After Kirsty told us about James Robertson and we looked around the exhibition we got to try drawing a self portrait like James Robertson’s one.
He had a globe painted with him to show he was educated and we think it also shows that he mapped around the world.
We had to think about what we would want the world to know about us. A lot of the boys drew something to do with football or computer games. There were also sports like, hockey and swimming, musical instruments and things we enjoy doing now or would like to do when we are older. We worked really hard on our portraits and coloured them in, some of us did not get them finished before we had our break so Miss Nicholson let us finish them once we had our snack. After our break we got to have a look around the museum which was great as our topic is Shetland. We had to complete a scavenger hunt. We split into 3 groups and worked together to find everything as well as having a look at everything in the museum.
We met another group on the stairs
This boat was massive!
We are ticking things off the scavenger hunt
“I can see you Miss Nichoslon!”
We loved looking at the fiddles
Ashleigh looking at what was being projected onto the wall
The boys thought they would nip around and photo bomb
Today we went to the Shetland museum to look at the exhibition on James Robertson. He is the Shetlander who put Jamaica on the map. He was the youngest boy of 10 children. He lived in a croft house in Gossabrough, Yell. His family weren’t rich but they weren’t poor. He was very clever. He made several maps of Jamaica and they are really good for the time they were made considering he doesn’t have the technology we have now. After he made the map of Jamaica he went to London and got a painting made of himself as well as buying lots of nice things since he was rich. He wasn’t nice to his nieces and nephews. It took him 12 years to make the map of Aberdeenshire.  He went on trial because the people who asked for the map of Aberdeenshire told him his map was wrong but he had worked on it for 12 years so it would have been right at the time he started. He only had 3 years to make it so they thought they shouldn’t have to pay him, he thought he should be paid for all his work. So they took it to court. He died before his trial so we don’t know who would have won. He died aged 74.
Our topic this term is Shetland. Yesterday in Topic Miss Nicholson gave us each a map of shetland and we had to write down where all the places were. We found a lot of places. We went over this as a class to see if we were right. We were learning about Fair Isle knitting/patterns and Miss Nicholson took in lots of Fair Isle jumpers which we got to try on. (they were a bit big though) We also got to see a jumper board which is what people dry Fair Isle jumpers on to keep their shape. After that we got to design our own jumpers and we got to listen to Shetland music whilst we did this.
I was at fireworks night. There was a huge bonfire and lots and lots of fireworks. They were very  good and they were all different colours like green and blue and gold. But there was no red ones. Suddenly… Right when I thought the fireworks were going to end a huge huge huge red one zoomed into the air. It was bigger and more colourful then the other fireworks. This one went higher and was faster. The firework stayed in the air much much longer then the rest of the fireworks did. Then I thought… This firework must be magic!
Today we looked at Remembrance Day and why we have it. We had a 2 minutes silence to remember those who was lost in the war. We also discussed why we wear poppies…
Remembrance Day is the 11th of November. At 11 o’clock on the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918 World War 1 ended.
We learned why poppies are the symbol of remembrance day…
Poppies were the only thing to grow in Flanders Fields – this is where a lot of fighting took place.
A man called John McCrae was so deeply moved by what he saw in Northern France that he wrote the famous poem ‘In Flanders Fields.’
We also learned the difference between the English and Scottish poppy.
The English poppy has 2 petals and a leaf whereas the Scottish poppy has 4 petals with no leaf. The Scottish don’t put a leaf on their poppy because it would cost more to make and they believe that this money can be better spent on supporting veterans.
Money raised from selling poppies help people who have been to war and survived and their families.
We all wrote our own Remembrance/Poppy acrostic poems and made our own poppies:
On Tuesday 3rd November we went on a school trip with the primary 6/7s to an African drumming workshop at the Scalloway Primary School. There were two guys that took the workshop Bruce Ncube, he was from Zimbabwe and Seckou Keita, he was from Senegal. Joy Duncan from Shetland was also there. Hamnavoe and Scalloway  primary 4-7 attended the workshop too. We got numbered because there was a lot of people so we had to take turns to play the drums. They taught us how to play them which was great.  When we were drumming the floor vibrated. We sung a song – some of the words were: Zebelay Zebelay zebelay, cocowah, cocowah. We had our break in the games hall. The boys played football, we had a game Tingwall vs Hamnavoe – we won 4-3.  This was a fun workshop, we really enjoyed it!
