On Saturday evening some of P1-3 pupils sang a selection of their Nativity and Christmas Concert songs at Mid Calder Kirk. They also joined in for the Gala Torch Light Procession. Thank you to everyone who attended.
Category Archives: Learning Stories
Author Visit
As part of our focus on reading this session, today P1, P5 and P7 had an inspirational talk from the author, Emma Mooney. She shared where some of her ideas for writing come from, really making us think about how a simple idea can be transformed into the beginning of a whole novel. We learned about the importance of an interesting and engaging first line of a story, and were challenge to try and recognise different novels from the first sentence of the book.
When asked what advice she would given aspiring authors, Emma shared that it is extremely important to have people around you who believe in you, and to stick to the ‘not yet’ plan by not giving up, even when things get tough. We thought that this was great advice for everyone, not just those who want to become authors.
Thank you to Emma for such an encouraging and motivating talk.
Advertising Expert
Today the Primary 4s and 5s had a very special visit from Martha Tod, an advertising expert, who gave us a fantastic insight into the world of adverts. As part of our IDL context, George’s Marvellous Medicine, we have been given the challenge to try and sell the idea of George’s medicine to the Dragons’ Den. As part of this challenge, we have been asked to create a company name and logo, an advertising poster and new packaging for the product.
Martha explained to us about the importance of advertising, as well as what kind of jobs someone who works in advertising would be asked to do. We looked at what makes a good logo and were challenged to search for hidden meanings and objects in some well known logos. We also learned about the importance of colour in advertisements and logos, exploring how different colours make us feel and what they represent. For example, did you know that black gives a sense of power and mystery, while purple suggests royalty, luxury and wisdom?
Thank you to Martha for giving us such great hints and tips to help us with our challenge. We have a lot to think about now!
PSA Christmas Fair 2016
A big thank you to everyone who showed up on Friday evening to support our school by attending our annual Christmas Fair. The PSA did a fantastic job of organising the event, and bringing the whole school community together for the festive season. It was lovely to see new members of the PSA, previous and current parents/carers, pupils past and present, members of the community and staff join together.
The fair raised the amazing total of £2,007.92! This will be added onto our Playground Fund, which brings it to the grand total of £8004.07. A big thank you to everyone who supported this event.
Advent Assembly
Today Rev. Povey joined us to celebrate the start of advent.
Christmas Jumper Day for Jak’s Den
Today we wore our Christmas jumpers and brought in a donation for Jak’s Den. The Nursery to P7 raised £198.19 for Jak’s Den. Well done everyone!
Alice: The Musical
Tonight and yesterday afternoon Primary 6 and 7 showcased their creative talents through Alice: The Musical! This term, the pupils through their interdisciplinary learning context of Alice invested setting and characters, looked at imagery, wrote their own scripts, compared and contrasts different versions of Alice and watched Alice Through the Looking Glass as part of the Into Film Festival.
They brought together all their musical, dramatic and artistic skills to put together a performance of Alice. A big well done to all our Primary 6 and 7 pupils who all contributed to the show in different ways, and a big thank you to our upper school staff. Thanks to the PSA who provided refreshments at the concert and to Williamston Primary for lending us their costumes. Thanks to everyone who made it along to the performance to support the children.
West Lothian Facebook link: https://www.facebook.com/westlothiancouncil/videos/10154200142190838/
Mr Anderson very kindly recorded our performance which is available on the West Lothian video channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqCLCya5doA
Mid Calder Reading Challenge
To celebrate Book Week Scotland, MCPS were set a reading challenge- to take a photo of ourselves reading for pleasure in an unusual place. We were inundated with weird and wonderful pictures of some very unusual places, and it looks like everyone had lots of fun taking part in the challenge. A big well done to all those who tweeted us their photos, or brought them into school on paper or on their own device.
Even some of the staff got involved…
Book Week
LI We are learning to recognise rhyming words
SC I can listen carefully and identify pairs of words that rhyme
Last week, as part of Book Week Scotland, Primary 1 received their Bookbug Bag from the Scottish Book Trust. On Thursday afternoon we watched the author Nick Sharratt reading his book called Shark in the Park on a Windy Day. The grown ups who came to join us for the afternoon seemed to enjoy the story too! The story was about a little boy called Timothy Pope who looked through his telescope and thought he saw a shark in the park. But was it? We enjoyed listening to the story and joining in with the repetition. We also noticed that there were lots of rhyming words in the story. We were keen to make our own telescopes, but since we couldn’t take them to the park, we decided to use them in the classroom instead. Our task was to look through the telescope and find the rhyming words hidden around the room. Everyone worked really hard and soon all the words had been found. Very well done Primary 1, and Thank You to all the grown ups who came along to join us on our word hunt!
Primary 7 Book Week
In Primary Seven, we have celebrated Book Week by focusing our work on comparing and contrasting the modern and older adaptations of Alice in Wonderland, with the original Lewis Carroll novel.
We have found some challenges when reading the novel – the language used when the book was originally written in 1865, has been difficult to follow at times whilst reading. We have also found that Lewis Carroll is a less descriptive author, compared to some modern day authors, therefore we have found visualising Wonderland quite challenging. We have had to refer back to the 1951 Disney version to help us to think about setting.
We are currently working on developing our knowledge of what a synopsis is and how to write one, within the context of a film review. We’re looking forward to being able to give our “Star Ratings” to each of the versions we have studied.
