Tag Archives: interesting

Confident Individuals, Group work, Health and Wellbeing, Literacy and English, Primary 4/5, Responsible Citizens, Successful Learners, Tingwall Primary School, Visitors

Coastguard visit

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Today the coastguards came to visit us. There were two men that came, they were called Willie and Ian. We were split into two groups, one group stayed in the class with Ian to begin with whilst the other group went outside with Willie then after about 15 minutes we swapped. It was good fun outside, we got to pretend to be coastguards and save people. 3 people went out to pretend to be swimmers whilst one person was the coastguard going to save them. We had to put this life jacket on them, a helmet and attach a rope to them. Another person got to use the megaphone and shout to the people swimming to let them know they were going to be rescued. Once the ‘coastguard’ was safe to go he ran out to rescue the swimmers, once he gathered them all together as a group we pulled them back using the rope. We did this a few times so that everyone got a shot at doing something! It was great fun! Then we got to have a look around the coastguard pick-up. We sat inside and had a good look around, they had a lot of kit in the back. Willie asked us to stand at the front of the pick-up so we could see the flashing lights when he turned them on. He warned us that we might want to cover our ears as he then put the siren on…it was loud!! The group inside listened to Ian as he spoke about the coastguards. He was really funny. He told us a few stories about when it is appropriate to phone the coastguards. He also spoke about bombs! He showed us a few photos of ones that had washed up on beaches and told us stories about them and the dangers and that if we are ever unsure about anything on the beach then we should phone the coastguards! At the end Ian let us try on the coast guard hats, he had one for boys and one for girls. Nearly everyone tried them on, Willie even put the ladies hat on Miss Nicholson’s head! 🙂

Confident Individuals, Responsible Citizens, Shetland, Successful Learners, Tingwall Primary School, Visitors

Dogs Against Drugs

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Today Michael Coutts came into school to talk to us about dogs against drugs.

There are 2 dog handlers in Shetland and they have 3 drugs dogs between them.

Did you know that dogs have 30x better smell than humans? Elephants have even better smell but they are more difficult to get in the police van. :’) Bees also have better smell.

The dogs and their handlers have to go south every year for assessments.

We got keyrings that had the website on it. Here is a link to the Dogs against drugs website if you want to have a look at the dogs in Shetland,  although Thor isn’t on this one : http://www.dogsagainstdrugs.co.uk/the-dogs

Thor is their newest dog, he’s still training. We got to meet him, he was lovely. He got really excited when he saw Magnus kicking the ball around at break time. He just wanted to play too! 🙂

 

Responsible Citizens, Topic, Visitors

The life of Scottish Olympian Eric Liddell

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Today we had a man called Graeme Patterson come into talk to us about the life of Scottish Olympian Eric Liddell, the primary 6/7s came in too. Graeme was really funny!

Here is some of the things we learned about Eric (what we can remember anyway)

Eric’s parents were missionaries so he and his brother grew up in a Christian household. They actually lived in China when they were really young but moved back to Scotland when the boys had to go to school. Eric was really good at sports and his brother was really good at school. After a while their dad went back to China whilst the rest of the family stayed home. When the boys were old enough the mum went to China too so the boys went to boarding school.

It was the time of World War 1 when Eric’s brother was aged to leave school, his mother was frightened that he would have to go to war. She prayed for him and when he was playing football someone tackled him and broke his leg so he couldn’t go to war as he was in hospital.

Eric was training to be a teacher and his brother trained to be a doctor.

Eric started running in the 100 metre sprint (it was called the 110 yard back then) people started to recognise him as he was really fast. He also played rugby for Scotland but he wasn’t that fussed about that, he was quite happy with his studies, the bible and running. Long story short he went to run the 100 metre sprint at the Olympic Games in Paris in 1924. (This was the first Olympic Games held after the war and the committee banned Germany from the games as they blamed them for starting the war in the first place and killing lots of innocent people)

At the games – they came with a list of the days of the races but the final of the 100 metre sprint was on a Sunday so Eric refused to run as that was his day to God. Race day came and he did not run instead they found him in Church on the Sunday reading the bible to others. He said he would run the 200m and 400m instead – he had not been training for this but he still managed to get to the finals in both.  He won a bronze medal for the 200m. On the day of the 400m final he was handed a note that said ‘Those who honour me I will honour. Samuel 2:30) so he put this in his shorts and ran the race…which he won! Some thought it was a one man race when they were watching it.

After winning 3 medals – 1 bronze, 1 gold and 1 for taking part he decided to finish his studies, became a teacher and got married to a woman called Florence.

