News from the last week

This blog entry is about the more 'everyday' things that happened in the last week. There will be special blog entries about the rest of the week's events too.

Here we are about to start our coastal food tasting. We've had a food tasting for every topic so we had to have one for the coast too. We were hoping for salmon but we got seaweed instead. Most people didn't like it, though the seaweed biscuits and rice crackers were ok. Only Ashleigh and Ronan liked the seaweed (laverbread from Wales).

We spent a bit of time exploring what was still in the marine chest, before we had to pack it all away to send back to Scottish Netural Heritage for another class to use next.

We finished making our PowerPoint slideshows about the biodiversity of Orkney's coasts, ready to show them at the class assembly. Everyone did very well with making the PowerPoints. Some of the P4s even managed to add sounds and make them run automatically! If you need lessons in how to make a colourful slideshow, just ask P3/4!

 

It was the last week of the gardening club. Can you guess what we were going to be doing?

We did a review of the year. We said what we had liked most, what we had found easy, what we hadn't enjoyed as much and what we had found difficult.

Somehow, we still found time to do PE. We had fun playing lots of different games.

We went to watch the final of Glaitness has got Talent! We were very proud of the people from our class who had got to the final. It isn't easy to perform in front of the whole school,but they were great!

The P7 band, Unlimited, won the show. The played 'Sweet Home Alabama' and sounded very professional. They really got the audience going. 

Well done, everyone.

Ancient Greece and lots of maths

We seem to have linked almost all our work to Ancient Greece and maths this week.

We had a Greek food tasting on Tuesday. Most people tried something new and got a sticker. One pupil tried everything! Mrs MacNab was very impressed.

Some people really didn't like some of the food, especially the octopus and olives. Mrs MacNab didn't like the octopus either! Mrs Stanger said the olives were the worst.

We had bread, white grape juice, red grape juice, black olives, green olives, figs, octopus, goat and sheep's milk cheese (feta cheese), Greek butter beans, loukamis (like Turkish delight but very very sweet) and honey sesame seed snaps.

Do you think they are enjoying the food?

In Drama we worked in groups. We used props to help us make up stories. The props all became characters - like a Scottish person (kilt), dragon (wings) and lots more and then we made up a story using all of our characters. It was fun.

Here we are hard at work writing.


In maths we have been learning about length. P3 have been estimating and measuring in metres and finding out if things (or people) are longer than about a metre, about a metre or shorter than a metre.

P4 have been measuring in centimetres and measuring objects with curved sides.

We did Ancient Greek maths and helped Pythagoras, a mathematician from Ancient Greece, prove his theory about right angles triangles.

In PE we are still practising for the class Olympics. We did javelin and Boccia this week. We had to measure how far the javelin went - so that was maths too!

We measured using a very long measuring tape.

Can you see what we are measuring with here?

P4 made the fish and they are all about a metre long so we could use them to measure the javelin throws.

 We used a measuring tape to see whose balls were nearer the jack (white ball) in Boccia.

P4 have been learning the 6x table - here we are practising it and testing each other (using timers).

We used Greek water clocks this week to time our talks (that's in a different blog entry). Abbie thinks we should use the 5 minute water clock if anyone loses 5 minutes of Golden Time next week. Mrs MacNab hopes we don't have to use the clock!

Here are some pupils using timers to test to see if the Greek water clocks are accurate (correct).

Would you like to use a Greek water clock instead of a watch?

Bere bannocks

At the end of last term we made bere bannocks. We went to the kitchen in small groups with Mrs Stanger to make them and everyone made some.

We cleaned up afterwards.

We cut up the bere bannocks and buttered them, then had them at our food tasting event.

We took some through to let the kitchen staff try them. We were worried about what they would think because they are all so good at cooking. They really liked them and Louis said they were the best bere bannocks he had ever tasted.

Mrs MacNab said they were the best she had ever tasted too and she liked them with the rhubarb jam from Shapinsay.

Food Miles

We have been finding out about food miles. This means how far the food has travelled to get to our plate. We were very surprised that some food had travelled so far.

This is us researching where the food came from.

We made cartoons showing how the food travelled. Some food had to go a long way on a plane and a lorry and a boat. They use lots of petrol so it is not very green. We found out about food in Orkney - it hasn't travelled so far to get to us. We even got some Orkney food to taste - yum yum.

We made a display to teach other people about food miles. P3 and some of the other staff came to see it.

Here is our display:

We used this plate of food and worked out how many miles the food had travelled.

If the lamb was from New Zealand, the potatoes from Israel, the carrots from South Africa, the milk from Bridge of Allan and the strawberries from Spain the food would have travelled more than 20 000 miles to reach our plate! We were very surprised at this.

If the lamb was from North Ronaldsay, the potatoes from a farm in Tankerness, the carrots from Baillies grown in Deerness, the milk from Crantit Dairy in Kirkwall and the strawberries from Birsay the food would only have travelled about 66 miles to reach our plate.

Here are some cartoon strips showing the different journey the strawberries might have made if they came from Spain ...

... or from Birsay.

Here are cartoon strips showing the different journey the lamb might have made if it came from New Zealand ...

... or from North Ronaldsay.

You can click on the pictures to see them a bit bigger if you want to.


We hope you have learned something from this - we did!

"You should think about where your food comes from."

.

Week 5 news

We're still all enjoying maths and working hard on our times tables. We do some pages in the workbooks and textbooks, but we also play lots of games to help with our tables. We're hoping that we'll be able to do maths outside sometimes.

In PE we're still working on ball skills. We split up into small groups and practised passing, then had a game of skittle rounders. It ended up a draw!

This is us having a discussion about local produce. We were trying to decide whether food was healthy or unhealthy and had lots of discussion about it. Then we tried to work out which food came from Orkney. We realised that all of it could be bought in the supermarket, but not all of it was grown or made in Orkney.

Do you like the turtles we made? They are baby loggerhead turtles, like the ones we learned about at the Cool Seas Roadshow.