Whalsay School

Whalsay Junior High School – A Connected Community of Learners

September 15, 2025
by Miss Irvine
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Snack-tember

School Value: Health

Secondary 1 and Primary pupils have been learning about better snacking in September or Snack-tember. It is a campaign endorsed by the British Nutrition Foundation (BNF) to promote healthier, more sustainable snacking for children and young people aged 5-16. It encourages children to explore, try, and make their own nutritious snacks with an emphasis on ingredients like fruit, vegetables, wholegrains, beans, and pulses, while reducing sugar, salt, and saturated fats.

The aim is to help children and young people choose and make snacks that have:

  • MORE vegetables and fruit
  • MORE wholegrains, beans and pulses
  • LESS saturated fat, salt and sugars

So far Secondary 1 pupils have had a quick introduction to Vitamins and minerals, fibre and will look at sugar next week before working on a display for primary parents evening. Today, S1 enjoyed preparing vegetables and trying different snack and dip combinations.

Primary pupils had an assembly about Snack-tember on Friday and have been given a snack challenge sheet to try out new snacks at home.

Primary pupils will also have class workshops from the Childsmile team about healthy snacks in the next few weeks.

 

Parents can find out more click on the links below

Why healthier snacking matters

Attack the snack

The science of snacking – American site but has some suggestions for snacks and the pros/cos of snacking

September 5, 2025
by Mr Healy
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Family Learning Day Success! :)

This afternoon saw the first of our planned Family learning afternoons where pupils and their parents got to learn and do fun activities alongside each other. There was pancake making, arts and crafts and archery all on the go.

So wonderful to see so many parents taking this opportunity to start the weekend off on such a positive note 🙂 Our thanks to Roselyn Fraser and team from Community Involvement and Development for putting on such a fun time for everyone to enjoy!

June 27, 2025
by Mr Healy
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Achievement Assembly, 60th Anniversary … Thank you!

… and that’s a wrap for the 2024/25 Academic Year!

To all pupils, parents, staff and members of the local community,

A very sincere ‘Thank You’ for all your efforts and engagements with school this year. It has been an action packed year of adventure and learning for our pupils across the ELC, Primary and Secondary.

The school year drew to a close with our Achievement Assembly which celebrated pupil successes across different areas of the curriculum and through different initiatives that have been running over the course of the Academic Year. Reviewing and reflecting upon the pupils achievements filled us all with a great sense of pride and appreciation for the close knit, hard working school community that we have in Whalsay.

We also had our 60th anniversary of the school celebrations this week and it was a real pleasure to welcome so many parents, grandparents, former pupils and members of the community to look back on old school memories. Tales of the dining hall, sporting events, quizzes, lessons and many more were exchanged in what was a very special event in bringing our community together. My sincere thanks to all who attended and a special word of thanks to all of those who helped collate photos, organise the layout of the old school plans (which were a particularly intriguing talking point), present pupils current work and organised teas/coffees. A team effort and lots of great discussion made for a very fine afternoon.

Finally, I’d like to wish all our pupils, families and extended families a safe and happy summer break. We look forward to welcoming you back in August after a well earned rest.

Best wishes on behalf of the staff team,

 

Niall Healy

 

June 24, 2025
by Miss Irvine
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Secondary Merit Winners

The Secondary Pupil Council and Team Captains requested the Bouncy Castle as a treat for the winners of the Secondary Merit Scheme. The winners this year were Maalie, and they enjoyed the bouncy castle on Monday afternoon!

The merit scheme recognises exceptional behaviour and effort, and encourages pupils to take greater personal responsibility for the quality of their behaviour and work. Well done Maalie!

June 13, 2025
by Miss Irvine
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Sports Day 2025

Sports Day took place on Monday this week, overall the weather was fine and didn’t disrupt any of the events despite a heavy shower at dinnertime.

The nursery held their mini sports day in the morning just before the P1-4 races began with P5-S4 sports taking place in the afternoon.

It was good to see so many pupils and parents dressed in the new house coloured Tshirts, featuring the updated school logo, sold by the parent council as a fundraiser.

Tirrick started with a lead going into Sports Day by accumulating most points durin ghte sports championship events and ended up overall winners with Maalie second and Shalder close behind.

Thank you to staff in particular Mrs Irvine and pupils for helping set up for the sports, house captains for carrying out duties and finally to our Active Schools coordinator Eoin Leask for kindly coming in to help out.

 

June 11, 2025
by Mrs Irvine
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Medal Success at County Sports

A group of 11 athletes travelled to Clickimin to represent the school at the County sports.  This was a welcome return to the sporting calendar after being absent since 2019.  The group of pupils were unsure of what to expect and knew they would be up against some tough competition from the other secondary schools.  Our pupils showed resilience, sportmanship and determination throughout the day coming home with an excellent haul of medals for our small school.

Particular mention goes to Aaron for his performances in the long jump and high jump where he won gold medals convincingly, breaking the Whalsay School record in the high jump with a clearance of 1.60 metres.  He also claimed bronze medal in the 100m.