They decided to leave everything and go to China to tell people about god. They had 2 children with one on the way in 1942 – this was when Japan was invading china. So Eric sent his wife and children to Canada (this is where his wife came from) and Eric stayed in China alone. He kept working but 2 months later the Japanese invaded his village and he was taken prisoner and thrown into a work camp as he didn’t come from China. He wanted to help others in the camp so he set up a school for the children in the camp. Sadly he contracted a disease and died the age of 43 (21 February 1945)

There is a statue of Eric Liddell in St Andrews – its what he looked like when he crossed the finish line.

When Graeme spoke of how Eric was a Christian and how he read the bible to people. Graeme showed us the bible that he thought was the best…he flicked through and said some people think that its boring, there was nothing in it. Then he said some people think its just black and white and flicked through the book again…this time there were pictures in it!! THEN he said he thought that wasn’t true and that it was full of colour…as he flicked through the book we could see the pictures were full of colour!!!!! everyone was amazed!

He also pulled off our shoes to show an example of what Eric shoes would have been like – not like the fancy trainers Levi had on but more basic ones like the ones Lucy had on. He smelled the shoes and pulled funny faces which made us all laugh!

We loved having Graeme in and would fully recommend anyone and everyone to get him to visit their school! He really was good!

Sciences, Space, Visitors

Space with Mr Rose

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Today Mr Rose came in to speak about the last few planets of the solar system. Here are a few more facts for you:

It takes 11 and a half Earth years for Jupiter to go around the sun.

Saturn takes 29 and a half years to go around the sun.

Uranus takes 84 years to go around the sun.

Neptune takes 165 Earth years to go around the sun.

You could fit all of the planets in the solar system in Jupiter.

The smallest star is the same size as 8 Jupiter’s.

It would take 1,000 Earths to fill Jupiter.

It would take 1,000,000 Earths to fill the sun.

1 day on Jupiter is 10 Earth hours

The Great Red spot on Jupiter is a tornado and you could squeeze 3 Earths into it!

Jupiter has 16 satellites and they are named after mythological creatures connected to Zeus.

Saturn has 18 satellites. The Satellite Titan creates a shadow on Saturn.

Uranus has 15 satellites and these are names after characters form Shakespeare.

Neptune has 8 satellites and are named after water goddesses

Literacy and English, Shetland, Topic, Visitors

Granny Brae

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Colvin’s granny (Jenny Murray) came in to talk to us and the primary 2/3s this morning about an axe head that Colvin found in Yell on the beach in Gutcher. This was used about 5000 years ago when the first Shetlanders were here. They used sheep guts to attach the stone to the wooden handle.The used ash and sand on a bit of leather to polish stones.

She talked about the houses that they had in the stone age. They were round, small and made of stones.

She allowed us to ask her questions at the end and tell her of our findings. It was really interesting and we enjoyed her visiting our class.

Here is a picture of Colvin and the axe head:

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These are a few photos that Miss Nicholson took. You can see what the axe would have looked like (a Whalsay man made a replica for the museum – with real sheep guts!) You can also see some of the other axe heads that have been found and used thousands of years ago. They were used for a number of different things: killing animals, chopping down trees (Yes Shetland used to have lots of trees and when they were building the Gas Plant they found roots of trees that would have been a forest!)

Space, Topic, Visitors

Mr Rose talks about space

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Today Mr Rose came in to talk to us about space.  It was very interesting! Here are a few facts we found out:

Barron worked out that 1000 seconds is 16 minutes and 40 seconds. (He worked this out in his head!)

There are 200 billion stars in our galaxy.

We learned a mnemonic to remember the different planets: My Very Elegant Mother Just Spewed Up Nine Pizzas. However this does not include the asteroid belt so he told us of the one he learnt when he was at school: Most Volcanos Erupt Marmalade And Jam Sandwiches Under Normal Pressure. But we like the first one best! 🙂

The sun is about 17-20 million degrees and its not on fire.

The Northern lights happen through the parts coming off the sun and hitting the earths atmosphere.

The planets travel around the sun at different speeds because the closer you are to the sun the less distance you have to travel and the gravitational pull speeds you up. So the closer you are the faster you go. Mr Rose had a powerpoint which showed the speed and direction of the planets orbiting the sun. It was cool to watch.

The half of Mercury that is towards the sun is hot (410 ̊C) and the other half is cold (-170̊C)

You couldn’t live in Venus because you would be suffocated because its mostly made of carbon dioxide, squashed because the weight of the air would crush you, baked because it is the hottest planet at 460ÌŠC and you would dissolve because of another gas which is very powerful. And it stinks!!! Venus is covered in clouds which keep the heat in, this is why it is so hot. A day on Venus is longer than 1 year.

Mars is very cold.

We really enjoyed his visit and look forward to him coming back next week for another session!