All posts by Miss Anderson

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Mummified Apples in P3!

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P3 were curious to find out what had happened to their mummified apples. Were they the same? Did they look any different? Did they smell any different?  P3 have been learning about all things Egyptian and had previously learned about the the mummification process and how something called ‘natron’, helped preserve the body for afterlife.

Using a mixture of salt and baking powder, our version of natron, the children covered a quarter of apple and left another quarter uncovered. We made our predictions, thought about the process and what might happen to each apple. Max and Miah predicted that the apple covered with salt and baking powder would be preserved, Scartlett and Charlotte W predicted that the ‘Nitron’ would dry the apple and make it soggy, and Kristen and Alyssa predicted that the apple in ‘Nitron’ would fizz up and turn brown. We left the apple in a cupboard for 7 days. After 7 days we had a wee look to see what the results were. Some of our predictions were correct. The apple covered in ‘Nitron’ dried out and was a bit sponge like in nature, it had preserved!

P3 are now looking forward to their trip to The National Museum, our Egyptian workshop and looking at Egyptian artefacts first hand.

 

Miss A

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P6 Homework Heroes

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P6 boys and girls have worked extremely hard completing their World War 2 homework task. All the children were given the choice of what they wanted to do by picking different activities from their homework grid, these included; paint/make/sew three flags for countries involved in the war, create a box full of items , photos and books from World War 2, draw a bar graph to show the number of people in armies in World War 2 and research what foods were rationed.

The children fully embraced the challenge and brought in a variety  of World War 2 artifacts, which had been passed down from great grand parents. We even had a couple of model airplanes make an appearance.

This homework task was very successful, I asked the children what they enjoyed the most and a lot of them said it was spending time with their parents/carers when completing the tasks.

I would like to say thank you to all parents and carers who helped their children with their homework.

 

Enjoy your weekend.

 

Miss Anderson & P6

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P5a Basketball Masterclass

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Yesterday P5a were privileged to have 2 basketball stars in our midst…..Finlay Ferguson and Ruari Harvey shared their talents with P5. The boys were not impressed with my skills the previous week and suggested that they take over a PE lesson and share their knowledge of basketball with the rest of the class. Both Finlay and Ruari train every week with West Lothian Wolves and put together a whole lesson to share with the class. The boys split the class into 2 groups and each took one half of the class. Finlay decided to teach his group layups and how to shoot and Ruari taught dribbling and triple threat, the groups then changed over half way through the lesson to give all children a chance of doing all activities. Both boys were excellent at giving their groups instruction and modelling exactly what they had to do. All of the children in P5a, including Finlay and Ruari, loved their lesson and have learned new skills along the way. Keep your eye out on the blog for future masterclasses as we now have a long list of children wanting to share their expertise……from drama to gymnastics.

 

I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend.

 

Miss Anderson

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P5 Christmas Party!

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On Friday we partied the morning away, both P5 classes had their long awaited Christmas party. Unfortunately Santa was busy and was unable to pop by but we all had a fantastic time anyway! Everyone make a huge effort and looked fabulous. After some games and dancing we got together for our party feast. We had amazing dancers and everyone showed great competitive spirit during our games. I think it is safe to say that everyone really enjoyed themselves.

Not long now until the big day.

We hope you all have a wonderful and safe Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year.

 

Miss Anderson & Mrs Campbell

  

Community, Events, Mid Calder 40th Anniversary, Primary 5, Uncategorized

Open afternoon in P5a

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Wednesday afternoon was very busy in P5a as we opened our doors and showcased our business models. All of the children have been working extremely hard over the past few weeks to ensure that their models, of their business, were reflective of the business that they wanted to open in Mid Calder. Over the past few weeks the children have made a business plan and a floor plan in the design of their shops/business, finally we put all of this into practice and started making our shop/business models. The parents/carers that visited us on Wednesday were very impressed with all of the hard work that the children have been putting into their models and were on hand to give advice as to how the children could improve them and some even contributed to the building of our models. Next week we will be sharing our sales pitch with the rest of the class and we will have 3 business that will go onto the final stage of our ‘Dragons Den’. We will keep you updated as to what business is the final winner.

P5a would like to thank all of the parents/carers that took the time to come and see what we have been learning.

Hope you all have a fab weekend.

 

Miss Anderson & P5a

Mid Calder 40th Anniversary, Primary 5, Uncategorized

New shop opens in Mid Calder!

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P5a have fully embraced the challenge of creating a new shop for Mid Calder main street. As a class we have  been looking at what shops we have in our main street and if it fits the purpose of living in the 21st century. We first drew a map of our village and identified what shops/businesses we had and where they were situated. Once we had completed this we then discussed the needs of our village and what could we benefit from. All of the children had to justify why they had made their choice of what shop they would open in the village and all  were very enthusiastic about designing and making their own shop/business. We have also been looking at measure which will help us when we start to make a model of our shop/business. We will be making our shop/business models over the next few weeks and then the children will have to make a pitch as to why their business should be chosen for Mid Calder main street……..look out for our fantastic designs on future blogs.

Have a great weekend.

