The sun shone on Mid Calder on Friday as we opened our doors for our annual Spring Fair organised by our PSA. Pupils past and present, families, staff and members of the local community joined together at MCPS and took part in a range of activities and events from the bouncy castle to tombola, various stalls to face painting.
A big thank you to the PSA who organised the event and to everyone who attended. We raised a huge £1773.97.
https://youtu.be/fHvFb_MgF0E
This afternoon we invited the parents and carers of our Nursery children who are transitioning to Primary 1 to a transition workshop. The Primary 7 pupils took the parents on a tour of the school and they had the chance to visit the P1 classrooms. We also shared some hints and tips for P1 from the current P1 parents which you can find below.
Hints and tips from P1 Parents
Mission 4 arrives at project Project Planetarium this week and it was all about Space Missions!
Part 1:
We used Twig on Glow videos to investigate how the news reported Neil Armstrong landing on the moon compared to Tim Peake at the International Space Station. We recognised that videos have changed over the years, for example videos now are clearer, coloured pictures, sharper images and have zoom. We also noticed how Tim Peake used Social Media to share his adventures in space via Twitter and a Video Log, this is something they could not do during Neil Armstrong’s mission.
Part 2:
Each Home Team are currently researching 2 space missions each. We made notes under the following headings:
We skimmed and scanned a selection of websites and books to find out the relevant information. We had to use key words to research using different search engines. We used Yammer to make a list of useful child friendly websites that we could use – this was so we could help each other. We will use this information to make a timeline of missions.
Part 3:
We have been learning about the job of a astronaut. We used books, videos and websites to discuss:
We found out that you need to have a qualification in Science or Technologies, and that is was useful to have a knowledge of different languages. We will use the information we found out to write a job advert for an Astronaut.
We also have been trying to build our own spacecraft – watch this space!
We are learning to understand what a tenth means.
In Primary 4 we have been learning about tenths in a range of ways. We know that a fraction means equal parts and that we can use our knowledge of the ten times table to help us find a tenths.
We were set the challenge of drawing a tenths number line. We used each others mistakes to get it write in the end, remembering that ten tenths is the same as 1 whole. Then we took it in turns to call out fractions and find them on the number line. We recognised that five tenths are equivalent to one half.
We used coloured counters to make a tenth number line in class, this helped us recognised that tenths are 10 equal parts.
Pizza fractions helped us to find a fraction of a shape.
We used Sum Dog to help us develop accuracy of our 10 times tables and and we also completed written tasks to find tenths of a number and shape.
Helping at home:
Please find attached the parent questionnaire that went out in school bags today.
You can return the electronic copy of the questionnaire to: wlmidcalder-ps@westlothian.org.uk
Education Scotland have shared our work on Yammer on their Glow blog:
https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/glowblogs/glowgallery/portfolio/mid-calder-primary-are-yammering/
We are learning to use websites to research information about our solar system.
We are learning to use text and images to communicate information in an interesting way.
A successful fact file will include the following information about each planet:Name
Your presentation should include
First of all we had to read websites to gather information about the planets.
Then we collaborated on our fact file together by using Sway.
We have finally completely our Solar System fact file by using Sway to present our work.
You can view our fact file below.
Please leave us some feedback by adding a comment.
Today we looked at how we could make our solar system factfile, following the research we had completed at the beginning of the week. We looked at how we could use Sway, another application available with our Glow log in to collaboratively create a factfile.
Each group used their research about specific planets to create a card in the Sway. We found it very exciting that all 6 groups could work on the one factfile using different netbooks, this was our first experience of collaborating on the one activity online. We decided that because this was our first time using Sway we wanted to use the netbooks so we could support each other. We will add a link to our finished factfile next week.
