth.
Glow Blogs uses cookies to enhance your experience on our service. By using this service or
closing this message you consent to our use of those cookies. Please read our Cookie Policy.
