A quick selection of photos from a tour of the different Wider Achievement groups this afternoon. What did I see? Firstly, happy and engaged pupils. That’s always number 1! Enjoyment and taking pride in your work is always so important

Creativity? Absolutely… from works of art to knitting to our sports stars on court.

Teamwork? 100%. I spoke to all Secondary pupils this week about the power of teamwork and looking out for each other. Lots of really great collaboration on show this afternoon.

Community – Wider Achievement offers us a great opportunity to engage with members of our community. To develop skills that can be passed through the generations. To celebrate what is unique about Whalsay, our community and where we are in the world. Our net mending group are a perfect example of this. Kudos to Mrs.Hamilton who was developing her skills too!

Delighted to share the outcome of our recent participation in Sumdog challenges; a national initiative where pupils answer questions to consolidate and further develop their knowledge in Mathematics.

Of the 2,944 nationwide that took part,

Our S1 class finished 63rd

Our P6/7 cohort finished 119th and our

S2 cohort finished 122nd.

This is a huge success for our school and testament to the hard work and dedication of our pupils to their learning in Mathematics. I’d like to extend thanks to teachers, parents and support staff who provided encouragement and support along the way.

Well done, Whalsay School!

Mr.Healy

Lots of great physical activity happening at Whalsay School today with football club at lunch time and badminton after school club. Big thanks to Eoin from Active Schools for facilitating both of these sessions.

Mixed netball will also be taking place on Monday lunch times for our Secondary pupils.

In English we have been learning about Shetland dialect.  The Picts and the Vikings were the first people that lived in Shetland. Some Viking words still exist in Shetland dialect today. Then Shetland became part of Scotland in 1469 and the language changed even more.

We learned about Shetland names and families, then we compared Shetland dialect and English and we also learned a secret language, the International Phonetic Alphabet.

At the end of the unit, everybody has chosen a topic and is making posters. Harry Bruce and Henry are doing pelagic boats, Sandy and John James are doing Shetland recipes, Kristopher and Sam are doing the Serene and the Antares, Lola and Geordie are doing family trees, Una is doing Shetland recipes, Alyshia and Mollie are doing family trees and Morgan and Bella are doing animals.

By Sam and Kristopher

S3 Graphic Communication pupils have been learning about, using and comparing: 2D computer aided drawing, 2D manual drawing and 3D computer aided drawing techniques.

The pictures show some of the 3D CAD models they have created and rendered. CAD features used include: line, circle, extrude, revolve, fillet, decal, mate, align, centre axis, material, lighting, shadows and reflections.

S1 have used thinking and sketching skills to create keytabs that are designed to be easy to recognise and suitable for their chosen user. They have learned about safety in the workshop and tools for working with plastic, and have used this knowledge and practical skills to make their keytabs. We have also been working on listening and decision making skills alongside working with determination and paying attention to detail.

The Whalsay Secondary School maakers joined in with the Wool Week Celebrations in the Symbister Hall last Friday.  Knitters from all over the world attended the hall to see the beautiful display of local knitwear and quite a few stopped for a chat with the girls.   We were treated to cups of tea with brilliant homebakes and a great time was had by all.

European Day of Languages

To celebrate European Day of Languages last week, S2 and S3 spent some time in class to research a few of the more than 225 languages that are spoken on our continent. Some of these languages are spoken by millions of people, others are used only by a handful and are sadly close to dying out.

Everybody in Secondary 2 and 3 got to choose a language and then found out facts about it, for example how many native speakers there are, in what countries the language is spoken and they also learnt how to say a few things like “Hello/How are you?/Thank you” in their language. The pupils created a poster about their language to display and share what they had found out with the rest of the school. Some pupils chose languages like Georgian and Greek and were shocked when they realised that those languages don’t use our Latin alphabet, so making their poster was surprisingly hard. Others noticed that some languages like Spanish and Italian are closely related to French, which we learn in class, so they could understand a lot more than they thought.

Here are a few photos and a video of a few S2 pupils saying “Hello. How are you?” in the languages they researched. Can you guess the languages they’re using? Thank you to Brooke in S3 for putting the video together.

On Wednesday 18^th September S1 visited the Croft House and Shetland Museums. This gave them a brilliant opportunity to see what Shetland life would have been like in the Nineteenth Century.

We started our day by visiting the croft house museum; where the bairns got a chance to see inside the house, hear about the history of the building, find out more about Shetland history in general and to ask the curator their questions. Due to the super weather, we also got a chance to walk down to the mill.

Following our visit to Dunrossness we then travelled up to Lerwick to visit the Shetland Museum. Ailsih Goodlad gave a very interesting talk to the class and the bairns got the chance to handle the items from the resource boxes. This proved very popular, as they were able to try out a kishie, try on a Skekler’s hat etc.

We then had a look at the Croft House reconstruction, the crofting and fishing displays and the sixareen in the boat hall. On the way back out to the bus we also had a quick look at the sixareens in Hays dock.

We all had a fantastic day and the bairns were a credit to the school. Well done S1 J

Sumdog is a games-based adaptive-learning app that tailors curriculum-aligned questions to each child’s unique level and is widely used by learners in different phases of Whalsay School.

Students from P4 through to S2 have been taking on their counterparts across different schools in Scotland and have achieved some very impressive feats. Of the 4,279 classes who took part, our classes finished in the following positions:

P4/5/6 – 285th place (278 points)

P6/7 – 58th place (468 points)

S1 – 51st place (493 points)

S2 – 48th place (500 points)

My thanks to the supporting teachers and congratulations to the students for working so hard to develop their mental mathematics skills