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P3 and P3/2’s amazing trip to North Berwick beach!

Yesterday P3 and P3/2 went on a trip to North Berwick beach. We had lots of fun playing in the sunshine with our friends. Our highlights were:

  • Enjoying a tasty ice-cream.
  • Burying ourselves in the sand!
  • Playing in the paddling pool.
  • Taking part in a sandcastle competition.
  • Digging holes in the sand.
  • Racing on the sand.
  • Walking to different parts of the beach.
  • Walking along the shore with our toes in the water.

Amelia: I enjoyed being in the paddling pool!

Alex: I enjoyed eating my ice-cream and being in the paddling pool!

Sophie: I enjoyed making big holes in the sand!

Ciara: I enjoyed making the sandcastle with my friends.

Marc: I liked eating my ice-cream and lying down on the sand.

Ignatius: I enjoyed the paddling pool. It felt weird because the water was pushing me over!

Euan: I enjoyed digging big holes in the sand!

Another busy week in P7/6 (minus the 7’s)

It has been a very busy and productive week in P7/6. The class felt a lot smaller ( and quieter) as our P7’s were away on their High School transition days, embarking on the next leg of their journey.

The week kicked off with a very successful trip to The Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh. The sun shone for us as we started our garden treasure hunt, where we had to find various flowers and items within the gardens and take photos of them or draw them. The sun was still shining when we had lunch so we were able to have a quick game of football in the park opposite the gardens. After lunch we got to take part in a work shop about the reproduction of plants, some of us got to dress up as flowers, a bee, stamen and stigma, which all represented the different parts of a flower. We then had to recreate what happens when a bee is attracted to a flower. It helped us to understand the process of pollination better.

On Wednesday Eve, Katie, Adam and Aiden took the Burton-mobile for a trip to Dobbies Garden Centre. We applied for funding from Dobbies to help us with our school grounds, in the hope that we could create a welcoming colourful, relaxing, place within our school playground and we are pleased to announce that we were awarded £600 worth of gardening equipment. Eve, Katie, Adam and Aiden have been displaying their green fingers by creating a small garden in our playground so I thought they would be the perfect children to go and have a wee trip to Dobbies to see what type of plants and equipment we could spend our money on. They all knew exactly what they wanted and came back with a very extensive list. We look forward to getting everything delivered and making our school playground a welcoming place. If anyone would like to help with this small project we would really appreciate your help.

On Thursday we got a visit from the SSPCA to discuss what animal cruelty was  and all of the children had very good questions to ask our warden. We ended the session with a game of snakes and ladders that related to animal facts.

Our P7’s all arrived back safely from their new high schools and had lots of stories to tell us about their time away. It sounds like they all had an amazing time and are all ready to make the transition to High School.

I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend.

 

Miss Anderson

Primary 6’s Botanic Gardens Trip

Primary 6 had a fantastic day out at Edinburgh’s Botanic Gardens on Monday. We spent the morning exploring the gardens. We followed a task sheet as we looked for particular flowers, trees, sculptures and animals located around the site. In the afternoon we took part in workshops organised by staff from the gardens. These focused on the life of plants – starting as seeds and ending in flowering and reproduction. We also used magnifying glasses to study plants up close and special glasses to see things as insects do! All in all, it was a brilliant day and the children were a credit to the school as they participated in all the activities. 

PSA: What We Do & How You Help?

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

MIDCALDER PRIMARY SCHOOL PUPIL RECOGNISED IN GLOBAL ROAD SAFETY WEEK COMPETITION

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

Digital Learning in P1

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.

Developing Digital Detectives in P5B

We are learning to identify reliable sources online

– I can state what makes a source reliable
– I can spot signs that a source might not be reliable and justify my opinion
– I know the importance of double checking the facts I find online

To celebrate National Digital Learning Week, P5B became Digital Detectives and were learning all about how to spot the truth online. We discussed the different ways we can find out information and, as we live in a digital age, we realised how much we rely on the internet to find out facts and help us with research. However, we are also aware that we can’t believe everything we read online! We learned about lots of different ways that you can check if a source is reliable, for example, by looking at the date it was published or updated, considering the credibility of the author, and double checking the facts using a least one other site. We were given a range of QR codes and URL links and we had to use our detectives skills to work out whether or not we could trust each site.

In addition to this, we have also been receiving coding lessons from Sean and Ben in Primary 7 to celebrate Digital Learning Week. We had been using Hour of Code to learn about the language of programming, and then we heard that P7 were becoming Scratch experts so asked them to share their skills with us.In our first lesson, they helped us to explore the features of Scratch, and in the second lesson they extended our skills and helped us to begin to create a simple game. By the end of our two lessons, we were even able to teach each other following learning conversations with our experts.

We have also been using our own and the school’s devices to take part in the Scottish Sumdog contest this week to develop our mental maths skills.

Digital Learning Week in P7/6

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

 

P3’s Digital Learning Week!

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!