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.
Today, Primary 6 and 7 had a great opportunity to hear from some experts working in STEM careers. Michael from Jacobs engineering and Daniel and Rob from GE Power spoke to the pupils all about their jobs and backgrounds in STEM. Also, pupils took part in two activities to put into practice some of the concepts they had been learning about. Daniel and Rob demonstrated how to create circuits using a battery pack, led lights and play doh! Michael led a session in creating bridges using everyday materials such as paper, blu tack and sellotape.
Many thanks to our visitors and well done to P6 and P7 for enthusiastically taking part in the workshops.
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:
On the 18th of May P6 started to do digital manipulation which means when you take a picture of still life and then turn it to black and white. We took some pictures of outside and then we took some of people. We used an app called Snapseed to change the fond of the picture.
Here’s some examples of some photos we took.
Yesterday, over 40 pupils from P5, P6 and P7 took part in the West Lothian Triathlon at Deans CHS. Pupils had to swim, cycle and run through a course laid out by a team of brilliant volunteers, high school students and members of Active Schools and Triathlon Scotland. In all, hundreds of pupils took part throughout the day. By all accounts, it was a fantastic time. The pupils really enjoyed the opportunity to take part in something totally different to what they had previously experienced. Staff and parent helpers were so impressed with the level of determination and enthusiasm shown by the pupils and also the confidence to have a go at something new. Well done to everyone involved. Bring on next year’s event!
As part of digital learning week, we had a choice from a range of new digital skills to learn. As a class we opted to improve our coding skills. Our technical troopers Zack and Ben gave us a demonstration and explained to us about different things we could do, when programming games. We had great fun coding new games and pictures.
‘We had fun teaching people things about scratch that they did not already know. We taught them how to properly code things. Feel free to share what you learnt at class at home’. – Zack and Ben
Second Level have been working on digital photography leading up to and during Digital Learning Week. Primary 5s led the way after their successful photography trip to the National Museums. The latest challenge involved the young photographers looking at the work of French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson who specialised in street photography in Paris and who was describes as trying to capture ‘the decisive moment’.
They went round the school trying to hunt down interesting subjects and then had the advantage of digitally manipulating their efforts – a luxury in the digital age of i-pads and apps that Cartier-Bresson did not have. They used Art Set, Snap seed and Photoshop express to change a few selected images. The children had to narrow down their winning shots to one and these were then printed off for a school exhibition. They were helped by the Technical troopers from P6 and P7 and Miss Sherlow was on-hand to offer advice on downloading and printing.
A lot of the school-life images focussed on portraits and here is what the pupils said, thought and felt. Some captured the moments of school life in black and white just like the master himself.
Primary 6 and 7 had a real treat this morning when they were visited by four parents working within STEM careers. The pupils had the chance to take part in two workshops, learning about different jobs through a variety of presentations and activities. It was great to see the pupils learning about the world of work and engaging with issues they had little previous experience of. I’m sure many were inspired to keep learning about STEM subjects and build on the skills they have already developed. As discussed with one of our visiting parents, pupils are preparing for jobs that perhaps do not even exist yet! The world of work is constantly changing and developing. Thank you to all those involved in making the event happen and well done P6 and P7 for listening well and engaging with the workshops.
Some important dates for P7…..more information will follow as soon as we have it.
Tuesday 5th June, Wednesday 6th June, Thursday 7th June – Transition days
Thursday 17th May – Health Day. Pupils should arrive for 9.30am, dressed and ready in PE kit and suitable footwear. Outside jackets may be required as some activities will be outside. (It is preferable that they arrive dressed in PE kit, although there will be changing rooms available).
Pupils must all take a packed lunch as they will not be able to purchase food from the school dinner hall that day.
The event will end at 2.30pm.
Pupils should make their own way to and from JYHS.
Tuesday 12th June and Wednesday 13th June – Transition days
Thank you for your continued support.
Primary 7s enjoyed their first session today with Michelle from the West Lothian Drug and Alcohol Service.
Together, we created Ciggy Simon to record the impact tobacco can have on a person.
Michelle recommended websites for us to look at:
www.bbc.co.uk What’s in a cigarette?
Our Homework is to give something up for a week and replace it with a healthy alternative. We will record our progress daily and discuss this next time.
We discussed the chemicals in cigarettes – we learned that tar is in cigarettes and it is also found on road surfaces. It kills cilia, the small hairs that protect the lungs. It causes breathing problems and stains fingers and teeth. We also learned that it’s in a cigarette because tar is created when you burn two or more chemicals together.
Michelle will be with us again next week and we have more questions for her. We look forward to seeing her.
