Category Archives: Supporting Reading

Expressive Arts, Second Level

P6s’ Trip to the Jupiter Artland the Best Ever!

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Last Wednesday all the P6s headed for a visit to the Jupiter Artland sculpture parkland at Wilkieston.

We took the children to see the magical amethyst grotto before we met our guides for the day.

The day started  with an introduction from the Art educators Sara and Lauren and a guided tour of some of the sculptures. We split into two groups and had some brilliant discussions about the artworks and their settings in nature.

Then it was off to sketch out our design ideas to add to the wonderful meteorite-like Coppice Wood by Andy Goldsworthy. This was quite an honour as this was the first time pupils have been creating to add to this land artist’s works.

The P6s rose to the challenge and we had amazing explanations of the works as they carried out their ideas. Please ask your child what they made and what they thought about the day. Finished works will be in an online gallery soon. We had a follow-up lesson back in class digitally manipulating our photographs using apps such as Be funky, Mixala, Art Effect, Snapseed and Art Set. These are free apps.

Our teaching staff had a wonderful day seeing such engaged and enthusiastic pupils. One staff member said it was the best trip ever!

Early Level, Expressive Arts, First Level, Primary 1, Second Level, Star Pupil

ART WINS in our STEAM SCHOOL

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Art Winners who all were shortlisted to enter, along with 7000 others, the National Tesco Bank Art Competition at The National Galleries in Scotland  a few months ago were celebrated today at our Assembly. They created these imaginative artworks over a few weeks. They were judged by the PSWs who chose exactly whom I would have!
P1 – Oliver  created an eye-catching blue cat with spots. He has an excellent eye for detail and painted a colourful background in acrylics. He always makes very interesting choices for line and colour that are sometimes unexpected.
P4 – Isla W designed a bright, vibrant Pop Art drawing in the cat theme with bold geometric shapes. Her artwork made the judges smile with her two cheeky cats. She has shown very detailed and thoughtful drawing skills and some interesting stripy-coloured cats against a multi-coloured sky background.
P6 – Mhari  started her magical dragon with an exquisite line drawing in graphite and pencil. The theme was Makers of Magic. She drew all the scales and texture of the creature and then added some pearlescent colours such as emerald green. We all agreed that she created a beautiful beast.
All of our fabulous finalists are all on display on three boards around the school with one school-chosen WINNER on each board. Please tell us what you think. Perhaps you would have chosen another winner. Can you explain why? Why do some artworks shine for you?
As we continue to develop our art skills we hope next year to go on and win in the competition. The winners are on display at MOD 1 in Edinburgh off Belford Road. I hope to take the new P5s to see this in September 2018 as part of their outdoor workshop there. A little inspiration is all we need to BELIEVE, ACHIEVE AND SUCCEED! Let’s go from STEM to STEAM. STEAM is an educational approach to learning that uses Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts and Mathematics as access points for guiding student inquiry, dialogue, and critical thinking.
Health & Wellbeing, Primary 5, Second Level

Kuksool Masterclass in P5

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On Wednesday this week Primary 5A and Primary 5C took advantage of the beautiful weather to go outside get involved in a brand new type of physical activity.

Emme from P5A was the latest pupil from her class to offer a Masterclass in a skill she has been learning. This week it was Kuksool – a traditional Korean martial art. Emme began by organising everyone into groups and teaching us a warm-up game. She then showed us a series of warm-up moves and chants to go along with them. We then practised a variety of  techniques to take our partners to the ground (safely!). Everyone participated very well and got involved. Miss Anderson and Mrs Campbell were particularly impressed by Emme’s organisational skills and her ability to hold the attention of more than 40 children on the field – not an easy task! Very well done, Emme

We had a brilliant session and are looking forward to the next time someone is able to come into school and share their skills with us – watch this space…