William also showed off his speed, giving athletes who had performed in the junior inter-county last weekend some tough competition.  He won silver medals for the 100m and 200m as well as a bronze medal in the shot putt and relay.

Further medals were won in the girls high jump with Alice winning bronze and both boys and girls raced their hearts out in the relays to win bronze medals.

The pupils were a credit to the school and should be proud of their efforts, well done!

 

 

 

 

May 22, 2025
by Leona Sandison
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Our Updated Logo!

Our School Logo has had a bit of a refresh!

The old one was in a poor file format so we contacted Julie Williamson who has kindly redrawn it for us.  We’ve also made a few changes to the font, we hope you agree that its looking excellent!  A big thank you to Julie for her help.

VE day celebrations

May 9, 2025 by Miss Irvine | 0 comments


Whalsay School with support from the parent council hosted afternoon tea yesterday afternoon to commemorate the 80th Anniversary of VE day.

The canteen was decorated with bunting and balloons alongside lovely bunting and art work from P1/2 and P3/4. Home Economics classes learning on rationing was on display and music from the era was playing too. Sandwiches, sweet and savoury goods baked by the parent council and staff were on offer with tea, coffee and juice.

Similar to other events, it was lovely and much appreciated to see our teas so well supported by parents, families and the wider community. A huge thank you to the parent council and staff who baked and helped out at the event. We raised an incredible £713 with it being split between the parent council and local Heritage Centre, a most valuable and treasured asset to our school and community.

Here are some photos from the afternoon.

 

 

 

 

This gallery contains 14 photos

April 4, 2025
by Miss Irvine
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School Dinner Memories and Recipe book

As part of our 60th Anniversary of Whalsay School celebrations planned for next term we will be asking for information from former pupils on a range of topics. To kick things off we are looking for information and memories about school dinners!

We are planning to make a School Dinner recipe book and have information about school dinners and memories on display. Please click the link here to help us with our research and please share the link with anybody who attended the school from the mid 60’s.

If anybody has any photos, the older the better, they would be willing to share for us to copy and use for display, please put them to the office with your name.

We are hoping that the sun will shine on Monday 9th June for our Sports and Open Day where parents, former pupils will be welcome to attend for a look around the secondary and a trip down memory lane.

March 17, 2025
by Miss Irvine
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Celebrating World Book Day

World Book Day was officially celebrated on Thursday 6th March with various literacy events taking place across each setting over Wednesday and Thursday of that week.

Reading sessions

Secondary 1-3 took part in paired reading sessions with nursery to P3/4, we have organised this for the past few years now and it’s lovely to see the engagement between the older and younger pupils.

Parents were invited in to Primary library slots to read with their child and do some literacy activities. The new reading Jenga game proved popular and will used during Library sessions to get pupils speaking more about literature.

Secondary

Secondary pupils were involved in various reading activities as well as the paired reading with nursery and P1-4, including a Bookface photo activity for the entrance tv and the 3rd years were involved in making up a scavenger hunt for the 1st an 2nd years to do during their library time on Tuesday.

Author Visit

Local author Ann-Marie Anderson launched her new Shetland dialect book “Hirda the Oorick.”We were delighted that she was able to come and visit the nursery and younger classes and read her new story. To follow up, primary pupils created new characters they thought would be good at picking up bruck and the nursery pupils made Ooricks.  

Reading Challenge

Primary pupils were invited to take part in a reading challenge at home and pupils who returned sheets were entered into a draw to win a £10 voucher.  Well done to everyone who took part.

Science Show

Science Teachers Mrs Constable and Mrs Simpson led a Harry Potter themed magic show on Thursday morning. Various experiments took place with The House captains supporting younger pupils. Mrs Irvine used her sorting hat to pick pupils to help with the experiments.

House Captains took part in a colour experiment mixing 2 liquids together to change colour and the final colour placed them into the correct Harry Potter house.

Mrs Simpson used a pupil dressed in a skeleton suit to show different bones in the body. P34 pupils were chosen to make shapes of small bones in their hands and upon hearing Brackium Emendo the bones began to melt through their fingers.

The next experiment used some feathers from Hedwig and P456 pupils had to charge their wands with cloth  and say Wingardium Leviosa to lift the feathers off the table.

P12 pupils got to look closely at a Marauders map using UV torches, it showed a map of Whalsay. Class teachers borrowed the map and wands so all pupils could have a go in class. It was important to follow the safety rules and not shine the torch in each others eyes.

The Marauders Map showed dragon feet near the school and it turned out that Mrs Constable and Mrs Simpson had a small dragon hiding in a big tin. They fed the dragon its breakfast but he ate it too fast and there was a firey bang!!

Environmental Print

Primary 1-4 pupils were encouraged to bring in examples of Environmental Print for a wall display. On the wall we have drawings of road signs, packaging, merchandise, clothing logos and photos around Shetland.

Across the primary, pupils took part in various literacy focused activities please have a look at the individual class blogs on the Primary blog for more information and photos. 

There was a lovely buzz around the school with the different activities taking place, we would like to thank everybody who took part and supported our World Book Day celebrations.

 

 

 

 

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