Category Archives: Junior Leadership Teams

Magical Mediators Receive Scottish School Award

Today the Magical Mediators were invited to attend the Young Talks Conference at Dundee University organised by the Scottish Mediation Network.

We listened to presentations from Tam Baillie (The Children and Young People’s Commissioner in Scotland), Nick Patel (a Mediation Magician) and from people who have a full time career in Mediation. We also attended two different workshops.

We were one of two schools who were asked to share our peer mediation journey. Keira, Anna, Sean and Caitlin presented at the school’s showcase to over 100 participants.

We took part in a Skype video chat with a school in America, it was interesting to see how peer mediation operates in another country. We also watched a video about peer mediation in Scotland and it was lovely to see our P7 peer mediators from last year.

The biggest surprise of all was when we received the award for our Outstanding Contribution to Peer Mediation in Scotland by a School and the prize of a free mediation training session from Jeremy Scuse (the managing director at Catalyst Mediation Ltd).

We our so proud of our Magical Mediators, both from last session and this session and all their achievements – congratulations!

http://www.slideshare.net/midcps/peer-mediation-mid-calder-primary-school

Peer Mediation Conference 2016

Due to the ongoing success of our Magical Mediator programme, our Magical Mediators have been invited along to attend and present at the Young Talk Conference at Dundee University. Unfortunately due to limited spaces all our Magical Mediators are not able to attend, to ensure everyone felt included we created a video as part of our presentation.

Programme for Young Talk Conference 2016 

Eco JLT Bug Houses

This morning, some members of the Eco JLT created bug houses in an effort to support biodiversity in the playground. During the planning stage, Morgan pointed out that plastic materials which could be used, such as plant pots, may become litter over time.  As such, we decided to use only natural materials collected from the local area.

IMG_0794 IMG_0795 IMG_0793IMG_0796 IMG_0797 IMG_0798 IMG_0799  IMG_0801 IMG_0802 IMG_0803

 

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.

Mid Calder School Calendar

Do you ever wish that you had all the key school dates at the start of the school session?

The PSA have worked with the Community Crusaders to produce a one stop shop calendar for the school session 2016-2017. Each month is decorated with the children’s artwork.

Dates include: Christmas parties, Sports days; School nativities etc

Calendars are available to buy from the school office at a cost of only £5. Closing date for orders will be Friday 20th May 2016.

Click here to see an example of the calendar: August 2016

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

Bring Your Own Device Parent Information

Thank you to all the parents and carers who attended our Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) parent information session. For those who were unable to attend, here is the PowerPoint that some of our Technical Troopers, Pupil Council and House Captains brilliantly presented. Thank you to those pupils for giving up their time to share our BYOD journey so far.

http://www.slideshare.net/midcps/aal-and-byod-parent-information

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!

Responsible Roles: Magical Mediator Training

There was a lot of excitement in the upper area this morning as the Primary 6s found out their Responsible Roles which they will start in term 4 of P6 and into P7. Each Primary 6 pupil completed a job application form, which were of a very high standard and were then allocated an appropriate role dependent on their skills, qualities and experiences.

The Primary 7 pupils with the support of Miss Burton put together a training session for the new P6 Magical mediators. They started with a job description and an overview of what the job required. We then took part in a selection of community builders which helped us to focus on the skills and qualities needed to be a mediator, and which also put us in the role of the disputants. Following this we went through the 5 stages of a mediation and the Primary 7s showed us a mediation scenario, then we had time to try out our own scenarios with the Primary 7s supporting us. Finally we ended with a question and answer session, the Primary 7 pupils offered a lot of very useful advice.

Thank you so much to the Primary 7s for training us and we are looking forward to our work experience shadowing opportunity in the new term.

Here is the Magical Mediators training video that the P7s made: