We welcomed Michelle Sutherland from West Lothian Drug and Alcohol Service on Wednesday. Michelle spoke to us about identifying the different kinds of risks associated with the use and misuse of a range of substances.We discussed the impact that the misuse of substances can have on individuals, their families and friends. Moving forward East Calder has been chosen as a pilot school to work alongside WLDAS to create a HWB action plan which will then be used acoss West Lothian. Watch this space!
Congratulations to these members of 7B for their achievements outside of school. We have the rosettes for 2 clear rounds in a jumping competition at a local horse riding school, quite the achievement! The medal was for an unbeatable season with Murieston United girls team, amazing! What a talented pair. If you would like to share any achievements from outside of school please let us know. We would love to showcase your talents, and remember an achievement can be anything you are proud of !
Congratulations to these two very impressive members of P7B .Great achievements over the weekend in The Spartan Race and Livingston Athletics Club. In the Spartan a 4 k was completed with 15 obstacles and to win the medals in the Athletics event it was both the high jump and 75m hurdles. Brilliant!
It was great to see P7 getting to know their buddies this week. Every P1 took a letter away with them that was written by their P7 buddy explaining how they hope they can help them settle into school life. On Wednesday P7 met their buddies and participated in a range of activities from reading and drawing to sorting activities. On a rota basis the P7’s have also been helping in the playground and lunchtime in the dinner hall. It has been fantastic to see such a nurturing attitude.
Maths looked a little different in P7 last week. As part of National Numeracy Day we looked some STEAM clips which demonstrated how Maths is so important in the World of Work. We heard from Scientists, Data Analysts, Builders, Bankers, Chefs and Engineers. Who knew Maths would touch upon so many different career paths! We then made our Numeracy lesson a little more active by going outside and starting a Maths Trail. It got very competitive as each group used their mental maths strategies to solve each problem. To finish off the week the class came up with some amazing designs crossing over curricular outcomes with both Art and Technology.
Following on from the success of our first Learner Agency task where the class planned, evaluated and took forward our Road Safety Assembly that we shared with the whole school P7 decided to instigate another active task. We discussed what Learner Agency meant to them and they came up with words such as choice, empowered, responsible, active and independent. These are all key values of Learner Agency.
Learner Agency is more personalized learning. It empowers the children to influence their own path. By encouraging P7 to take initiative, they enhance their ability to take control, increase motivation, and ensure they respond to their own activities. They develop the ability to organise themselves, employ strategies that help them to become effective learners and how most importantly to take their learning forward. These are all skills that they will need to develop as they make the transition to S1.
Or current context is Charities and Communities and the class decided to use this as the basis for their Learner Agency activity. We briefly discussed possible Learning Outcomes and within their groups they created their own Success Criteria. Each group has been allocated a display space and will present their learning here as well as using other media to share their creations! I have already witnessed ICT, Drama and Art and I cannot wait to see each groups final presentations….Watch this Space!
We have linked all our Literacy tasks this week to celebrating Fairtrade Fortnight. We consolidated any previous learning we had surrounding Fairtrade by looking at a reading comprehension on Ethical Trading. This also allowed us to embed our knowledge of different question types, something we had looked at previously. We then completed a research task where the classes had to choose how they would display their findings. We were so impressed receiving News Reports, Audio Clips, PowerPoints, Leaflets and Posters!
On Wednesday we watched a clip called Tanya’s Journey which followed a girl from the UK as she travelled to visit Fairtrade Farmers abroad. We used this opportunity to introduce the idea of a recount and the features we would expect the class to use. This task involved a range of outcomes ranging from listening skills, note taking, summarising and creating a new text. Using a map of the world the children also looked how Fairtrade stretches across the globe and what factors relating to the landscape influence which products grow where. Finally, on Friday we are going to have a debate! We gave the classes some statements on Fairtrade and asked them, using their previous learning on expositions to decide which side of the argument they would support or oppose. We are looking forward to a heated debate!!
Alongside all our Fairtrade work we have also been looking at multiples and prime numbers in Maths and continued with our tasks set by Mrs Martin in Art and Mr Millar in P.E, P7 you must be exhausted! Thank you again for all your hard work this week.
Another busy week both in the classroom and at home. Linking to our Scottish Tourism context both classes have been using their research skills to learn about Scotland. They have been looking at its culture, landmarks and Geography. Using their knowledge of different genres they created a poster demonstrating how Loch Lomond was formed. We were impressed with the variety of media used to display their findings.
In Literacy we have made curricular links with our RME context of Carnival. We looked at using Higher Order Thinking skills to create 6 different question types from a piece of text on Festivals from around the world. We also looked at how to create an effective summary, identifying what the key ideas of a text are. Using these skills, the classes then went on to complete a reading comprehension effectively extracting the main points of the text.
In Maths we continued with our concept of area looking at both the area of compound shapes and of right angled triangles. Well done to all of those of you who went on to attempt the challenge activities; very impressive!
Keep up the hard work everybody, you are doing a great job!
Can we start by saying how impressed we have been with both P7 and P7/6 during their Remote and Classroom Learning. Really engaging with every task and demonstrating great perseverance and resilience. We are very proud of your efforts. Last week we covered a wide range of outcomes and activities including
It was also really impressive to see how so many of the class linked their science tasks to the work we have been doing on procedures when completing their experiment. Also using features of an exposition when creating the persuasive text in their Social Subjects activities. It is great to see the children using their learning across all curricular areas. Keep up the hard work, you have been brilliant.
P7S had fun this morning creating their own 3D origami modular shapes whilst following instructions on a webinar. Japan is our current context so the link to cross curricular tasks allowed us to encompass a range of outcomes. The class had to listen very carefully to each sequential instruction, other skills they demonstrated were resilience and certainly perseverance. It was great to see teamwork coming into play with our origami experts sharing their knowledge with some of their peers and teacher!! We reinforced our knowledge of shape vocabulary using terms such as nets,vertices,parallel and faces and this was brilliantly times as our next context in Maths is shape. I am sure we will all be experts now. Well done P7S a great effort.
