“Tis the season to be jolly…” and Primary 3 and 4 were certainly feeling jolly today when they celebrated at their Christmas party.
We also showed off our dance moves, played lots of games, ate some delicious food and sang along loudly to our favourite songs. Everyone had a fantastic afternoon 🙂 Merry Christmas Primary 3 and 4!
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!
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!
We are learning to visualise the characters in a text
– I can use my imagination to form pictures in my mind
– I can select the key words the author uses to help me to create pictures and can explain my thinking
– I can use my senses to help me to visualise
This week, Primary 3 started their new IDL context about the book, The Boy Who Grew Dragons, and we were introduced to the reading skill of visualisation. We learnt that visualising is when you use the words an author writes to help you to make pictures or a movie in your mind, allowing you to understand what is happening in the text.
We then heard two descriptions of well-known book characters and, without seeing an illustration, we had to draw a picture of what we thought the character looked like using the key words from the text. We compared our drawings to the real illustration and discussed what words or phrases would have helped us to be more accurate. Using our new skill, we then drew pictures of the baby dragon in our IDL book.
Supporting at home:
When reading a range of different books at home, ask your child to visualise the characters and key events being described. Encourage them to describe the pictures they are forming in their minds, and ask them to tell you, point to or read the words that the author used to help them to create these pictures.
Yesterday, the Technical Troopers organised a Digital Dress Down Day to raise funds to further support digital learning in Mid Calder Primary School. Our pupils were challenged to dress up as a character from an online or digital game, an emoji or a piece of technology.
Thank you to everyone who took part and donated. We raised a fantastic £175.05 and we can’t wait to share what we spend it on with everyone.
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.
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.
Despite a slight Scottish drizzle yesterday morning, P1-3 took to the field and gave it their all in a fantastic Sports Day. There were a range of activities on offer including football shoot out, welly throwing, obstacle races, hurdles, sack races and lots more. A big thank you to Mark, our Enjoyaball specialist, for organising such a successful and enjoyable Sports Day and thank you to all the parents and families who came along to support the event. Thank you to the PSA for providing ice poles as a refreshment, which we enjoyed despite the wet weather.
A big congratulations to Cunigar who were the overall winners!
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:
To celebrate National Digital Learning Week, Primary 3 have used a range of digital technologies to enhance their learning across the curriculum.
In maths, we have been taking part in the UK National Sumdog Contest to develop our mental maths skills, as well as using Purple Mash and Table Mountain to help us to learn our times tables. In literacy, we have been looking at the genre of Science Fiction, and we used Puppet Pals 2 to bring some our stories to life. We also completed a ‘Space Race’ quiz using QR codes. We had to follow clues to locate QR codes hidden around the school, then use our skimming and scanning skills to to answer space questions using the links.
As part of our IDL context, NASA Juniors: Mission X, Primary 7 led a Virtual Reality session using their own devices. They rocketed us up into space, allowing us to explore the International Space Station, take a closer look behind the scenes of the Moon Landing, and explore a space museum. One of the Primary 7 Technical Troopers then helped us to use the Glow tool, Forms, to create our own space themed quiz. We posted these onto our Yammer page and completed each other’s quizzes.
We love using digital tools to enhance our learning in lots of different ways and Primary 3 feel like they have become ‘Digital Divas’ this year 🙂
Evie: “When I was young, I never used to use technology but then I discovered how good it was when I got my own iPad. Now I like using Yammer on the iPad and computer because I like commenting about what the teachers and people have posted.”
Rose: “I like using digital technologies because it is fun and it helps your learning.”
Sam: “I like playing games on the iPads and using paint on the netbooks. It makes learning fun.”
