Meldrum Primary School Blog

We’ve had another positive week here at Meldrum.  A group of P5 and P6 pupils volunteered at St Andrews Church soup kitchen this week and will do this for the next few weeks, demonstrating the Curriculum for Excellence capacities of being effective contributors and responsible citizens in our local community.  Our P6 and P7 netball team took part in some matches yesterday and showed excellent teamwork, well done to everyone who took part!  We had the first session of a P6 and P7 football after school club which went well too.

School Uniform – we are noticing that some children are not coming to school in their uniform and would ask that you support us in trying to uphold our standards of pupils wearing uniform.  There is no obligation for children to wear jumpers with school badges, a plain red or black jumper/cardigan are absolutely fine however we do have some of our children wearing jumpers with slogans which we would ask are kept for home.  If anyone requires help and support with uniform, please contact the office and speak to either Mrs Stephenson, Mrs Brown or myself in confidence and we can assist with this.

P1 – we are going to have a student from Strathclyde University coming to work in P1.  She will work alongside Miss Jones and will support in the class and will work with small groups on learning activities.  She is with us for 1 day per week for a few weeks, building up to more days as her placement goes on.  Her name is Miss Lockhart and we look forward to welcoming her next week.

We will also be welcoming a student teacher who is currently on placement in the drama department at Deans Community High School to our P7 class this Tuesday and the following Tuesday too.  She will be observing Mrs Lang but will also deliver a drama activity in P5, P6 and P7 during her time here.  Her name is Miss Lusted and we are pleased to have the opportunity to have her in the school.

Next week

Monday – P7 to work with West Lothian Council Digital Pedagogy officer on Adobe Express resource

Tuesday – Student teacher from DCHS  in school

Wednesday – Miss Lockhart from Strathclyde University working in P1 today; opportunity for any pupils who have applied for P1 place at Meldrum to visit the school 4pm (not required if you attended the December drop in); Parent Council meeting Teams 6pm

Thursday – P6/7 football after school club

Friday – World Book Day dress as an adjective event

This week we have delved into our Ancient Egypt topic by learning about the types of jobs and clothing the Egyptians had and how they traded goods. We also had fun in outdoor learning exploring hieroglyphics and working out the puzzle in orienteering.

Great Green

Telling the time of O’clock, half past, quarter to and quarter past. And working out simple time durations.

Think Pink

We need quicker recall of our 4 and 6 times tables.

This weeks lead learners are Addison and Mia C. Well done!!

Primary 2 have had another great week and are getting ready for Spring!

We have continued this week with our sounds and writing sentences using “the” independently or with little support. We have been learning “y” as the “ee” sound. This sound is found in many words such as happy, sleepy, cosy, rainy, baby, dirty, dusty, very, scary, crazy, lazy, city and many more…

As well as telling the time, we have started to investigate measuring using non-standard units, cubes, counters, sticks etc. We are starting to use standard units, thinking about centimetres when measuring length. We have also carried out a class survey to find out which modes of transport are the most and least common.

Great Green: “What went well…”

-We have been continuing to work on telling the time, using o’clock, half past, quarter past and quarter to, making links between analogue and digital. We have been playing a game in class which can be used to practise our skills! If looking to access the game, start on “1. Read time to the hour”, and only move on to “2. Read time to the hour and half hour” when comfortable with this.

Telling the Time – Mathsframe

-We have started to explore different modes of transport, making links with Science outcomes, we tested out toy cars on ramps with different materials. The children correctly predicted which material would allow the toy cars to travel the furthest. Our ramps were fluffy, rough, soft and wooden. We used a metre stick to measure the distance travelled in centimetres. The fluffy material made the cars travel the least and the wooden ramp made the toy cars travel the farthest.

Think Pink: “Even better if…”

-We are still working on our narrative writing, making sure we include adjectives to describe our characters and not to use a full stop before “and”. Next Friday, March 6th, we are celebrating World Book Day by dressing up as an adjective. Some examples are: sparkly, sporty, cosy, wild. Many of the children have fantastic ideas how to do this and I can’t wait to see their ideas come to life!

