Category Archives: Technologies

Book Week Scotland in P3

In Primary 3, we LOVE reading and we have been excited to take part in fun learning activities to celebrate Book Week Scotland 2018.

Visualising the character: Through our IDL based on the book, The Boy Who Grew Dragons, we have been developing the reading skill of visualisation. We used this to help us when beginning to look at our whole school book, The Lost Thing. We listened to the book being read without being able to see any of the illustrations or the front or back cover, and we were challenged to draw ‘the lost thing.’ We then created a fact file for our creatures, describing its appearance, habitat, diet and hobbies. We compared our ‘lost things’ to the real illustrations, watching the film version of the story to visualise the characters and settings further.

Creating animations: Using our own lost characters, we used Puppet Pals 2 to create short animations based on the book. As some of us had not used the app before, we began by ‘tinkering’ with it, exploring its features and teaching each other when we learned something new. We took pictures of our lost things and made them into movable characters, adding voice overs to narrate the stories.

Read, Write, Count: In addition to all of this, Primary 6 joined us to gift us with our Read Write Count Book Bags. They helped us to explore the exciting books, create our own stories and play the fun games with us.

We have also taken part in a Book Week Scotland reading contest on Sumdog, continued to read our own books for enjoyment and given our review of lots of exciting new novels that our PSA has very kindly funded. We also enjoyed a visit from author, Colin Drysdale, who shared lots of incredible facts about sea creatures and sea birds found in Scotland. What a busy and book loving week in Primary 3!

 

P5’s Outdoor Adventures

Primary 5 have had a great few weeks exploring the school’s woodland areas and using the space as an ‘outdoor classroom’ for various challenges in Literacy, Art, Technologies and Health and Wellbeing.

As a class, we have been reading ‘Billy & the Minpins’ by Roald Dahl. Challenge one saw us using our visualisation skills to imagine what the Gruncher (a terrible man and Minpin-eating creature) would look like and then creating natural art inspired by Andy Goldsworthy.

Challenge two was based our Technologies skills. We had to design and create bridges for the Minpins to travel from tree to tree. There were some magical creations!

Our final challenge was very different! We used the woodland as a setting for ‘yogateering’. Pupils had to find, memorise and repeat various yoga sequences to earn points for their team.

Overall, we have thoroughly enjoyed taking our learning outdoors and hope to do more in the new year.

 

P3 are fired up about dragons!

In Primary 3, our IDL is based on the novel, The Boy Who Grew Dragons. As one of the main characters in our book is Flicker the dragon, we decided that we wanted to learn more about dragons. We made lots of fantastic suggestions about how we could do this, and our most popular choices were to research dragons, design our own dragons, build dragons and plan a home for a dragon.

Breathtaking Builders- We have been learning how to build a dragon using Lego and Knex. Some of even built our dragons a home to live in and food to eat.

Powerful Planners– We have been learning how to plan a home for a dragon to live in.

Deadly Designers– We have been learning how to design our own dragon using the iPad app, Art Set.

Roaring Researchers- We have been learning how to use a search engine effectively, using key words to find out interesting facts about dragons.

We are really enjoying everything that we are learning through our IDL, The Boy Who Dragons. Why not ask us about the reading and drama skills that we have been developing as well!

Digital Dress Down Day

Yesterday, the Technical Troopers organised a Digital Dress Down Day to raise funds to further support digital learning in Mid Calder Primary School. Our pupils were challenged to dress up as a character from an online or digital game, an emoji or a piece of technology.

Thank you to everyone who took part and donated. We raised a fantastic £175.05 and we can’t wait to share what we spend it on with everyone.

Bloggers in P5 – First Post for Sophie

Ever        Going      Be

Things           To       Alright!

Hi it’s Victoria and Harper. We went to The Modern art galleries. We went to MOD1 and MOD2 let’s see what we did! First we got off the bus (we all do that right?) When we got there we were greeted by two ladies their names were Poppy and Heather. We also got split into groups I was with Heather so was Victoria. Miss Brolls came with our group too.

First, we went outside and all of us looked at this big hill. Me and my partner took some pictures of stuff like this big penguin it was really a woman. We all couldn’t believe it. Then we went over to MOD2 where we made sculptures. Leah (my partner) made a pie looking art work I loved it! We went outside to play and meet the other group.

Then, we had lunch yay then Miss Brolls took us to Raqib Shaw and it was so cool seeing his art he had two dogs in all of its pictures. Finally, we got to go back to the park to have a little play while the others saw his art.When they came back and we all played together it was so fun.

I will add some picture to show you!

Please submit a comment to let us know what you think.

 

 

STEM Workshops in Primary 6 & 7

Today, Primary 6 and 7 had a great opportunity to hear from some experts working in STEM careers. Michael from Jacobs engineering and Daniel and Rob from GE Power spoke to the pupils all about their jobs and backgrounds in STEM. Also, pupils took part in two activities to put into practice some of the concepts they had been learning about. Daniel and Rob demonstrated how to create circuits using a battery pack, led lights and play doh! Michael led a session in creating bridges using everyday materials such as paper, blu tack and sellotape.

Many thanks to our visitors and well done to P6 and P7 for enthusiastically taking part in the workshops.

p6 amazing adverts

P6 made their own toys as you probably know if you read last weeks blog. We made adverts. Our adverts had to be 60 seconds or less you also had to tell how much your toy was and where you can get it from, what it does, how it works, what age is it for, why do you want to buy it. We used the green screen to help us pick backgrounds to go with our product. We also made our product and we used it to it in our advert. We watched the adverts and gave feedback to the toy creators. All the adverts were really good because they gave lots of detail about their prouduct. This is one of the products.

Primary 6 visit to West Lothian College

On Tuesday, Primary 6 had a great visit to West Lothian College. We were there to take part in three different activities linking to STEM and the World of Work. In the engineering department, pupils had the chance to see different workshops that students use to learn new skills and complete projects. They then took part in some tasks involving problem solving skills. In the hair and beauty department, pupils learned how to use various products as part of a hand massage. They also learned and practised some new hairdressing techniques.

We all really enjoyed our time there and it gave us a good insight into the work of a college student and how these skills link to jobs for the future.

Digital Learning Week in P2

This week, as part of Digital Learning Week, Primary 2 have been developing their digital skills with a little help from the Technical Troopers. The children were keen to use Scratch Jr to explore coding. The three Technical Troopers from P7 and P6/7 provided lots of help and encouragement, and their great enthusiasm was soon inspiring P2 to try new things.

We also used Puppet Pals 2 to explore animation. First, we had to choose a space themed background, then think about different characters and objects that we could include as part of a simple story. Finally, we added sound effects and words to tell the story. The results were fantastic and we were very impressed by our efforts.

As part of our Moon Mission IDL work,  we also designed rockets on Purple Mash.