Category Archives: News

Anytime Anywhere Learning, Events, Health & Wellbeing, House Meetings, Internet Safety, Primary 1, Primary 2, Primary 3, Primary 5, Primary 7, Pupil Council, Technical Troopers

House Meeting: BYOD and Internet Safety

February 2, 2016 Miss Burton 1 Comment

Last week we had our first House meeting of 2016 and the House and Vice Captains decided the focus should be on Anytime Anywhere Learning (AAL), Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and internet safety, as these are currently hot topics of conversations in our school.

As usual we started the meeting going over the plan for the meeting and expectations. Then the house members took part in a community builder. The House and Vice Captains showed us a video about internet safety as it is Internet Safety Day soon.

This led on to telling us about Bring Your Own Device, this is something the Technical Troopers and Pupil Council are leading. We had to create a post-it pledge to show how we would follow our school values of responsible and respectful if we became a BYOD school. The House and Vice Captains have taken these post-its and created a school crest.

Thank you to the House and Vice Captains, and P7s for organising such an interesting house meeting.

http://www.slideshare.net/midcps/house-meeting-3

Anytime Anywhere Learning, Primary 7, Pupil Council, Technical Troopers, Technologies

Glow Meet with Williamston PS

February 1, 2016 Miss Burton Leave a comment

On Thursday some of our Pupil Council and Technical Troopers took part in a Glow Meet with some pupils from Williamston Primary School. Some classes at Williamston Primary already use Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), so we decided we would ask them some questions about their journey, including the benefits of BYOD and how they resolved any issues they came across. A big thank you to the P6s who gave gave some of their lunch time to meet with us, we have lots to think about.

Community, Events, Health & Wellbeing, Primary 1, Primary 2, Primary 3, Primary 5, Primary 7, Pupil Council, Uncategorized

Morning Blether: Profiling

January 29, 2016 Miss Burton Leave a comment

This morning the Pupil Council held a Morning Blether to explain to parents what profiling is, how we are profiling at Mid Calder Primary School and how was can improve our approaches to profiling.
We also shared a new profiling tool that our staff have created in order for parents to understand what a level looks like in Maths and Language. This will be launched at the Curriculum evening on February 25th at 6pm and will be made available to all parents at this event and on the blog.

Thank you to the Pupil Council for organising this event and to the parents who attended, you can find a copy of the PowerPoint below.

http://www.slideshare.net/midcps/profiling-morning-blether

Community, Events, Health & Wellbeing

Breakfast Club Open Morning

January 29, 2016 Miss Burton 1 Comment

This morning we invited parents along to join Breakfast Club with their child/ren as part of Breakfast Week celebrations. We had a great turn out, thank you to Mrs Findlay and all the parents who supported this event.

Community, Interdisciplinary Learning, Primary 5, Uncategorized

Grand Designs

January 27, 2016 Miss Sherlow 4 Comments

This afternoon, the middle area were lucky enough to have a special visitor to come and help them with their IDL context, Grand Designs. Mr Cargill, the Depute Headteacher at West Calder High School, came to share some wisdom and words of advice based on his experiences of being involved in the design of the new high school. He discussed the budget for the school, how some of the money might be spent, and how he knows that tough budgeting decisions will have to be made based on what’s best for the learners and staff in the school. He also shared the questions that those involved in this process have been asking themselves, some of which were the questions we have been asking during our own design challenge. We also learned about the different places Mr Cargill has gone to find ideas to help him. He even travelled as far as Liverpool to visit a newly built school, speak to those who now learn and work in the school, and to take pictures to remember ideas that he liked. Although we might not make it to England to get some great ideas, we were certainly inspired by the creative layouts and designs he showed us.

A big thank you to Mr Cargill for sharing his experiences. We can’t wait to use what we have learned in our classroom designs and to share our finished designs with him!

Events, Health & Wellbeing

Farmhouse Breakfast Club Week

January 27, 2016 Miss Burton 2 Comments

This week as part of the Farmhouse Breakfast Club Week Mrs Findlay has worked with the children to organise a number of events to promote the importance of eating a healthy breakfast as well as promoting our school breakfast club.

To link with our Burns celebrations the children decided on a multi-cultural breakfast to promote that we are ‘One Scotland’ and we celebrate the range of cultures of people who live in Scotland. The children enjoyed croissants, bagels, selection of meats, porridge, lentil dahl, sweet noodles.

Anytime Anywhere Learning, Primary 1, Primary 2, Primary 3, Primary 5, Primary 7, Pupil Council, Technical Troopers, Technologies

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)

January 26, 2016 Miss Burton Leave a comment

Today at our Pupil Council meeting we discussed the concerns we had about bring our own device and came up with some solutions.

Lost, stolen, damaged devices: We recognised that we would have to trust each other. We think it’s important that your device has a protective cover. Some of us discussed that if you brought you own devic e it is just for you to use. We would have to learn to take responsibility for our own devices and respect other children’s property.
Taking photos & videos: Some of us had the idea that if you were using your own device you could only take photos of yourself and your work and you could use school devices to take photos of other pupils in your class. We discussed how you had to ask someone before you took a photo and then delete the photo from the device when you are finished. We recognised that we would have to be responsible when taking photos and videos to ensure they were appropriate.
What if I don’t have a device?: ‘So what?’ -We have lots of devices and eq uipment in school that you can use. We discussed how you might want to take an old device to school with you to use.
Responsible use: We thought it would be a good idea to create a contract so children remember how to use the devices responsibily. We don’t think we should use social media or texting at school, we want to use our devices to help us learn.

On Thursday some of the Pupil Council and Technical Troopers are having a Glow Meet with the Pupil Council at Williamston Primary. They are using BYOD and we think we could learn lots of them.

Our new school devices are almost ready to use on our Anytime Anywhere Learning network … We are very excited abut the possibilities this will have for us and our teachers!