Category Archives: Primary 7

STEM Open Morning

This  morning, MCPS opened its doors to parents, carers and friends in order for pupils to exhibit their learning through our STEM (Sciences, Technologies, Engineering ad Mathematics) contexts for learning. This included:

P1: The Garden

P2-3: The Great Deserted Island

P4-5: Project Planetarium

P6-7: CSI

Our guests spent time in their children’s classes taking part in a wide range of activities including; designing space crafts of the future, information sessions, demonstrations, Science investigations and lots more.

We also used this time to ask parents for their input into our Curriculum Rationale, the the results of which will be shared soon.

Thank you to everyone who came along to support the event.

BYOD Glow Meet

To celebrate Digital Learning Week, today some of our Technical Troopers took part in a Glow Meet with Williamston Primary School to share our progress with Bring Your Own Device so far. Both schools shared how they have been using BYOD to enhance teaching and learning, and it certainly inspired our thinking and gave us some great ideas about what we could do next. Some of the pupils in Williamston have been using online tools to create their own profile pictures for their Yammer accounts, which has inspired P5 in Mid Calder to do the same.

Thank you to the pupils who gave up some of their lunch time to share some of the great examples of learning through digital technologies happening in both schools.

P7 at Glasgow Science Centre

‘bmfy f ifd’!!! Only P7’s will be able to read this coded message that we learned about today at Glasgow Science Centre!

What a fantastic day. First up was a workshop to learn more about Caesar Cipher and cracking cryptography. The children will be able to take their code cracking skills back to school and use them in our CSI topic.

We then had a chance to look around the interactive games in the Science Malls. On floor 3 we took on the role of the snot barrier, burned some energy in the giant hamster wheel, performed a virtual autopsy and bust some moves at the DNA disco. Floor 1 offered us more inspiring games that made our minds work. We had to offer ideas on how to meet ever increasing energy demands without breaking the bank or damaging the environment, we had the chance to feel the force of wind in a hurricane booth, find out what happens in a nuclear chain reaction and  crank the handles to generate enough power to race around a Scalextric track.

All of the activities were testing different skills – strength, patience, concentration, reaction times, organisation and team work.

In the afternoon we went to the workshop ‘My World of Work – All about Me’. We learned about our personality traits by completing the personality quiz, used the careers information wall to discover more about different careers linked to STEM and we were able to talk to a High School career officer about what subjects we should study if we were interested in working in one of these roles.

Staff from the Science Centre commented on the superb behaviour of the P7’s, how hard they worked and were impressed by there knowledge of STEM and code cracking. Well done P7 – another great day out. Your teachers are very ‘uwtzi’ (proud – caesars cipher)!

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Busy start to our final term!

P7 has got off to a busy start this term.

In Primary 7 we have been learning about Forensic Careers. These jobs are vital in a crime investigation.

The first thing we did was we learnt about all the possible jobs in Forensic Science. Such as a Toxicologist, a SOC (Scene of crime) officer, a Pathologist and much more. We then discussed the job requirements if you were to apply for one of these jobs; we came up with different answers to what we would need in order to work in the Forensic environment. We thought we needed to have good eyesight, curiosity, imagination, be very good with details, have integrity and have the ability to keep accurate records.

After we chose one of the jobs to research and make an advert.

In Science, we completed an experiment to see whether or not an orange would float or sink in water.  First we had to make a prediction on whether we thought it would float with the peel on and then we had to predict whether it would float once it had been peeled. Here are some of our predictions:

‘It has it’s skin on so it is not going to absorb water so it will float’

‘It will float as the peel will make it lighter’

‘The peel has small holes in it creating air pockets, air will fill these making it float’

We discovered that when the skin was kept on, the orange would float, but as soon as we peeled the orange it sunk, meaning that our predictions were correct.

This term we are looking forward to learning all about STEM (Science, technology, engineering and maths), and learning new skills that will help us in the world of work.

As P7’s we have our transition visits to look forward to, our leavers assembly and our final trip as a year group. We are all looking forward to the journey.

 

Miss Anderson & P7

Primary 7/6 Learning Letter

Dear Parent/Carer,

Welcome to Term 4 in Primary 7/6.  In this last term the children are looking forward to planning and developing their knowledge and understanding of STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Exciting and challenging lessons and activities will be completed by the pupils, using the context of CSI style investigations.  Here the pupils will have the opportunity to develop reasoning and logical thinking within problem solving scenarios.  We are excited about P7 leavers activities and starting with our new roles in P6 in preparation for P7.

Mrs Murray and Miss Gordon

learning letter p7.6 term 4

Using ICT to enhance learning in Mid Calder

We are living in a constantly evolving digital world and technology has an impact on nearly every aspect of our lives. And, we are very lucky to be able to use this technology in school to develop skills that will help us in the world of work and in our journey as lifelong learners in our ever advancing world.

Here are some of the ways that we use ICT to enhance our teaching and learning in Mid Calder Primary School:

Visit from Scottish Mediation

The Primary 7 Magical Mediators had a meeting today with Roxan from the Scottish Mediation to discuss our Magical Mediators process. The discussed the benefits to the pupils at school and in the real world. They also discussed potential difficulties and how they overcame them. Roxan was very complimentary about our Magical Mediators and how they were a great asset to the school.

Photos and videos to follow!