Category Archives: News

Fundraising, PSA, Uncategorized

PSA: What We Do & How You Help?

Leave a comment

We raise funds, with your help, to give the school the extra things it needs each year. Over the years we’ve managed to provide the school with things as diverse as iPad protectors & cameras all the way through to the staging and very popular chick hatchery. We are also currently raising funds for the new playground once the nursery building is complete.

You help by coming along to the Fairs, sending your children to Movie Nights and buying our fundraising items. Remember the school calendars and the Christmas mugs and cards? That was us!

But it could all end… Over the course of the year we’ve lost some of our committee and more are leaving at the end of the year. If we can’t get the requisite minimum number of 8 parents and 2 teachers, we have to fold.

This means not only a loss of around £5,000 per year for the school to purchase items similar to those we’ve bought in the past, but there would be no more Halloween Parties, Movie Nights, School Fairs, P7’s Leaver’s trip and funding for bus trips. Even ice lollies after the Sports Days.

What We Need

For more parents to sign up! As a committee member, it won’t take up a lot of your time. Attend our monthly , term time meetings, help out at events only when you can (where, we can assure you, you will have lots of fun) and really feel you’re making a difference to your school and your child’s schooling. If you can help, please contact us on the email below, or even give us a shout on the Mid Calder Parents Reminder page on Facebook – we’re often loitering there to answer parent queries on school events. Our next AGM is Wednesday 13th September at 7pm, in the staff room of the school. We hope you can come along.

The Small Print: The Parent Staff Association is a registered charity and our commitment is to support the school through fundraising. This enables the school to purchase items that support the children’s’ education which are outwith the school’s budget. As parents of children attending this primary school, you automatically become a member of the PSA. However , it is a committee made up of volunteers, who give some of their time to help organise the fundraising. We are an official organisation, therefore we have a chairperson, treasurer and secretary. We have two members of staff who also sit on the committee. All meetings are recorded and we produce minutes of theses meetings. Our meetings take place in the staff room – 7pm on the second Wednesday of the month, term time permitting.

We also hold an AGM, which normally takes place in September and is open to all parents. The fundraising that we do ranges from fairs to parties for the children.

We are constantly looking for new ideas. Our committee embers all donate different amounts of their time; it depends on how much they can give.

Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at: psa-midcalder@hotmail.co.uk The PSA is a registered charity. Charity number: SC044390

Events, Primary 7

P7 Fair

Leave a comment

On Thursday 1st June the P7 pupils held a fair to raise money for their P7 Leaver’s Party. There were lots of stalls with things to do or buy. All pupils in the school had the chance to come along. Some of the stalls included:

  • Soak the House Captains/Vice Captains
  • Buy slime
  • Baking stall
  • Lucky Dip
  • Temporary Tattoos
  • Beat the Goalie

They raised over £500 which is fantastic! A huge thank you to all the boys and girls who came along and helped the event to be a great success. Also a thank you to the P7s for their hard work and to everyone who donated baking.

Community, Events, Nursery, Outside of School, Primary 1, Primary 2, Primary 3, Primary 5, Primary 7

Mid Calder Gala Day

Leave a comment

The shone on Mid Calder for their annual Children’s Gala Day. We had a great turn out from our school community to walk with us in the procession.

The Primary 7 pupils had a special treat!

We entered three school teams in the Gala Relay Races. Thank you to the children who represented our school, especially the boys team who won!

You can find more photos on the West Lothian Flickr page.

Thank you to the Gala committee for organising such a fun, community event.

Achievements, Community, Events, Health & Wellbeing, JRSOs, Uncategorized

MIDCALDER PRIMARY SCHOOL PUPIL RECOGNISED IN GLOBAL ROAD SAFETY WEEK COMPETITION

Leave a comment
Kaylie Preston, a pupil at Mid Calder Primary School has been awarded runner up position in a Scottish Junior Road Safety Officer (JRSO) competition.
 
To support Global Road Safety Week 2017, hundreds of children throughout Scotland entered the competition to design a poster to highlight the dangers of speeding.
 
Now in its fourth year, the United Nations Global Road Safety Week runs from 8 to 14 May and seeks to raise awareness about the dangers of speeding through its #SlowDown campaign.
 
Pupils from JRSO participating primary schools were encouraged to get imaginative and enter the competition through their own choice of media.
 
A total of 616 pupils from 37 primary schools entered with a range of impressive and informative poster designs, including traditional hand drawn entrees to digitally created designs as well as some accompanied by a selfie.
 
Pupil Kaylie Preston impressed the judging panel with her excellent road safety poster design that carried the messaging: ‘#NoSpeeding.’

The overall first prize went to five year old Isra Ahmed, a primary 1 pupil at Milton Primary School, South Lanarkshire, with her creative design that kept it simple yet impactful with the message: ‘Read the sign, take your time.’
 
Michael McDonnell, director of Road Safety Scotland, said: “The enthusiasm of young people and schools across the country never ceases to amaze me, and the quality of the submissions shows great imagination. 
 
“Hopefully, the underlying reasons for the competition and Global Road Safety Week will be brought home to the children and strike a chord with their teachers and parents. The road environment can be dangerous and inappropriate speed choice is a major factor in the type of injuries vulnerable people can suffer.
 
“JRSOs do a fantastic job of promoting road safety messages in their schools and it’s encouraging to see so many schools getting involved and putting Scotland on the global road safety map. A massive thank you and well done to all those involved.”
 
A further 26 runners up and 77 commendations were awarded to pupils from schools in Aberdeenshire, East Dunbartonshire, Midlothian, Moray, North Lanarkshire, South Ayrshire, South Lanarkshire, Stirling, and West Dunbartonshire.
 
All schools who entered received a participation certificate.
 
For further information or to view the competition entrees, visit: http://jrsocompetition.com/competition-gallery-2017
Anytime Anywhere Learning, Digital Learning Week 2017, Primary 1, Technical Troopers, Technologies, Uncategorized

Digital Learning in P1

Leave a comment

This  week we practised logging on and off  the netbooks independently.

Logging on can still be quite tricky as we need  to recognise both lowercase and uppercase letters.  Logging off correctly means that the netbook is ready for the next person to use.

The Technical Troopers came down to support us with all of this which was very helpful. Once we had all logged on successsfully, we discovered that the Technical Troopers had planned a Purple Mash activity to help us consolidate some of our learning about pirate ships.

As we painted each part of the ship we were able to name the part and say something about its purpose. We were then shown how to save our work too, so we can share it with our families at home.

A very big thank you to the Technical Troopers for helping and supporting our Digital Learning this week. We loved having you in our classroom.

We also used the netbooks and  i-pads this week in Literacy and Numeracy tasks. A very popular game that helped us to recognise and read words was the Poop Deck Pirates game.

 

In Maths and Numeracy we used Hit the Button and Dino Park Maths to practise our addition and subtraction.

Anytime Anywhere Learning, Digital Learning Week 2017, Nursery, Primary 1, Primary 2, Primary 3, Primary 5, Primary 7, Technical Troopers, Technologies

Digital Leaders for Digital Learning Week

Leave a comment

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. Primary 4A, 4B and P3 received a lesson on how to use the Glow tool Forms, while P7/6 and P5A 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 logging onto the netbooks and accessing a pirate themed activity using Purple Mash. Primary 6 were taught about the language of coding using Hour of Code, while P5B continued to develop their programming skills using Scratch to create a simple game. P3/2 were shown how to use the different features of iMovie to create a short film about their IDL context.

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.