Category Archives: Uncategorized

Community, Events, Outside of School, Primary 5, Primary 7, Pupil Council, Self Evaluation, Uncategorized

Pupil Council Learning Walk … Take 2!

March 7, 2017 Miss Burton Leave a comment

Today our Pupil Council went along to Addiewell Primary School, along with Woodmuir Primary to continue our Cluster Learning Walks. The Pupil Council gave us a presentation about their school and showed us a video.

We asked the Pupil Council some questions about their school:

What IDL topics are you learning about?
How do you use digital technologies in your school?
What kind of outdoor learning do you have?
What is your school motto and values?
What type of whole school events does your school have?

We also asked Mrs MacMillan, their Principal Teacher some questions about her job:

What is your favourite part of your job?
What are you most proud of in your school?
How do you deal with behaviour in your school?
How do you plan your assemblies?

There were lots of things that we found interesting about Addiewell Primary:

Together Time
How they eat their snack together
Wheelie Wednesdays
Improvements they had made in their playground
Their school motto
Everyone was very friendly
Cozy Corners in their classrooms
Their movie models in P5/6/7
That it was a combined school with St. Thomas Primary

Thank you to Charley, Jessica-Lee and Ryan for being our tour guides and answering our questions.

Achievements, Events, Health & Wellbeing, Primary 7, Responsible Roles, Uncategorized

Magical Mediators receive WL Stellar Award!

March 6, 2017 Miss Burton 2 Comments

On Friday afternoon the Magical Mediators and their parents/ carers were invited along to the West Lothian Stellar Awards at Howden Park Centre where they received the winning award for Responsible Citizens.

The information below details why these group of pupils were nominated for the award and the impact they have had on the school and themselves. A big Congratulations to all the Magical Mediators for this huge achievement, we are very proud of them.

https://www.westlothian.gov.uk/article/13221/Spotlight-on-pupils-at-Stellar-Awards

How the outcome was achieved, were there barriers, new ideas, teamwork etc.

Over two years as a Senior Management Team we recognised that we were having ongoing issues in the playground. As part of a way to address the issues we introduced Responsible Roles for Primary 7 pupils which included:

Playful Pals: They have the responsibility of teaching younger pupils playground games, looking after the playground equipment and ensuring children are not on their own at break and lunch times.
Safe Security: They have the responsibility of ensuring the playground area and toilets areas safe and pupils are using the facilities responsibility.
Magical Mediators: They operate a peer mediation programme which helps pupils solve disputes in the playground through a coaching programme.

The Primary 7 pupils filled out an application form and were allocated a role depending on their knowledge, skills and qualities, they then underwent training for their specific role.

Who was involved/ affected – those involved, those supporting, those who benefitted.

Initially the Magical Mediators were trained along with St. Ninian’s Primary by the Scottish Mediation Network, the pupils now run their own training programme. They work in partnership with the pupil support workers and are supported by the depute head teacher. The Magical Mediator service is offered to P1-7 pupils. Our Magical Mediators are still in regular contact with the Scottish Mediation Network, who have written case studies about our programme to share our learning with others.

What was learned.

The Magical Mediators help our pupils become independent by helping them develop conflict resolution skills there preparing them with skills for learning, life and work. Pupils in the school have become more solution orientated by trying to solve their own problems first before asking an adult for help.

The Magical Mediators programme has impacted hugely on their Primary 7 leadership skills as they have responsibility for leading and developing the programme. They have developed their communication skills in a number of ways from promoting and advertising the service through Assemblies, promotion videos and our school blog to how they communicate with the pupils who use their service. They have developed resilience and problem solving skills in order to independently overcome difficult situations. They have also developed their organisation skills by

What makes the achievement/project/group/individual special.

Our Magical Mediators have represented our school and West Lothian at the Scottish Medication Conference and more recently they were asked to share our journey to schools across Scotland at the Scottish Young Talks Conference. At this conference they received an award from the Scottish Mediation in recognition for our Outstanding Contribution to Peer Mediation in Scotland by a School.

What are the lasting impacts of the achievement/project etc.

Our Magical Mediators continue to have a lasting impact on the health and wellbeing of the pupils in our school. It is a sustainable programme, as the Primary 7 pupils have developed training workshops to train the new magical mediators each year. We regularly support the Scottish Mediation Network with their research and have appeared in their Young Talks Magazine several times.

You can find out more about our Magical Mediators on our blog:

https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/wl/mcps/?s=magical+mediators&searchsubmit=

Primary 7, Sciences, STEM 2017, Uncategorized

Cool Chemistry in P7/6

March 3, 2017 Miss Anderson Leave a comment

LI: We are learning to identify the features of a fair test

LI: We are learning to classify materials

SC: I can identify that a material/substance has changed through decay, cooking, burning, rusting, melting and dissolving.

I can investigate what causes this change.

This week we kicked off our new topic ‘Cool Chemistry’ and we have been very busy discovery what chemistry is and what processes we have to go through when conducting an experiment.We are all excited that we are going to be learning about chemistry and what this involves. At the beginning of the week we looked how materials can changed through different processes. We were all given a small piece of clay which we examined and we had to describe its properties. Some of the words that we came up with were: flexible, moist, dusty, strong smell, squishy, gritty and soft. We then watched a film to see what happens to clay when it gets fired in a kiln. Once the clay had gone through the heating process the properties of it were very different. Some of the words that we used to describe the properties of the fired clay were: smooth, hard, fragile, rigid, breakable. We discussed how clay would not be able to go back to its original form and came up with other materials that this would happen to when they have gone through a change, we discussed that bread and eggs could not go back to their original form.

