Mr Povey Retires!
Today in school, we were very privileged to have our wonderful Mr Povey visit us for the first time in a long while.
Mr Povey has decided to retire and our Mid Calder Primary community wanted to mark this special occasion: each class designed and made a retirement card filled with messages of thanks and congratulations. We were able to hold a very small scaled, socially distanced event in school to present him with our special wishes.
We shared some of our special memories with him, including lots of assemblies, performances, nativities and memorable church occasions from over the years.
A huge congratulations from all of your Mid Calder Primary School family Mr Povey – we wish you a long and very happy (and relaxing!) retirement. We will never think about celebrating the school end of summer term in the same way again!! #schoolsoutforsummer
Extraordinary Humans in Primary 3
As part of our IDL context, Extraordinary Humans, Primary 3 have been learning all about different people who have not let a physical disability affect their confidence, strength, or their ability to believe in themselves and become extraordinary.
We have been learning all about the Paralympic swimmer, Ellie Simmonds. We used fact sheets and online search engines to find out about her childhood, achievements and life after the Paralympics. We organised our notes under subheadings and then used Microsoft Word to create a biography about her. We tinkered with the features of Word before using it, learning how to layout our biographies neatly, add an image, how to change the fonts and colours, and how to use bold and underlining to make our headings and subheadings clear. As our final subheading, we had to explain why, in our opinion, Ellie was extraordinary, and our reasons were something that we should all aspire towards.Â
Last week, we also had a talk from Linda, who told us all about how her granddaughter had the life threatening liver disease, biliary atresia. Linda explained how, despite having gone through many challenges in her 9 years of life, Alesha is always a fighter and has an enthusiastic and positive outlook on life. She left us with the message: Stay strong. Stay beautiful. Be yourself. Believe. Another extraordinary human!
Breaking Gender Stereotypes in P3, 4 and 5!
As part of their IDL context, Extraordinary Humans, Primary 3, 4 and 5 have been learning about gender stereotypes. Over the last few weeks, we have visited by two people who have broken down these stereotypes and now have jobs and take part in hobbies that they love, regardless of their gender.
Miss Walkingshaw came to speak to us about her passion for playing football, and the journey that she has been on as a girl who wanted to play. Unfortunately, it wasn’t always easy for her to join a team, and people thought that she wouldn’t be a talented player because of her gender. Now, she has represented Scotland, has played for two very well known football teams and regularly appears on TV. What an extraordinary human!
We were also visited by George who came to tell us all about how he was inspired to become a nurse after being cared for by a male nurse when he became ill as a child. He explained that some of his family were against his choice of job in the beginning, and that they told him it was a ‘girl’s job.’ Despite being the only man during his training, and being the only male health visitor in West Lothian at the time, George didn’t let it put him off. Another extraordinary human!
Supporting our learning at home:
P3, 4 and 5 have all been set a homework to prepare and present information about an Extraordinary Human of their choice. This could be someone famous, or could be a friend of family member. The talks should last between 2-5 minutes and can be presented in a format of their choosing. It would be great if you could support your child with their research, and let them practice at home. All of the success criteria for the talks can be found here.
Welcome to Mid Calder Nursery and Primary School blog.
 Our school vision creates a very positive ethos within our school; all members of our learning community ‘Believe’ in themselves and thus ‘Achieve’ the best they can which will ultimately enable them to ‘Succeed’ in all they do.
Our nursery vision is ‘Playing to Learn, Learning to play‘.
We aim to prepare all our young people for the challenges of the future. Our learning environment aims to stimulate, challenge, support and provide opportunities to develop life skills.
We take positive steps to promote effective partnerships between home, school and the wider community. We have an open door policy and you will, as parents, be made most welcome at all times. We hope you enjoy looking at ‘life’ within our school and nursery and we would welcome comments under any blog posting.
