Category Archives: Learning Stories

Tales of disaster in Primary 5

Yesterday, Primary 5 had two very special visitors who came to share their experiences of natural disasters as part of our IDL context for learning. Ellie shared her experience of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that followed in Japan, telling us all about what she went through personally, what devastating effects both disasters had, and how the people affected worked together to rebuild their lives and their cities. She also told us about a memorial in Ishinomaki which has the words, ‘Ganbarou! Ishinomaki.’ We learned that this was a message of hope at a time when the people of Japan didn’t have any.

Mrs Findlay also shared her story of an earthquake she encountered in Rhodes while on holiday with her family. She told us how people had to react quickly despite being completely unprepared, as well giving us some advice about what to do to try and stay safe in an earthquake. She also shared how each of her family members reacted to the shock of the event. Both visitors shared very different experiences, but both were caused by the same extremely dangerous and highly unpredictable natural disaster.

A big thank you to both of our visitors for sharing their experiences. It was invaluble for us to hear first hand about how terrifying these disasters can be, and how much damage they can cause.

Days of the Week

For the last 2 weeks the children in nursery have been learning the days of the week. We have been singing songs to practice the cycle of the days and it has helped us learn the day before and day after. We read ‘The Hungry Caterpillar’ and discussed what he ate every day. At the Art and Craft table some of the boys and girls painted a caterpillar and placed a day of the week card on each part of his body. We then put the days in order and attached the food that he ate on the correct days. As a team, we also completed a jigsaw and looked at the different things the children did on different days. The boys and girls can now complete this independently or with a friend.

At home the children could sing you the days of the week songs and try to talk about what day it is today, tomorrow, yesterday.

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Bring Your Own Device Update

This week, the Technical Troopers met to discuss the use of Bring Your Own Device in MCPS to find out what is going well and what can still be improved. As we are still in the trial phrase of Bring Your Own Device, we have decided to allow children in P5-7 who have a signed BYOD contract to use their own device during Free Time Friday. The Technical Troopers brainstormed the benefits and possible problems that could occur with this, and also discussed the possible consequence of the contract being broken during Free Time Friday.

We decided that all of the details outlined in our Responsible Use contract will still stand. This will be reviewed regularly to ensure that our pupils, staff and devices remain safe. You can see a copy of our Responsible Use contract here. If you would like your child to engage with Bring Your Own Device, copies of the contract can be obtained from the class teachers in P5-7.

In addition to this, and following on from our taster session from Google at the end of last term, we have recently purchased a set of 10 Virtual Reality headsets. These can be used with most smart phones using the ‘Expeditions’ app. Google Expeditions takes children on virtual trips all over the world, allowing them get up close with historical landmarks, dive underwater with sharks and even visit outer space! This is an exciting new use of Bring Your Own Device that we are looking forward to exploring.

Mid Calder celebrates Robert Burns in style!

On Friday 20th January, pupils from across each class demonstrated their Scots skills by participating in our annual Robert Burns assembly.

Two pupils from each class recited their poem in front of the audience, led by our House Captains.  We learned a little information about Rabbie Burns himself and we were treated to a real celebration of Scots culture, when girls from P6 and P7 performed some Highland dancing.

Niamh Sher, Cailin McKenna and Zach Paris will now go forward to represent Mid Calder Primary at the West Lothian Burns Recital competition later on this term.

ALL boys and girls who took part were a real credit to themselves – their use of Scots language was outstanding and dedication to learning their poems off by heart was fantastic.

Thankyou to our judging panel, Mr MacFarlane, Mrs Bokhari and Mrs Mackenzie had a tough job choosing a representative from Primary Five to Seven.

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Primary Seven get buddying!

Primary Seven pupils enjoyed their first buddying session with P1 pupils on Wednesday afternoon.

The focus for the afternoon session was developing Literacy skills – pupils from P2/1 were up leveling their sentence work in their fabulous stories about an ice castle.  P1 spent some time completing paired reading with their buddies to practice reading skills.

This was a fun session and Primary Seven are looking forward to their next visit in two weeks.

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Building Snow Castles in P2/1

Einartas had a great idea to go outside and build snow castles as part of our Castles interdisciplinary learning. Some of decided to work on our own, in pairs, in small groups and in larger groups. We had to use items that we found to create a castle. Some us added a flag created a moat and made turrets as we had been learning about the features of a castle in class. As a group we explained to the rest of the class the features of our castle and how we made it.

 We are learning to write a description of our ice castle.

  • I can describe what the castle looked like using wow words.
  • I can use sentences to describe the castle.
  • I can use capital letters and full stops.

When we went back in our class we talked to our learning partner about what our castle looked like. Then we wrote a description of our castle. We realised that we were so excited we forgot to add in wow words so during our buddy time, our buddy’s helped us to uplevel our writing  by using wow words.

 

P5a Maths

P5a Maths

Learning Intention:

We are learning to display information in frequency tables and bar charts and understand the impact of scale on these

Success Criteria:

  • I can ask and answer questions about information displayed in frequency tables and bar graphs
  • I understand the impact of scale on pictograms and bar graphs and can use this to make sensible choices about what scale to use
  • I can create my own pictogram or bar graph choosing an appropriate scale, labels for axes and title
  • I can ask and answer questions about bar line graphs

As part of our IDL topic on Natural Disasters, we have been learning about different ways of displaying data and how to interpret information shown on charts and graphs.

We looked at a selection of graphs and answered questions about the data displayed on them. We then surveyed our class and created our own graphs. When we could confidently do this, we looked at data about volcanic eruptions around the world and created bar graphs to show the number of deaths caused by these.  As we were working with large numbers we had to adjust the scale of our graphs accordingly to ensure they were accurate and that they would fit on the page! Next we will be learning how to create pie charts and line graphs.

Learning Letter P5

Dear Parent/Carer,
Welcome to Term 3 in Primary 5. We are looking forward to a busy and fun term. The highlights of last term
included our George’s Marvellous Medicine topic and our trip to the cinema. We were also excited to start
this term off with our Dragons’ Den pitches to a guest panel of exclusive Dragons. We have now begun our
new IDL context for learning, Natural Disasters, and all of the children in P5 will be involved in the West
Calder High School cluster handball festival on 15th February.
Miss Sherlow and Mrs Campbell

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Learning Letter P6/7

Dear Parent/Carer,
Welcome to Term 3 in Primary 7/6. Last term we held an amazing show, ‘Alice in Wonderland’. All of the children were very
excited about this and our final show was amazing. Thank you for all of your help towards making this special for the children. We can’t wait to go and see ‘Alice the Musical’ performed at the Playhouse shortly. This term the children are looking forward to learning about democracy and how society works, this will accumulate in class elections and each class will have a class president. P7 have started some transition work with Dr Cherry from W.C.H.S where they have been learning some technical drawing skills and will shortly visiting the High School to make a spatula.
Dates for up and coming events:
Wednesday 25th January – ‘Alice the Musical’
Monday 21st February – Visit to Scottish Parliament
Monday 6th March P7 – The Risk Factory

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Learning Letters P7

Dear Parent/Carer,
Welcome to Term 3 in Primary Seven. We are looking forward to a very busy term, focusing and concentrating on lots of hard work and effort into our Maths, Reading and Writing. We will be using our context for learning in our IDL to engage with current social and political news, studying and investigating Scotland in the year 2017. This will culminate in an exciting trip to Edinburgh to visit the Scottish Parliament, to learn about democracy.
Mrs Ross

Dates for up and coming events:
Alice In Wonderland theatre trip: 25th January
Risk Factory trip: 6th March
Scottish Parliament trip: 21st February

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