Raasay Primary School

We are delighted that our recent application for a Third Green flag has been successful! We are grateful for all the hard work and support of parents, Parent Council and the wider community. Here is what the team at Eco Schools Scotland had to say about our award:

‘Dear Mrs Duncan,
Eco-Schools Scotland – Eco-Schools Green Flag Award status
I am delighted to confirm that your school has successfully renewed Eco-Schools Green Flag Award status. This is an outstanding achievement, so please pass on our congratulations to everyone involved.
Interim Assessment Report
Massive congratulations to everybody at Raasay Primary on successfully renewing your Green Flag status. I cannot believe how much you have achieved since my last visit and felt that your wonderful submission showcased well all the marvellous environmental work going on in school (although I must admit that your photo with Mickey, the dolphin, was my favourite!). Throughout, you have made fantastic use of your unique, island environment to enhance the children’s learning and give them a true sense of place, working collaboratively with helpful partners such as the Ranger’s Service, local businesses, the CCF, Highland Council, Eden Court and the Raasay Roots, Fruits and Shoots initiative. Through the creation of your All Weather Garden Project, you have gained well-deserved recognition of your efforts, winning the Council’s Carbon Clever Competition, a success shared via BBC Alba and Eden Court’s Climate Change Day. Well done, too, for your ongoing scheme to help your fellow islanders compost their organic waste, your involvement in the development of the Victorian Garden at Raasay House and your tireless community litter picking and beach cleaning activities. For a small school, you have definitely made a big impact! Next time round, you will be able to renew your Green Flag status via our new, online system, and we invite you to continue your exciting Eco journey by choosing one of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals on which to focus, in tandem with your ongoing ventures, to add a global dimension to your environmental work. Amazing effort, everyone. Well done!’

We are now underway with our Community Arts project whereby the pupils will be researching and mapping local Gaelic placenames. As you can see, our map is filling up nicely already.

We are delighted that Dr Margaret Ritchie from the University of the West of Scotland, in conjuction with Strathclyde University visited our school to deliver some amazing STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) lessons with the children.

This links in well with our Science focus this term whereby children are developing key skills in understanding the impact of forces in our world.

Dr Ritchie worked with pupils and they conducted various experiments looking at scientific variations using pipettes and test tubes, exploring the properties of liquids.

As you can see in the photographs, they also explored the effects of static electricity. One of the most amazing activities was seeing holograms in action – Dr Ritchie set up various holograms which appeared to float above the computer keyboard – various holograms appeared including the Earth and some dancing figures.

We look forward to this continued partnership with Dr Ritchie and her colleagues as they continue to support the school. They have also provided the school with a drone which we look forward to using as part of our further science activities throughout the year.

In Art lessons children are exploring a variety of techniques within printing. These include: repeating, overlapping, rotating and arranging shapes; monoprinting and print overlays.

I’m sure we all remember some ‘snow days’ from our childhood! As you can tell, Raasay Primary pupils love the snow and here they are having some fun at playtimes.

Report by Tabby Carslaw P6

On Tuesday 9th of January we had a fun science lesson on forces, pushing and pulling etc. We had different materials and objects such as a coke can, tennis ball, playdoh and a bag of sand. We then had to see if we could  push or pull to change their shape then we had to see if we could change them back to their original shape.

We then took some different objects and we had to write down what we thought would happen to them – would they change, not change or bounce back? To finish it off we recorded all of our results on our worksheets.

For our third experiment we found out how to make different objects slow down, speed up and change direction using forces such as push, pull and twist. For example our first object was a bicycle and to speed up you have to push on the pedals to slow down you have to pull the brakes and to change direction you have to twist the handle bars.

My favourite thing was finding out how different materials change shape.

The photographs below show us working on our experiments and also Rhona and I working on this report for the website.

Here at Raasay Primary School we feel that it is important to acknowledge the support the community give us and to spread some Christmas joy and cheer. With that, the pupils were out and about in the local community – singing festive songs and giving out chocolates as they visited local households.

It might be Christmas season but the composting still has to be done – the Santa hats add a festive touch!

Thanks to Calum Gillies for this excellent condensed version of our School Christmas Production 2017 – we hope you enjoy it! The full version of our play will be available soon right here – as a link on our website.

We were delighted that a very special visitor was able to join us for our Christmas Party. As you can see – when Santa visits Raasay he has a very special mode of transport!