Category Archives: Junior Leadership Teams

Anytime Anywhere Learning, Events, Technical Troopers, Technologies

Digital Schools Award Validation Visit

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This afternoon, Mid Calder Primary School welcomed a special visitor- Mrs Jelly, a Digital Schools Award validator. The purpose of this was to find out if our school could become the third one in West Lothian Council to be given the Digital Schools Award.

Mrs Jelly’s visit began with a presentation from some of our past and present Technical Troopers who shared examples of the amazing digital learning that goes on in our school. They described Mid Calder’s journey to becoming a Bring Your Own Device school, as well as explaining the impact that this has on both our pupils and staff. Miss Burton and Miss Sherlow also shared the many achievements and recognition Mid Calder has received for our use of a range of digital tools to support and enhance learning.

Mrs Jelly was then invited to visit our nursery and several classes across the school to see digital learning taking place first hand and to engage in discussions with our pupils and staff. Both her and Mrs Compton, who joined Mrs Jelly on her visit, were extremely impressed by what they saw and heard.

A big thank you to all of the pupils and staff who showcased digital learning so confidently, and to Mrs Compton for her continued advice and support. We eagerly await the results in the post. Watch this space…

 

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

MIDCALDER PRIMARY SCHOOL PUPIL RECOGNISED IN GLOBAL ROAD SAFETY WEEK COMPETITION

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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

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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

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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.

Anytime Anywhere Learning, Digital Learning Week 2017, Primary 7, Technical Troopers, Technologies, Uncategorized

Digital Learning Week in P7/6

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It has been Digital Learning week across the country and we at MCPS have been celebrating by  sharing our learning across all levels. The technical troopers have many talents and Cailin and Olivia  shared their knowledge of Sway, a tool for producing presentations, where the children can either work independently or contribute to a group Sway. Cailin and Olivia were the teachers for the morning and gave a short presentation as to how to use Sway and the features that can be used. Some of the children had already used Sway and were just building upon their knowledge but others had not used it before and needed a little bit more guidance. By the end of the lesson all children were able to contribute to our class ‘How does your garden grow?’ Sway and had made their own, some added pictures and some added videos. It was good to see Amy continuing with her Sway during free time Friday this week and building on her knowledge. I hope that some children might just use Sway in the future when presenting.

I hope you all have a fantastic holiday weekend.

Miss Anderson

 

Anytime Anywhere Learning, Digital Learning Week 2017, Technical Troopers, Technologies

Digital Learning Week in P6

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On Tuesday, Primary 6 were lucky to have some Technical Troopers come into class and lead a session exploring coding. We were shown some resources such as https://code.org/learn to help us get started. This resource can be used at home to continue learning. The pupils were incredibly enthusiastic as they were given an opportunity to experience something completely new. We will follow this up over the coming weeks.

Anytime Anywhere Learning, Digital Learning Week 2017, Nursery, Primary 5, Technical Troopers, Technologies

Digital Learning Week in the Nursery

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The Primary 5 boys and girls came to the nursery to show us how to use the beebots. They learned positional language, forwards, backwards, side to side, left and right. They used these directions to program the beebots and make them move. They linked it to number by rolling the dice and the number they rolled was the number of moves the beebot would make.

“They were going backwards and front ways!” – Sophia

“They were really fun.” – Eilidh

“I liked the beebots because I made mine go round in a circle.” – Hannah

 

We used the visualiser to project the children’s writing on to the smartboard. They were able to show their friends how they wrote their name and how they formed letters. They loved seeing their work on display.

The children have continued to use the ipad apps and have enjoyed choosing songs for the new ipod! They are now in control of the music in the nursery!

The go pro was in full swing keeping track of the children’s learning. It was keeping active and was also used for the children interviewing each other about what they were doing.

Some of the boys and girls have been practicing their keyboard skills while learning their letters and sounds.

 

The children then helped Mrs Murray do the blog post to share their learning.

Anytime Anywhere Learning, Digital Learning Week 2017, Primary 3, Technical Troopers, Technologies, Uncategorized

P3’s Digital Learning Week!

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This week P3 have been thinking about Digital Literacy and how it is used in our classroom to support and enhance learning. P3 think that Digital Literacy:

  • Gives children a different way to present information and demonstrate their learning.
  • Allows children to explore Numeracy, Literacy and other curriculum areas in a fun way through games and apps such as Sumdog and Purple Mash.
  • Allows children to share and discuss our learning through Sway and Yammer.
  • Helps children to concentrate because it is a fun way to learn.
  • Lets children explore new things that they have not seen before.
  • Helps to prepare children for CEM testing.

We also had a visit from the Technical Troopers this week who delivered a fantastic lesson showing the children how to create a questionnaire using Forms. The children loved this and were able to create questionnaires based on our context of Healthy Bodies and Healthy Minds.

Miss Clark: The Technical Troopers did a great job of showing the children how to create their questionnaires step by step.

Eilidh: I enjoyed learning how to make a questionnaire with pictures and videos!

Lewis Adams: I liked being able to pick a picture to add to my questionnaire.

Marc: I think the Technical Troopers were helpful and they showed me how to add a video and picture to my questionnaire.

Ben: The Technical Troopers were very kind and let us take our time using the netbooks.

Alex: I enjoyed the Technical Troopers teaching us more about using the Glow page to learn new things!

JRSOs, Junior Leadership Teams

Global Road Safety Week – Poster Competition

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Last week in our JRSO Junior Leadership Team, we entered the Global Road Safety Week Poster Competition. This poster had to highlight the dangers of speeding as well as being eye-catching and colourful. The results were released today, and out of 616 children in the whole of Scotland that entered, Kaylie Preston in P4B was awarded runner up!

Congratulations Kaylie and the rest of our JRSOs for their fantastic entries!