Tag Archives: Topic

The life of Scottish Olympian Eric Liddell

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!

Mr Rose shows us the planetarium

We were very lucky to have Mr Rose come back to visit us again. This time he took the planetarium with him, we enjoyed learning about the stars and constellations. Most of the Primary 4/5s went in the morning and some of us had to go after break with the 6/7s  as we are a big class and they don’t have as many in their class. It was great fun and a great way to end our space topic!

Cooperative learning with P6/7

We have been working with P6/7 as part of our topic, Space. Their topic is space too.  On Wednesday the 3rd we started working with them. All the P6/7s came in to our classroom and we got put into groups. Then Miss Morrison explained what we were going to do. Each of the  groups had to make a poster about a planet. It had to be very colourful and have lots of information. One person from each group had to pick an envelope and inside it would tell  us which planet we were going to be researching. My group did the Sun. We each had a different role. There was 2 Head Researchers, 1 Head Illustrator and  1 Head Writer. We had to look in books for information first then after about 20 minutes we were allowed to look on computers. We didn’t get much done on the actual poster but it was good because we got together again on Monday and worked on our posters. Today before lunch P6/7 came through because we were going to show our posters to the class. We were allowed 5 minutes in our groups to decide who was going to present the poster.  My group The Sun went first. Our poster looked really good. After that, all the other groups went. All the posters looked really good! I really enjoyed working with P6/7.

Shetland Museum

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.

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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 had great fun!

Trip to the museum to learn about James Robertson

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

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.

Last day of term

Today it is the last day of term, evreyone is exited. In the morning we were doing lexia or ERIC then we watched newsround. After that we did a quiz at 10:40 we had break. Then most of us wached hercules as we looked at this legend during our topic this term but some of us went on laptops and ipads. At 12:45 we are going to have lunch. Then we will write in our learning logs after that we will have golden time.   HOPE YOU HAVE A GOOD HOLIDAY.

 

Last day of term!

Friday 9th of October

Today it is the last day of  term! Everybody is exited for the October holidays and lots of people are going on holiday. Some people have already gone this week. Today we got Eric time Lexia and Newsround first thing then we did a quiz of things you know. After break we are watching Hercules because this was one of the legends we looked at during topic. During lunch break then I get picked up from school to go to the Airport and fly to Aberdeen. On Saturday the 10th of October I will be going to London then…

FLORIDA!!!!!!

After lunch we will be doing  learning logs and then golden time!

By Lucy

Last day of term

Today was the last day of term. We watched Newsround and we did reading and then we did a quiz. The quiz was about lots of things. Some of the questions were: where is your iris? Or what is the Olympic sport spear throwing called? The team that got the most questions right got two dojo points each. After break we’re going to watch Hercules as this is a legend we looked at in topic and them after lunch we’re doing learning logs and then golden time.

Myths Around the World

Primary 4/5 have been very busy this past few weeks researching myths and legends around the world. Once they gathered all of their research they created a presentation. They had the choice of how they wished to present their information – most groups chose Power Point, although there were a few groups that chose to have a poster alongside their Power Point. We looked at presentation skills before they presented their work to the rest of the class. There were lots of questions asked after each presentation which sparked great discussion within the class.  A lot of hard work was put into their presentation and it showed! Well done P4/5!