Raasay Primary School

We were delighted to be invited to the Raasay Gallery on Tuesday 9th October to see the wonderful exhibition of work by Judy Evans. The pupils were also able to participate in a screen printing workshop organised by Judy where they learnt the skills of producing their own screen print artwork based on the theme of birds. Pupils in P5-7 then used these pieces of art to inspire a short poem. We are hoping to work with Judy again for some more screen printing workshops in term 3.  Gordon, very kindly, showed the pupils his lovely art studio and some of his work.

The pupils then performed some of the songs that they have been working on for the Christmas Show and also some from their own repertoire! Thank you to Gordon, Christa and Judy for a lovely morning – we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!

Pupils, staff  and parents would like to extend their thanks to the Raasay and Skye community and beyond following the recent school Coffee Day. The record breaking total raised this year was a staggering £4641.16!

The day was thoroughly enjoyed by all and the school look forward to using some of the funds on developing ICT within the school and working with pupils, parents and partners in allocating the funds to specific projects.

Moran Taing!

Just a reminder – we hope to see you all tomorrow from 11am until 3pm for our Annual Coffee Day.  Lots of amazing prizes on offer and the Parent Council providing lots of yummy food!

See you all tomorrow!  Don’t miss out – the forecast is for sunshine. 🙂

Please note that our annual Coffee Day will be taking place on Saturday 6^th October, starting at 11am and finishing at approximately 3pm. There will be all the usual stalls, our Parent Council Café, live auction at 2.30pm and lots of opportunities for wonderful prizes to be won! We hope to see you all there and that the sun shines! Look out for the posters for further information and please note that donations for the day can be dropped off at the school from now on.

Thursday 11^th October – there will be a World War 1 exhibition at the Hall, run by the Portree Archive Centre. Pupils will be attending this exhibition from 1.30pm and the children will be holding a mini workshop on poppy making as part of their school project. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to use the templates provided  to create their own poppy and write the names of any family or friends on the poppy as a way of remembering those who have fallen and those who have been affected by war and conflict in any way. We aim to create a ‘Poppy Cascade’ on the stairway of the hall before 11^th November which will be on display until the end of the year.

This term, the pupils are studying World War 1 and we were delighted to welcome a visit from the Armadale Castle Museum with their ‘Coming Home’ Exhibition which commemorates 100 years since the end of the War. The workshop focussed on children’s lives from World War 1 and the jobs that children undertook at that time. We also had the opportunity to learn a little bit about how the prisoners of war at the Raasay Iron Mine interacted with the island community and how the islanders ‘smuggled’ food to the prisoners and in return the prisoners created hand made toys for the children of these families. We also learnt about how children were involved in foraging and gathering during the war and identified the many uses for heather, bog myrtle and spagnum moss. The workshop finished with the children getting the opportunity to make beautiful woven designs using foraged materials.

It’s not often that we have a local wedding on the island so when Norman and Iona decided to tie the knot we couldn’t miss out! Fortunately the sun came out just in time for Iona to arrive on a dumper truck! After watching the guests and bride arrive, we had a treat at Raasay House Cafe before heading back to see the bride and groom on the front lawn. We all thought a certain classmate looked very smart in his kilt outfit. Iona is very much involved in our school, providing sports and dance clubs and we wish them all the best for the future.

Due to the weather at the end of last term, our Inter-school sports event with Carbost and Struan Primary Schools had to be cancelled. We did however arrange a suitable date for all three schools and on Friday 7th September we all enjoyed meeting up with fellow pupils from partner schools to have some fun and competitive sports. Here we are enjoying the day.

David Crooks, Highland Council ICT Development Officer came to our school on Wednesday 5th September and delivered Chromebook training to pupils and staff as part of our ICT School Improvement Plan. The pupils and staff learnt how to create quizzes, work on a shared document simultaneously and how to access assignments. Our school allocation was for a one to one device for P6 & 7 and one other device shared between the P1-5 class.

To maximise on the impact of the Chromebook roll-out, we are looking at purchasing a one to one device for all our pupils and we have identified that the School Fund this year will be supporting this project. We will keep you posted of our progress and we will be sharing more of our developments in this area throughout the year via the website.

We were sorry to say goodbye to Fiona Stone as she left for her new life in Harris but are delighted that Katy Ann will be taking up the PSA hours in the school. Before she left Fiona completed the art project in the shelter – adding a fantastic fishing boat scene to go along with the Dun Caan mural already in place.