Enjoy the sunshine this weekend

Mrs Campbell and Miss Anderson

Modern Languages, Second Level, Uncategorized

P6 French vocabulary

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P6 have been learning French vocabulary we learned the days of the week and the month. Monday – lundi, Tuesday- mardi, Wednesday- mercredi, Thursday – jeudi, Friday – vendredi, Saturday – samedi and Sunday is dimanche. Those are the days of the week in French. Here are the months January – Janvier, February – Février, May – Mars, April – Avril, May – Mai, June – Juin, July – Juillet, August- Août, September- Septembre, October – Octobre, November- Novembre and December is Décembre. These French words will help us if we ever go on holiday to France and also we can talk in French to our class mates and teachers. Here are some extra words. How are you – Comment allez-vous, What day is it – Quel jour est-il, What time is it – Quelle heure est-il and what is for dinner – Qu’est-ce qu’on mange. We also learned some other words such as can I go to the toilet. Written by Alicia,Iona and Caitlin

Digital Learning Week 2018, First Level, Primary 2, Technologies

Digital Learning Week in P2

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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.

Digital Learning Week 2018, Early Level, Primary 1, Technical Troopers, Technologies, Uncategorized

P1P get Digital! #NDLW18

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As part of National Digital Learning Week P1P have been using digital technologies to enhance their learning accross the curriculum.

We started the week with a fantastic session from P7. We were introduced and shown how to use VR Headsets! We were able to explore emersive virtual tours of castles which linked brilliantly with our Castle IDL context. P1P loved how the VR Headsets made them feel like they were really in different locations. We also used Purple Mash to digitally paint castle related images using different textures.

We have continued to share our learning on our class Sways that you can find on the blog and our twitter. In class, we independently scanned QR codes linked to our Sways to recap and discuss our previous learning experiences. We love looking at pictures from our previous lessons.

The Technical Troopers also visited our class to introduce us to a new app ‘Puppet Pals’. We loved animating the different characters and adding our own pictures and voices to our stories. Some of us were able to record our digital puppets and show it the rest of the class through mirroring on our Promethean Board.

This week we have also continued to develop our reading skills on Teach Your Monster to Read, practise our numeracy and maths on Sumdog and explore coding on Scratch JR.

Digital Learning Week 2018, Primary 5, Second Level, Technical Troopers, Technologies

iMovie Masterclass in P5

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On Thursday this week, some of Primary 5A and Primary 5C were lucky enough to receive a lesson in how to use the iMovie app as part of Digital Learning Week. Jamie, Dylan, James and Euan came to our class to show us how to record and edit movies. We then all had a chance to go off and make our own short films, which was a lot of fun; these were then shared with the rest of the class. The p5s who were lucky enough to take part in this lesson will now have a chance to teach the rest of their class -they say the best way to learn is to teach someone else, so watch this space! Thanks to Miss Sherlow and the fab Technical Troopers for their input, we thoroughly enjoyed it.

Anytime Anywhere Learning, Digital Learning Week 2018, Expressive Arts, Primary 5, Primary 7, Second Level, Technical Troopers

Capturing the Decisive Moment

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Second Level have been working on digital photography leading up to and during Digital Learning Week. Primary 5s led the way after their successful photography trip to the National Museums. The latest challenge involved the young photographers looking at the work of French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson who specialised in street photography in Paris and who was describes as trying to capture ‘the decisive moment’.

They went round the school trying to hunt down interesting subjects and then had the advantage of digitally manipulating their efforts – a luxury in the digital age of i-pads and apps that Cartier-Bresson did not have. They used Art Set, Snap seed and Photoshop express to change a few selected images. The children had to narrow down their winning shots to one and these were then printed off for a school exhibition. They were helped by the Technical troopers from P6 and P7 and Miss Sherlow was on-hand to offer advice on downloading and printing.

A lot of the school-life images focussed on portraits and here is what the pupils said, thought and felt. Some captured the moments of school life in black and white just like the master himself.