Category Archives: Interdisciplinary Learning

Book Week Scotland 2018, Community, English & Literacy, Expressive Arts, Nursery

Celebrating Book & Nursery Rhyme week

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Over the last fortnight we have celebrated World Book week and Nursery Rhyme week. We started with a visit from Rachel McGaw who read ‘The Kilted Coo’.  Then we were challenged to learn a different nursery rhyme every day, starting with 5 Currant Buns which we acted out. Next was  Humpty Dumpty, we had fun clapping each time we said Humpty and Dumpty. Our favourite was A Sailor went to Sea,  clapping 3 times every time we said sea or see. We finished the week with  I’m a Little Teapot and Round and Round the Garden. As a treat we invited our parents and carers in to hear our rhymes and watch the children receive their Book Bug Bags.   They enjoyed home baking and shortbread made by the children then participated in our nursery rhyme concert. It’s been a fabulous few weeks celebrating with our families.

Book Week Scotland 2018, English & Literacy, Primary 3, Technologies

Book Week Scotland in P3

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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!

 

Book Week Scotland 2018, English & Literacy, Uncategorized

Book Week in Primary 4!

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Primary 4 have enjoyed looking at the book The Lost Thing by Shaun Tan. The children took part in several activities to explore one of the main characters in the book ‘The Lost Thing’.

Visualisation challenge: The boys and girls had to listen to the book without seeing any pictures. As they listened, they were asked to pick out information that would help them to visualise The Lost Thing in their minds. Have a look at their creations!

True, False or Unsure challenge: Once we had found about the Lost Thing, the children were set a challenge to decide if a set of statements were True, False or Untrue. The boys and girls then shared their decisions and justified their choices. It was a really interesting discussion and the children had lots of different opinions about the Lost Thing. These were some of the statements we looked at:

  • There is only 1 lost thing in the entire world
  • The lost thing is lonely
  • The lost thing looks for lonely people
  • The lost thing wants to be alone
  • The lost thing is invisible
  • The lost thing is in Shaun’s imagination
  • Only children and animals can see the lost thing

‘Found’ poster challenge: Our last challenge was to create a Found poster so that if someone or something was looking for the Lost Thing we could help them find it! We thought about creating detailed character descriptions for our poster, have a look!

Interdisciplinary Learning, Primary 3, Technologies

P3 are fired up about dragons!

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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!

Events, Interdisciplinary Learning, Primary 3

P3’s Scottish Seabird Centre Trip

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Primary 3 visited the Scottish Seabird Centre to learn more about our IDL context, Save Our Seas, and we had a fantastic time. We learned about the different food chains found within the ocean and even became some of the sea creatures ourselves to explore who eats who. We also took part in a ‘What A Waste’ workshop where we investigated the properties of waste and the impact that it can have on the marine environment. Then we took part in a beach cleaning activity to help to clean up the coastal environment and protect the local wildlife.

After looking at pictures and learning about the different habitats sea creatures live in, we went on a Rockpool Ramble to learn more about the different species that can be found in the rockpools. We even had a chance to handle some of them, making sure we did this safely while being careful not to scare the animals.

This trip has inspired Primary 3 to fight to Save Our Seas even more than before, and we will continue to spread the word in Mid Calder Primary School and beyond.

Eco, Information for Parents, Interdisciplinary Learning, Primary 3

P3 are Saving Our Seas

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In Primary 3, we have been learning all about the incredible creatures that live in our oceans through our IDL, Save Our Seas. Unfortunately, we have also been learning that, sadly, these creature’s lives are under serious threat from pollution, especially plastic pollution. To spread the message and help the staff and children at Mid Calder Primary School to become #oceanheroes, we created an informative video to encourage everyone to play their part in stopping the oceans from drowning in plastic.

We then asked each class to make a Promise to Our Planet: a promise of something that they can do to help to Save Our Seas. These promises were then added to a sculpture of a sea turtle that Primary 3 had made using plastic bottles that we had collected from our lunch hall.

If we don’t stop plastic pollution, there could be more plastic in the sea than fish by 2050. Can you help to reduce plastic use in Mid Calder Primary? We would like every child to bring a reusable water bottle to school, avoiding bringing a new plastic bottle each day. We would also like you to be considerate of using recyclable products in packed lunch boxes. These are small and easy steps that we can take towards stopping single-use plastic in Mid Calder. Together, we can Save Our Seas.

 

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, Interdisciplinary Learning, Learning Stories, Nursery, Primary 1, Primary 2, Primary 3, Primary 5, Primary 7, Technical Troopers, Technologies

Digital Leaders for Digital Learning Week 2018

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To celebrate Education Scotland’s National Digital Learning Week, our Technical Troopers have been working extremely hard to make a #digitaldifference in Mid Calder Primary School. They have delivered lessons across all stages of our school, teaching our pupils how to use a range of digital tools to enhance their learning. P3 received a lesson on how to use the Glow tool Forms, while P4 learned how to the Glow tool, Sway. The Technical Troopers helped our Nursery children to develop their positional language by using the Bee-Bots, as well as supporting P1 with creating an animation using Puppet Pals 2. Primary 6 and 7/6 were given a range of coding sites on their Yammer page to explore, while P2 developed their programming skills using Scratch Jr. Primary 5 were shown how to use the different features of iMovie.

The Technical Troopers received lots of positive feedback from both the teachers and the pupils, and they did a fantastic job at sharing their own digital skills confidently to make a #digitaldifference. Check out the video that they scripted and edited to showcase what they got up to:

Digital Learning Week 2018, Nursery, Technical Troopers, Technologies

Digital Week in the Nursery

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This week we have been continuing to explore and develop our digital learning. Some children were using the iPads to scan QR codes to unveil which well being indicator character was hidden. Displaying confidence and  leading their own learning, they were able to demonstrate to their peers how to do this. We have enjoyed learning how to turn our Adventure Ted adventures in to a comic using comic life, displaying these in our foyer for everyone to read. Using our iPod we chose which song we would like to dance to, also enjoying a game of musical statues. We recorded our indoor and outdoor play with our GoPro then enjoyed a visit from The Technical Troopers who helped develop our directional language when teaching us how to program the Bee-Bots.