We learned about the 5th of November and why we have bonfire night. We know all about Guy Fawkes and read the poem Remember, Remember the 5th of November. Some of us hadn’t heard it before. We also read other poems to do with bonfires and fireworks. We thought it would be good to create our own! So as a class we thought of all the words we associate with bonfire night and fireworks. We used all of our senses! We wrote these all on the whiteboard so everyone could see. Then in groups we made acrostic poems about fireworks and bonfires (we wanted to do bonfire night but we didn’t have enough room). Everyone in the group had to contribute! We had time at the end to draw colourful fireworks on our poems.
We were busy making Halloween decorations for the Halloween party in the hall at the weekend. We had great fun making lots of different things. Miss Nicholson had lots of activities for us to choose from, she put all the choices on the board and we chose 2 we wanted to do. We could make hanging bats, paper chain ghosts, ghost garlands, witches, spider webs, hanging ghosts and lots more. We tried to make the spiders web out of black bags but they didn’t work so we chose other things. We really liked making the paper chain ghost.
Our spider web
our huge paper chain ghost
hanging ghosts
our little ghost garlands
little ghosts handing from a paper chain
Thursday
We learned French words for a witch, a pumpkin, a ghost, a black cat, a pointy hat, a spider and a skeleton:
Miss Nicholson put pictures of these things around the room, she would say one of them and we would have to stand next to the picture we thought it was. The first time we did this a few of us got a bit mixed up but once she tried it again we all got them right.
After French Miss Nicholson split the class into two groups and gave us the bones of a skeleton and asked us to try and put it back together. We worked really well as a team and it didn’t take us long to put him together again. Both groups did make 1 mistake but it wasn’t a big one. We thought this was fun!
We mixed up our right and left hands but we didn’t think about the fact he was lying down and we were the opposite to him.
our leg bones are the wrong way round but we worked well as a group
Friday
Today after we watched newsround we took the Halloween quiz. Did you know that the old name for Halloween is Samhain and that people in the middle ages were suspicious of black cats because they thought they were witches?! Hundreds of years ago people thought that ghosts would try to return to their old homes on Halloween so to avoid being recognized by theses ghosts, people would wear masks when they left their homes after dark so that the ghosts would mistake them for other spirits. So this is why we dress up!
We used words associated with Halloween for our spelling activities. We all brainstormed and came up with one to put on the board.
During golden time Miss Nicholson brought in a couple of pumpkins for us to carve. A few of us stayed in the classroom to help. We had great fun working together to create these! Everyone had a shot at scooping out the insides. It was very messy but great! When we were waiting for our turn we designed a face for the pumpkin. Once everyone had drawn something we put them on the floor and we chose 2 that we wanted. Miss Nicholson counted up the votes before she carved them for us. She said a couple of us could take them home if we wanted so we put up our hands to see who wanted them and then used lolly sticks to chose 2 people. This was the fairest way. Colvin and Lucy were the 2 chosen to take them home. 🙂
We’ve had a busy few days back at school, on Wednesday we watched newsround and discussed what we watched and debated whether we should or shouldn’t have wild animals used for entertainment purposes. We thought if they were being treated fairly and were being looked after then this would be ok as they usually take orphan animals or ones that cannot look after themselves. Then we shared a little of our news with the class before writing about our October holidays in our writing jotters. We had to draw a spooky Halloween picture and write a spooky short story about it. Some of us didn’t get to write the story as we had to go onto our reading. After dinner we made Halloween crafts – we will put another post up to show you all the cool things we made. It was great! On Thursday we had reading and maths in the morning, then music and class PE after break and in the afternoon we had French but this was linked to Halloween which was fun and we had to assemble a skeleton.
Today we watched Hercules. We watched it for our project myths and legends. It had lots of myths in it. The whole class really enjoyed it. At golden time we watched matilda when we were watching it then the teachers moved all the stuff in our class room in to p67 so we can get our new carpet. It was good today because its our last day of term. Before we watch matilda then we got some harry bows. They were so yummy. WE REALLY ENJOYED OUR DAY!!!!!!!!
