Category Archives: Primary 7

Term 3 Celebration Assembly

Today we welcomed parents and friends along to our Celebration Assembly so that pupils could receive their STEM Super Star and Successful Speller awards.

Certificates and prizes were also given to the children who won our Bookworm, STEM and Fairtrade Junior Leadership Team’s challenges and competitions, and to the 5 pupils who represented our school at the West Lothian Burns Contest. We also announced the Top Scorers for each house, along with our house winner.

A big thank you to Hannah Rarity for inspiring us by sharing her interpretation of our school motto, Believe, Achieve, Succeed, and for sharing her journey of hard work and determination to become the successful singer she is today. Thank you also to Leah, P6, who impressed us with her own musical talents and played ‘Clowns’ for us on the piano.

Well done to all of our award winners!

Fairtrade Fortnight 2018 at Mid Calder Primary School

Over the last two weeks we have been celebrating Fairtrade Fortnight by taking part in various activities, competitions and experiences. The children have embraced learning about Fairtrade and enjoyed sharing their learning.

Each class was assigned a Fairtrade product to find out about. Have a look at what each class got up to!

Nursery

We have included a picture of our floorbook, comic life and pictures of the children exploring the fairtrade items Mrs Murphy had brought in from the Fair Tradewind shop in Linlithgow. After seeing the worry dolls the children asked if they could make their own worry dolls.

Primary 1: Bananas

P1 learned about Pablo the Banana. He taught the P1’s about what Fairtrade means and also about the journey of the banana. We then designed our board games for the competition.

Primary 2 and 3: Coffee

P2 learned about coffee and other Fairtrade products. They were able to colour and label Fairtrade products from around the world and then draw a Fairtrade product that they have seen or tried.

Primary 3 learned about what Fairtrade is and why it important before researching their Fairtrade product, coffee. We used the netbooks to find out interesting facts and shared them with a partner. As we have been learning about fact and opinions in our reading lessons, we then using the Glow tool Forms to create a fact and opinion quiz about Fairtrade.

Primary 4 and 5: Brazil Nuts

P4 and P5 learned about the Brazil Nut. We found out about the story of the Brazil nuts by:

  • Finding out where and how Brazil nuts are grown and gathered
  • Looking at the rainforest and the factors needed to grow Brazil nuts
  • Talking about Fairtrade and how it can help Brazil nut gatherers to get a better deal

Primary 6: Tea

P6 had a great time  looking at a tea planting community in Malawi as part of Fairtrade Fortnight. We learned about how Fairtrade pays their workers fairly and also provides money to benefit the whole community. Pupils worked in groups to decide how money should be spent within a community (e.g. Food, water, healthcare, education etc). They had to decide which needs were most important- a difficult decision!

Primary 6/7: Footballs

Primary 6/7 took part in their own competition to ‘Design a Fairtrade football’. The Fairtrade Junior Leadership Team had a look at the fantastic designs and picked 1st, 2nd and 3rd place! Have a look at some of the designs:

 

There was lots of other fun things happening around the school too!

Nurture group: Baking with Fairtrade products

The nurture group worked with Mrs Kellner to make a Fairtrade banana loaf. They had lots of fun following the recipe, measuring the ingredients and mixing everything together! A delicious smell filled the corridors of the school and it tasted delicious!

 

Fairtrade breakfast: Bananas and Chocolate!

This week during breakfast club the children had the opportunity to taste Fairtrade bananas and chocolate. The boys and girls enjoyed dipping their bananas in the rich dark chocolate and it was smiles all round!

 

Fairtrade competition

The Fairtrade Junior Leadership Team launched a competition to design a Fairtrade board game. Lots of children across the school entered the competition and the JLT had a difficult decision trying to pick a P1-3 and P4-7 winner. They played some of the games to help make their decision. Winners will be announced next week! Have a look at some of the fantastic competition entries!

Visit from Lush Livingston

Lush in Livingston kindly offered to hold an assembly for the school to talk about their fresh handmade cosmetic products and give pupils the opportunity to purchase some of their fantastic range! However, due to the untimely Spring snow the visit has been re-scheduled. We will update you with this visit soon!

Tidy Toilets!!

