Here’s information on the Christmas crafts on sale today in the foyer from 2:45pm. Christmas clothing will be in Room 7 so please go in and help yourself. We have a range of clothing and sizes. Any clothes not taken will go to Shoard.
Skills Development Scotland careers advisers are hosting a webinar for parents and carers of S2 and S3 pupils on Wednesday 7th December at 6:30pm.
They will discuss option choices and the support and resources available from Skills Development Scotland to help both young people and parents and carers at this time.
Today pupils and staff at Whalsay School came to school dressed like they’d just rolled out of bed all to raise money for Children in Need. Pennies for Pudsey were collected in each setting raising around £335 for the charity, what an amazing amount! Thank you for your support.
Here’s a photo of P67 and the nursery and links to the P234 and P56 Blog posts about today.
Thanks again to the Whalsay community for generously supporting the Blythswood Shoebox Appeal this year. Around 70 boxes were delivered from Whalsay to the Shetland Aid Trust who gathered 900 boxes in total this year for the appeal.
Here are the primary House Captains with the beautifully wrapped gift boxes.
On Thursday 3rd November, S1 pupils had the opportunity to take part in a ‘Design and Build a Wind Farm in Virtual Reality’ project at the Shetland UHI. The session was run in partnership with Developing the Young Workforce (DYW) Shetland and SSE Renewables.
The aim of the project was to provide a fun, interactive workshop that helped pupils find out about the range of STEM related careers available and to build on their own personal and academic skills.
The pupils worked in groups on designing a wind farm. Activities involved: choosing the turbines used, siting them on a map using computer imaging software; calculating their costs, revenues and profits; and presenting their ideas to the rest of the group and the course organisers. The winning team, Dizzy Energy (Alice, Carrie, Reuben and Michael) were commended for including information about the wider reasons for building a wind farm and for getting all their calculations right.
In addition to the 3DW project, pupils also heard from Shetland UHI representatives about the Skills4Work programme which they will be able to apply for in Term 3 of S2.
We would like to thank Emily von Tonder (DYW co-ordinator) for organising the activity, Andy Dennison from 3DW who ran the workshop and Julie Graham from SSE Renewables who funded the workshop.
This week, primary pupils have been celebrating maths week. It started off with a whole school assembly on Monday about the importance of maths for every job and that maths is everywhere! In class they have been busy working hard on their maths with each class producing a ‘Beauty in Maths’ display, which was the focus of maths week this year.
A huge thank you and well done to the parents (for driving) and bairns who completed the family maths challenge. You did a super job, hopefully you had fun with your families and noticed that maths is all around. Libby drew Morgan’s name out as the winner so she will get her prize when we get back after the holidays!
The Open Afternoon was a chance for parents to come in and visit classes and see the different games and resources used to teach maths. We also had out the Numeracy packs that we put home pre covid as a homework resource. We will be using them for homework next term so look out for more information about them after the holidays. We also left out leaflets on how to help your child at home with maths, the link to the leaflet can be found here where you will find other resources to support you at home.
Primary 6/7 organised a Bring and Buy sale on Thursday afternoon to coincide with the Open Afternoon. The Bring and buy sale took in over £160 and P67 are going to decide after the holidays how to spend the money and they are going to donate all of the toys and books leftover to Shoard.
Please note that there will be no Model Yachts activity tomorrow for Wider Achievement. Pupils normally involved will be in school until 2pm and should not be picked up at the Houll Loch.
As part of N5 Biology pupils learn about the heart and associated blood vessels. The class agreed that seeing is believing so they spilt into groups of two and each group got to dissect a sheep’s heart. They identified the four main blood vessels entering and leaving the heart, along with the two main valves and the four chambers. Luckily it was a fine day as two of the pupils had to observe the dissections from outside, looking in through the windows.
Pupils at Whalsay School and Nursery gathered for a special photo on Thursday 29th September to celebrate Wool Week and an anniversary for the school.
During the school’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June, one of the Primary pupils, William Leask, pointed out that another anniversary was being overlooked. He had noticed a plaque in the lobby of the Primary Department recording the official opening of the Nursery and Primary buildings by Councillor William Smith and Krystina Simpson on 8th May 1997. In an email to the Head Teacher, he suggested having a whole school photo to mark this anniversary.
Whalsay School normally takes a lot of photos for Wool Week when pupils participate in Fair Isle Friday so it was decided to combine these two celebrations. Ivan Reid kindly agreed to bring in his drone so that we could take an aerial photo of the pupils in “25” formation.
Wool Week coincides this term with the resumption of Peerie Makkers in the Primary Department after an enforced absence due the COVID pandemic. A group of dedicated volunteers led by Amanda Pottinger have been coming in on Tuesday afternoons to train up the enthusiastic group which includes Primary and Secondary pupils. One of the Science teachers, Caroline Simpson, is also running a Makkers group on Thursday lunchtimes for Secondary pupils.