Author: Miss Young

It’s lovely to hear about our pupils achievements in and out of school. Here are two pupils celebrating their medals and hard work in their extra-curricular activities.

One pupil won five medals at the Fauldhouse Swimming Gala: coming 4th in the 200m freestyle, 5th in the 50m breaststroke, 1st place – winning two gold medals in the 50m freestyle and 50m back stroke and one silver medal in the 50m butterfly. Incredible!

Another pupil shared his success after winning two gold medals at the World Kickboxing Association (WKA), beating the current world champion!

Well done boys, you are demonstrating many meta-skills here including collaboration and leadership.

Our pupils have been completing their writing journeys by pairing appropriate graphics with their writing, then they moved on to checking their writing targets. After this they record and read their writing to try and persuade us even more. I am sure a few of us will be persuaded on this one!

Have a look at one journey here:

 

Why red velvet cake is the best cake

Red velvet cake is quite popular and is a brilliant treat. It’s not sickly to eat like when you have chocolate cake, it has the perfect amount of icing on it, red velvet also has an incredi…

Go to this Sway

 

This morning we had a French tasting session between Primary 6 and Primary 7.

We had the opportunity to taste a variety of some French themed foods including: brie, camembert, croissants, brioche and baguettes. The pupils then had to record their views about the foods and research how to say them in French. We had a challenge activity to find out why certain foods exist.

Who knew that it was rumoured that the French baguette was created for soldiers. The long shape apparently meant that it was easier for the soldiers to carry bread during a war!

I’m not so sure that we were all a fan of the pungent French cheeses though, well done to everyone who had a go at tasting them!

In Primary 7 we have gathered our questions and curiosities about our Ethical Living context. Have a look at some of the questions we have come up with.

We have already started to explore ethical branding, toilet rolls and how our eggs are produced and farmed. We are planning our questions around what might affect our future and we are having some rich discussions about how we are influenced in the media.

Primary 7 thoroughly enjoyed their trip with Alan Hamilton yesterday, Alan is a friend of the school, a veteran and an expert in all things to do with WWII.

He set up an activity for us to discover some different war graves, when we found the correct graves we laid some commemorative crosses for Remembrance Day. Alan also explained a bit about each soldier, their role in the war and how they lost their lives.

Alan told us some information about a residential house right next to the school, if you look closely at the brickwork, you can see that there was an opening – this used to be the old tuck shop for the school. He also reminded us that the ‘big’ house at the end of the road used to be a Police Station.

Alan was delighted with his gift from a pupil, the pupil made him a technical replica model of some war weapons. We want to say a huge thank you to Alan for his continued support of the school and wealth of knowledge. The pupils are looking forward to working with him again.

An exciting week in Primary 7, our class pet arrived! An oxygen producing variety of phytoplankton, this idea was conceived and led by a couple of our pupils. They will need to look after it and culture it to enable growth and reproduction. This ties in well with our learning around IoT and our classroom sensors, we are going to explore if having plankton in the classroom will lower our Co2 levels.

For our mathematics context, we have started to look at fractions, creating some fraction art and fraction Halloween pumpkins.

We also had our Halloween disco yesterday, we have included a couple of photographs from the night, more to come soon!

Both classes spent some time together and shared our learning about circles. We had to draw circles in pairs with a piece of string and a piece of chalk, we then labelled the different properties of a circle. We figured out that the string had to be tight and we needed an anchor point. There were some great displays of communication, leadership and problem solving going on. After we finished, we had a bit of fun playing a giant game of duck, duck, goose – running around the circumference of the circle. An excellent showcase of our mathematical understanding and skills, all whilst the sun was shining.

Here is one of our P7 pupils who took part in The Livingston Athletics club championships. She placed first in long jump and first in her 80m sprint.

She loved the supportive environment and standing on the podium for the medal ceremony, a massive well done!

 

Have a look at our collaborative display across Primary 7 and 6. We are showcasing how we use and live our Pedagogical Principles in the upper school at ECPS.

We are so proud of the pupils and we always enjoy witnessing their rich discussions. Play in the upper school has become an important part of our pedagogy, it has definitely deepened understanding and the best part is we have so much fun!

We created our Pixton Avatars this week and we can’t wait to get started. Some of us have already started to write our own Place Value comics…coming soon!

We also explored the importance of social skills and how we control our emotions, linking these to the Zones of Regulation. We are going to explore our own social targets and strategies for each of the zones. Some of us were thinking about what makes a good friend and our own strengths as a friend.

We came up with some powerful adjectives: empathetic, kind, honest, trustworthy, calm, supportive, mature, funny, respectful, positive, social, helpful and more!

We discussed and linked these skills and strengths to our applications for the Pupil Leadership Group.

Good luck to everyone who applies!