Our House Captains and Vice Captains were keen to improve the school toilets for everyone and they’ve been working with other members of the school community to improve things and ensure they are a nicer place to be!  After discussions at House Meetings, they decided on rotas and rewards and put this in place a couple of weeks ago.  After counting up the scores today, they announced that the Upper Girls Toilets and the Infant Boys Toilets had the highest points.  They will have ‘fancy’ toilet paper and hand wash in their toilets next week.  A very big well done to everyone for trying hard and leaving the toilets as they would like to find them! 

Snow Day suggestions P7

Primary 7

Below you will find a list of suggested activities should there be an unplanned school closure.

Literacy

Revise your spelling words using any of the strategies we have discussed.

Work on set reading where possible. Alternatively write a review of a book of your choice. Design a front cover for the book. Map the journey of the main character.

Write an imaginative story entitled ‘Crack in the ice!’ – remember to use VCOP.

Write a winter poem using imagery, similes and metaphors.

Numeracy

Practise times tables.  Time yourself! See how quickly you can write out a times table then try and beat your record.

Continue to develop your skills in measuring and weighing by following a recipe. Take pictures to share your work with the class on return to school.

Weigh and measure items from around the home and create a table to record your results.

Carry out a survey of your choice for example favourite sandwich filling and display your results in a bar chart or pie chart.

 

Other areas

Research weather conditions and how icicles and snowflakes are formed.

Record daily temperatures in a table then display results in a graph.

Choose a Scandinavian country, research and create a fact file. Compare their weather to ours here in Scotland. For example how do they cope in wintry weather? Does their daily life change in the winter?

Design and make a winter decoration. Write down instructions detailing how your decoration is made – photographs or labelled diagrams would be useful.

Make a ‘Wintry Scene’ collage.

School Closure

Good morning everyone,

I know you will have had a group call to say the school is closed tomorrow and that we will miss both the ‘P7 Assembly’ and the ‘Bingo Night’.

We will reschedule the P7 assembly for later in the session, I know they have put a lot of work into their presentations and it would be a shame if they did not get to showcase them. I am sure the PSA will be in touch to let everyone know the new arrangements for the bingo night.

The conditions are not ideal but it is lovely to look out and for children to venture out and have fun. I was out yesterday for a short while to clear garden paths and it was bitter cold, this morning you would not know where these paths are!

Boys and girls if you are outside keep wrapped up cosy and keep yourself safe. I look forward to seeing you all back with lots of stories on Monday.   Mrs McKenzie

Snow Snow Snow

Good morning everyone,

Here we are all stuck at home and wondering what we can do!

I do not imagine that is the situation at all and you are already very busy. However, boys and girls you could catch up on your spelling homework, read an extra few pages of your reading book or use your Sum-dog log in to complete some maths challenges OR you could get outside build an amazing snow structure, take a picture and e-mail the school with them. I am sure your teacher would love to see what you did on your day off. Take care and keep safe when you are outside, hope to see you tomorrow.                                                     Mrs McKenzie

 

Ooh La La! French Culture Hits Mid Calder.

Come along to our Curriculum Evening on Tuesday to find out how we learn about France, French culture and French vocabulary. The upper school will be there to present their learning with videos, Powerpoints and posters.

Miss Brolls will try to offer ways to support Modern Languages evening using cartoons

OR with a structured lesson as below

French First Level Classroom Talk Updated

P7 News

It’s been a busy couple of weeks in Primary 7! Last week we held our annual Scottish Poetry competition. Well done to Bethan, Cailin and Olivia who were the winners from our class!

We have also been thinking about kindness in P7, linked to our Wonder topic. We created our own portraits in the style of the Wonder illustrations and surrounded them by rays of kindness.

We are continuing our work on our new IDL topic, Japan. We have been comparing Japan and Scotland, looking at similarities and differences and learning more about Japan as a country. Next we will be learning about natural disasters common to Japan. With Ms Brolls we created our own Cherry Blossom pictures.

Internet Safety in P6, P7/6 and P7

This morning, P6, P7 and P7/6 had the opportunity to take part in a live GLOW meet with Police Scotland all about internet safety. This was part of Safer Internet Day 2018. This topic is a core part of the Technologies curriculum:

I can explore online communities demonstrating an understanding of responsible digital behaviour and I’m aware of how to keep myself safe and secure. (TCH 2-03a)

Pupils joined with thousands of others across Scotland to listen to police officers talk about a range of online safety strategies and then opportunity was given for questions to be answered afterwards.

Hopefully all of us have learned a little bit more about staying safe online and about how our own conduct online can affect others.