Shapinsay School

Did you know that a school in Edinburgh found what they think is a pirate skeleton underneath their playground? You can read about it by clicking here.

We wondered what we could find and we wanted to have a go at being archaeologists. The big class had been learning about this too and it looked really interesting. Mr Ross very kindly said we could use their archaeology tools too.

We found lots of interesting things and it was fun learning what archaeologists do.

We had to wash our finds carefully.

We have been learning about how we can use adjectives to improve our descriptions. We each drew a pirate or a mermaid but couldn't let our partner see. Then we had to describe our picture to our partner so they could draw it. If our descriptions were good our pictures were similar.

We have also been playing Pop Up Pirate!

Today we had a challenge:

Challenge: Create a pirate ship to carry 2 lego people across the water tray. You must make it move by blowing the sail – you cannot touch it!

Learning Intention: I can think about which materials are best for which tasks.

Success Criteria (we came up with these ourselves)

• It must float.
• It must be big enough and stable enough to carry 2 lego people.
• Test your boat to make sure it works.
• It moves when I blow the sail.
• I have thought about the size of the sail.
• I have attached my boat together (not frayed)
• My boat is ready to test in an hour.
• It looks like a boat!

We chose whether to work on our own in or small groups. Here are some shots of us in action

All the boats met the challenge, although some did move faster than others. We invited the big class to come and judge which boat they thought looked most like a pirate ship. Finally we all looked at the Success Criteria and thought about whether we had achieved them before we evaluated our ships.

Well done everyone!

We have been learning about comparing. We compared Pirates and Vikings. We did some reading to find out about both and we made notes. Then we used our notes to write what about what they had in common and what the diffferences were. Finally we had to think about which we preferred and why.

We have done some maths with pirates. We solved problems and we did some data handling.

We found a recipe for Pirate Grog, so of course we had to make it!

Some people liked it and some didn't!

We used different skills to create our own mermaids. We used watercolour paints and had to mix the correct colours we wanted.

We used collage to create the tails, thinking about which materials worked best. Some we overlapped.

Our mermaid cave now has lots more mermaids!

We couldn't come into school last Friday because it was too windy. We designed and made our own pirate ships at home - aren't they great?

We have also been playing with a lego Pirate Ship.