Miss Anderson & P5a

Maths & Numeracy, National Maths Week 2017, Primary 5, Uncategorized

Maths week Scotland in P5A

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Maths has been our main focus this week in P5a. We have been learning all about position and direction. At the start of the week we got out our Atlases during IDL, where we had to locate where the Rainforests were in the world. We used our knowledge about using a non-fiction book to help us locate this information in the Atlas. One of the children spoke about co-ordinates and was able to explain to the others what a co-ordinate was,  the other children were then challenged to find a main airport and provide the co-ordinate for it.

We then started to think about the language that we could use to give someone directions, what the children came up with was amazing, things such as; co-0rdinates, 360, 180 and 90 degrees, clockwise, anti-clockwise, full, 1/2 and 1/4 turn, left and right, backwards and forwards and the 8 compass points. We used our new language skills to write direction of how to get from one point of a map to another. We took our learning outside and we had to direct each other from different points in the playground using all the language that we had learned. We quickly learned that when blind folded we were unsure as to what direction N,E,S and W was and we had to change our language, we all had great fun.

We have also been learning how to ask good questions in maths. Miss Anderson and the children had to use their questioning skills to find out what the number was and the only answer could be yes or no. Some of the good questions that were asked were:

Is it an odd/even number?

Does it have 2/3/4 digits?

Is it a prime number?

Is it a multiple of?

The children were then given the opportunity to work with a partner and get them to ‘guess’ the number. This is a great game that can be played at home to improve questioning skills.

 

Hope you all have a fantastic September weekend.

 

Miss Anderson

Class Community Contracts, Health & Wellbeing, Primary 5, Uncategorized

Life in P5a

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All of the children have got off to a great start over the past few weeks and have settled well into the routines of P5. We have been building our class community and getting to know each other a bit better. One of the first things that we had to do was decide on what theme we wanted for our class charter and we all decided on a ‘cinema’ theme, I think you will agree that it turned out fantastically, we then had to decide on what the most important children’s rights were that we wanted to respect within our classroom, not only did we discuss what ones were relevant within our classroom but we also spoke about what we could do within our class to respect these rights. We have all signed out class contract and can’t wait for a happy and successful year in P5a.

In our class we also have our ‘Class Shout Out Wall’ where if someone feels that somebody is doing a fabulous job or if someone has helped you, we can write a compliment on a post it and place it on someones ‘face’…….. It’s ok we got everyone to draw a self portrait for the wall so no-one will be coming home covered in post-its! The wall seems to be covered in post-its on a daily basis as we have such a great class where everyone is kind and helps each other.

We are all looking forward to the next year in P5a.

Miss Anderson & P5a

 

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Another busy week in P7/6 (minus the 7’s)

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It has been a very busy and productive week in P7/6. The class felt a lot smaller ( and quieter) as our P7’s were away on their High School transition days, embarking on the next leg of their journey.

The week kicked off with a very successful trip to The Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh. The sun shone for us as we started our garden treasure hunt, where we had to find various flowers and items within the gardens and take photos of them or draw them. The sun was still shining when we had lunch so we were able to have a quick game of football in the park opposite the gardens. After lunch we got to take part in a work shop about the reproduction of plants, some of us got to dress up as flowers, a bee, stamen and stigma, which all represented the different parts of a flower. We then had to recreate what happens when a bee is attracted to a flower. It helped us to understand the process of pollination better.

On Wednesday Eve, Katie, Adam and Aiden took the Burton-mobile for a trip to Dobbies Garden Centre. We applied for funding from Dobbies to help us with our school grounds, in the hope that we could create a welcoming colourful, relaxing, place within our school playground and we are pleased to announce that we were awarded £600 worth of gardening equipment. Eve, Katie, Adam and Aiden have been displaying their green fingers by creating a small garden in our playground so I thought they would be the perfect children to go and have a wee trip to Dobbies to see what type of plants and equipment we could spend our money on. They all knew exactly what they wanted and came back with a very extensive list. We look forward to getting everything delivered and making our school playground a welcoming place. If anyone would like to help with this small project we would really appreciate your help.

On Thursday we got a visit from the SSPCA to discuss what animal cruelty was  and all of the children had very good questions to ask our warden. We ended the session with a game of snakes and ladders that related to animal facts.

Our P7’s all arrived back safely from their new high schools and had lots of stories to tell us about their time away. It sounds like they all had an amazing time and are all ready to make the transition to High School.

I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend.

 

Miss Anderson

Anytime Anywhere Learning, Digital Learning Week 2017, Primary 7, Technical Troopers, Technologies, Uncategorized

Digital Learning Week in P7/6

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It has been Digital Learning week across the country and we at MCPS have been celebrating by  sharing our learning across all levels. The technical troopers have many talents and Cailin and Olivia  shared their knowledge of Sway, a tool for producing presentations, where the children can either work independently or contribute to a group Sway. Cailin and Olivia were the teachers for the morning and gave a short presentation as to how to use Sway and the features that can be used. Some of the children had already used Sway and were just building upon their knowledge but others had not used it before and needed a little bit more guidance. By the end of the lesson all children were able to contribute to our class ‘How does your garden grow?’ Sway and had made their own, some added pictures and some added videos. It was good to see Amy continuing with her Sway during free time Friday this week and building on her knowledge. I hope that some children might just use Sway in the future when presenting.

I hope you all have a fantastic holiday weekend.

Miss Anderson