Category Archives: Interdisciplinary Learning

English & Literacy, Expressive Arts, Interdisciplinary Learning, Maths & Numeracy, Primary 2, Sciences, Uncategorized

P2 Mid Calder Museum

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At the end of our IDL topic about Dinosaurs, Primary 2 invited P1 and P7 to their Museum.

First, we made posters to inform the classes that the museum was about to open, and we put them up all around the school.

         

Then, we discussed the things we particularly enjoyed about our own visit to the National Museum of Scotland, and we talked about the kind of things we thought would have made our visit even better.                                                         For instance, we really enjoyed handling the dinosaur bones and looking at the huge skeleton models, but we thought that a short film about dinosaurs would have been really interesting too.

Thinking about these points, each Dino Discovery Team planned their own display. They had lots of  amazing ideas! Soon, we had displays that included

  • digging for fossils in the sand
  • sorting dinosaur models into herbivores and carnivores
  • working as a team to build an enormous jigsaw and name the dinosaurs
  • using netbooks to create dinosaur pictures
  • a quiz
  • a short film clip about a stegosaurus

Primary 2 wanted their visitors to have lots of opportunities to pick things up and handle them, to play and to be creative as they learned about dinosaurs. They also created Fact Files about different dinosaurs, and carefully chose non-fiction books to display as well.

Interdisciplinary Learning, Primary 3

Dinosaur Invasion in Primary 3

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We have been learning to write a story about a dinosaur invasion at Mid Calder Primary School

Success Criteria: I use features specific to an imaginary story including:
– an interesting opening sentence to ‘hook’ my reader in
– a description of the dinosaur
– a description of what happened
– my thoughts and feelings
– an interesting setting for my story
I can use adjectives to paint a clear picture in my reader’s head

This week, Primary 3 arrived into our classroom to find that it has been destroyed. We checked the CCTV footage and found out that we’d had a visitor, a very large visitor…

We used drama techniques to explore what we thought the tyrannosaurus rex might have done next during its invasion of our school. We improvised how we thought the rest of our pupils would react to seeing a dinosaur, then we created a still image using our body language and facial expressions to portray our thoughts and feelings.

We used these ideas to help us to write a story about the dinosaur invasion, describing what the tyrannosaurus rex got up to in Mid Calder Primary and how we reacted. We included lots of adjectives to help us to paint a clear picture in our reader’s mind. Some of us definitely enjoyed describing the teachers getting eaten a little bit too much…

Events, Interdisciplinary Learning, Learning Stories, Primary 2, Primary 3

Mr T.Rex Visits Mid Calder

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Today Primary 3, Primary 4 and Primary 2 had a very special visitor, Mr T. Rex. At the beginning of their Dinosaurs IDL context, Mr Rex wrote each class a letter asking for their help, as he believed that the people were forgetting about the dinosaurs. He challenged P2, P3 and P4 to set up a Mid Calder Museum to teach other pupils and keep the memory of dinosaurs alive, and we enthusiastically accepted this request.

This week, we held our museums and shared our new knowledge and skills with Primary 1 and Primary 7. We loved showcasing our learning and we felt that we definitely helped Mr T. Rex. We were extremely excited to meet the man himself and asked him lots of relevant questions about his job and his experience of finding fossils. He was able to teach us lots of new and interesting facts about palaeontology and different dinosaurs.

A colossal thank you to Mr T. Rex for coming to visit. What an end to a very exciting week, and a fantastic IDL context. We have loved journeying back to the land before time to stop the memory of dinosaurs from becoming extinct.

Achievements, Anytime Anywhere Learning, Events, Nursery, Nursery Learning Stories, Primary 1, Primary 2, Primary 3, Primary 5, Primary 7, Technologies

Surprise visit to mark Digital School Award

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Pupils at Mid Calder Primary and Nursery School had a surprise visit from Donna McMaster, West Lothian Council’s Head of Service for Education Curriculum, Quality Improvement and Performance, recently.

Mrs McMaster dropped in to congratulate the school on gaining national ‘Digital School’ status for excellence in digital technology in teaching and learning.

The Digital Schools Award recognises the dedication and innovation shown by Mid Calder Primary in areas of leadership and vision, digital technology for learning and teaching, school culture, professional development and resources and infrastructure.

Donna McMaster commented: “I was delighted to have been invited to Mid Calder Primary School to congratulate pupils and staff personally on their achievement.

“Mid Calder is the second primary school to achieve the Digital Schools award in West Lothian, earlier this year Kirknewton Primary School was also recognised as a digital school.

“Bathgate Early Years Centre was the first facility to pick up the prestigious award in West Lothian, and it is believed to be the first early years centre in Scotland to achieve the accolade.

“It is fantastic to see the work which has been achieved to embed technology into the school ethos and how technology is being embraced by the pupils, staff, parents and carers.”

Depute Head Teacher, Sarah Burton, Mid Calder Primary, West Lothian said: “The Digital Schools programme offered our school a supportive structure to evaluate our digital learning journey and where we needed to go.”

“It has also enabled our Technical Troopers pupil group, to take on a valuable leadership opportunity within our school. We are very proud of how digital learning is embedded in our school from nursery to primary 7, and this award was a chance to celebrate this work and share with others.”

Events, Fundraising, House Meetings, Maths & Numeracy, National Maths Week 2017, Primary 1, Primary 2, Primary 3, Primary 5, Primary 7, PSA

Coin Trail Winners

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On Friday, the PSA and House and Vice Captains organised a coin trail for money week and to raise money for school funds.

Longest line winners:

  1. Linhouse – 100 points & extra break
  2. Almondell – 75 points
  3. Cunnigar – 50 points
  4. Calderwood – 25 points

Total raised:

  1. Cunnigar – £181.10 – 100 points
  2. Linhouse – £152.84
  3. Almondell – £103.77
  4. Calderwood – £54.98

Total: £492.69

A big thank you to the PSA for counting the coins!

 

 

Maths & Numeracy, National Maths Week 2017, Primary 7, Uncategorized

Crazy Coordinates in P7

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We are learning to explore the use of coordinates to plot points and describe positions and movements on a grid.

Success Criteria:

  • I can use coordinates to describe and locate a point on a grid.
  • I can plot coordinates on a grid and connect them to complete a 2D shape.
  • I can make journeys on a grid, following instructions about the coordinates to visit.
  • I can give the coordinates of points on a grid.

Primary 7 have been learning to work with coordinates. We have been working on drawing grids accurately then plotting points for our partner to identify. We have also been identifying the coordinates of shapes and creating our own shapes. We will continue with our coordinate challenges this week.

National Maths Week 2017, Nursery, Nursery Learning Stories

Numbers in the Nursery!

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We have had a busy week in our new nursery embedding numeracy in to our play activities. During snack the children have been paying attention to how many food items they have to take and during the preparation they have been discussing cutting things in half! Here are the grapes being cut in half.

“It makes one grape in to two grapes!”

 

We have been using our new Promethean board to play interactive games. We have been counting objects up to 10, but some of us can count much higher than that!!

              

 

On Thursday we went on a number hunt in the nursery. The numbers were hiding behind QR codes and we had to use the ipads to read the code and find the number. Once Mrs Murray had taught some of the children how to do it, they were able to teach their friends!!

Outside in the garden the children were ordering our number mats as they jumped. We have to check that we have 8 trikes parked at the end of the day and the children have been counting how many potatoes they had harvested and how many peas were in a pod! What a busy week!