We also learned about fair testing, what this involves and why it is necessary. Once we had learned about fair testing we then conducted our own investigation into what melts faster, butter or chocolate. We discussed how we could make this a fair test and decided that we had to keep the water at the same temperature when melting the butter and chocolate, the water had to be the same amount and the butter and chocolate had to be the same amount otherwise this would not be fair and our results might vary. We made predictions and were surprised at some of the results. We are looking forward to learning more about chemistry over the coming weeks.

Keep your eyes peeled for more experiments.

Miss Anderson

Primary 5, Sciences, STEM 2017, Technologies, Uncategorized

Mission 6: Fingerprint Discovered

March 3, 2017 Miss Sherlow Leave a comment

Learning Intention: We are learning what a fingerprint is
– I understand that everyone has a unique fingerprint
– I can identify the key features of my own fingerprint
– I know how and why the police use fingerprints to help them solve crimes

As part of our STEM IDL context, Kidnapped, P5B have been receiving missions from Police Chief Anderson to help Police HQ to find Jack and Sarah Green. This week, we discovered that a fingerprint was found on the strap of a watch belonging to Jack. Chief Anderson sent our investigation teams a fingerprinting kit so that we could find out more about our own fingerprints.

We learned there are 3 main characteristics to look for; loop, whorl and arch. We put our fingerprints onto a balloon first and inflated it so that we could see our print pattern more clearly. We used magnifying glasses to get an even closer look.

We then took prints of all ten of our fingers and analysed them to find the specific characteristics of each one. It was interesting to compare all ten fingers and see which was the most common characteristic. We recorded out findings and added this to our growing case files.

We also discussed how difficult it must have been for the police to match fingerprints in the days before technology. We used our own and the school devices to find out when the first crime was solved using fingerprint evidence- all the way back in 1892!

Community, Events, Primary 3, Uncategorized

P3’s Amazing school trip to Jupiter Art Land!

March 3, 2017 Miss Clark 2 Comments

P3 went to Jupiter Art Land and saw lots of interesting and cool sculptures!

Euan: My favourite sculpture was the stones in the trees by Andy Goldsworth because they were really interesting!

Lewis A: My favourite part was having a wee seat on the stones in the secret house!

Jacob: I liked the statues of the weeping girls because they stayed really still like a statue.

Olivia: My favourite part was the crystal cave. It was really shiny and cool!

Ciara: My favourite part was the weeping girls because they have long hair that hides their faces. I remember it was by Laura Ford!

Amelia: My favourite part was the trees with the giant stones because it was stretching the tree out!

Junior Leadership Teams, Uncategorized

Fairtrade Fortnight

February 27, 2017 Mrs Smith 1 Comment

This year Fairtrade Fortnight takes place from 27th February to 12th March.

Fairtrade Fortnight 2017 is all about Fairtrade Breaks.

The Junior Leadership Team have been learning about Fairtrade, and would like to encourage others to participate in this event.

To do this, they have created a competition for all Primary 1-7 classes. This involves collecting as many Fairtrade labels as possible over the two week period. The class with the most labels will win an extra Break time.

They also suggested having Fairtrade Fridays during these two weeks. They would like to encourage as many people as possible to bring a Fairtrade snack for Break time on both these Fridays (but no nuts please).

Outside of School, Primary 7, Uncategorized

Upper area trip to the Scottish Parliament

February 23, 2017 Miss Anderson Leave a comment

On Tuesday afternoon the upper area visited the Scottish Parliament. When we arrived we spent a short while looking at our spectacular surroundings of Arthur Seat and the amazing architecture of The Scottish Parliament, even the bike stands are arranged in a special way, which can only be seen if you are standing in a particular spot. On arrival, all of the children had to go through very strict security, it was a bit like going through security in the airport. Thankfully we were all ok and we were all able to proceed to the main part of the building. Walking through the main foyer we could see the spectacular architecture throughout and there were many fascinating sculptures that we were able to take the time to look at.

Firstly we went into a small room where we were put into small groups. There were certain objects scattered around the room, such as; a ballot box, a gavel and sounding block, a crown and robe, the ceremonial mace, the act of union and a royal seal, we didn’t know that the bigger the seal you had, the more important you were, in our groups we had to discuss what we thought they might be and what relevance they had to The Scottish Parliament. As we have been learning about The Scottish Parliament we were very good at discussing the purpose of each object. We also learned a bit more about the history of the Scottish Parliament. In our groups we then had to decide the devolved matters and the decisions that were made in The Scottish Parliament.

Primary 6 were very lucky to be able to have a chat with our own local MSP Neil Findlay who spoke about his life as an MSP. He also gave us a few tips for when we are holding our own elections. Katie asked for some advice on how to become class president, Neil advised her to be confident when speaking, to know your questions and anticipate what your audience might want to ask, he also added that it is always good to put a bit of humour into your speech.

Finally we had the opportunity to visit the debating chamber. We were all very excited and the children were eager to see our First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. We had to be extremely quiet when entering the debating chamber whilst the debate was on as there are cameras and microphones everywhere. When we entered there was a very lively debate going on and some of the politicians were even shouting and banging their tables, we later found out that this is their way of booing! We couldn’t always make out what the debate was about or who was talking but it was very entertaining. Our First Minister Nicola Sturgeon even made an appearance much to the delight of many of the children. It was a very interesting environment and gave us an insight as to what goes on at The Scottish Parliament.

I like it when the MSP’s were hitting their table during the debate as it was very funny – Natalia P7

The debating chamber was the best bit of the day, I particularly liked the way that all of the parties disagreed. – Keiran P7

I found the trip very interesting and learned a lot more about The Scottish Parliament – Matilda P6

I disliked when all the MSP’s were banging on their tables and interrupting each other because it seemed very disrespectful to the others that were talking – Cailin P6