-We are going to look at data handling, using our transport surveys to create pictograms, we will also use the information from our forces experiment to create bar and line graphs.

Lead Learners:

Our lead learners next week are Callum and Annie for consistently working hard in all areas of the curriculum.

It has been a sporty week in P7. On Tuesday we had a visit from Evie Wills, a Scottish Woman’s International Rugby player. She spoke about her journey to international success as well as her nursing career. We took this opportunity to develop our knowledge about the World of Work. Evie was very inspirational and was able to answer all our questions.

Last night the Netball Team participated in round two of the inter-school netball tournament. Meldrum was a very strong team and easily won both their games (4-0 and 4-1).

Also, last night was the first football after school club. The boys are looking forward to playing as a team and participating in some inter-school games soon.

Great Green (Things that went well)

• Scale drawings of our height to put on a display to demonstrate the average height of P7.

Think Pink (Things we want to get better at)

• Sharing using a ratio (This was our Numeracy Transition topic this week).

This week our Lead Learners are Jessica and Jason for demonstrating kindness and inclusion… Well done!

They have decided that the value they will be looking for next week is honesty.

Another busy week in Primary 5! We have continued to focus on opportunities to read for pleasure, sharing books that we have enjoyed and giving reasons why these books/authors are amongst our favourites.

Great Green – ‘What went well’

– Primary 5 used ‘My World of Work’ to explore the jobs that best suit their skills and attributes. They created ‘Animal Me’ profiles which explained different jobs and careers that are linked to these skills and attributes.
-We created a large-scale Victorian factory and made collage images of a city skyline showing the shapes of the buildings against the smoke-filled sky from the factories.

Think Pink – ‘Even better if’

– think about the use of neat, joined handwriting to uplevel our tasks.
– take every opportunity to tell the time!! and calculate how long an event lasts (duration of time.)

Lead Learners.

Our lead learners last week did a great job. Thank you – Thea and Arlo
This week our Lead Learners are Zuzanna and Adam
Their tasks will be to
– checking pupils have the correct equipment each morning and for any task throughout the day.
– lead and support the class during fitness sessions in P.E. and during our Daily Mile.

It was lovely to welcome our children back to school on Tuesday after the February break.  Everyone seemed positive about being back at school and being with their teachers and friends again.  P7 started a new block of their online transition lessons, this block has a Numeracy and Maths focus. Today in assembly, we had a presentation from Carers of West Lothian (CoWL) who talked to us about what it means to be a young carer and how CoWL can offer support.  CoWL can be contacted at any time by parents/carers and you can visit their website here: Carers of West Lothian | Support Starts Here

I hope that everyone enjoys the weekend, it’s great to be noticing a difference in daylight hours and hopefully we get some more spells of dry weather!

Next Week

All Week – Mrs Egan holding Learner Conversations and looking at pupil work with some children from across the school

Tuesday – P7 having a visit linked to My World of Work

Wednesday – Mrs Brown and pupil group to volunteer at church soup kitchen

Thursday – Mrs Egan out of school at HT training day

Friday – Pupil group sessions today (children working in mixed groups to take forward an aspect of the curriculum)

This week we have enjoyed exploring Chinese New Year and identifying our Chinese calendar animal. We were born in 2018/2019 so some of us are a dog and some a pig. We also made some Chinese lanterns and listened to traditional Chinese music. We then looked at Chinese letters and wrote our name, it was pretty tricky!

Great Green

We have started a new class novel by our favourite author Tom Fletcher. We have used reciprocal reading strategies to make predictions and clarify words. We ordered the Kindle Edition so we can read along on the board with the teacher and see all the interesting characters. There is even a soundtrack!

Think Pink 

Practise your 4 times table everyday!

This weeks lead learners are Hazel and Mason. Well done!!!