Category Archives: ICT

JYHS – ‘German Adventure’

Both the P7 classes really enjoyed themselves this morning at JYHS. They engaged in a modern languages event called ‘The German Adventure’. There, they were able to work with S1 pupils and P7 pupils from another school.

 

Please enjoy looking at our photographs on Twitter!

 

P7 classes 🙂

P6 – Author Study

Last weeks Reading Activity was based on reading for information and our Social Subjects focus of Space (see our display for evidence of your work 🙂 ). This week I would like you to hop back into your novels… but more specifically your authors. FIND OUT MORE AND COMPLETE THE FOLLOWING.

 

Can you share your findings in the comments box below so we can all access your work?

If you finish early can you take the following quiz….

http://www.booktrust.org.uk/books/children/have-some-fun/quizzes/15 – I’d be interested to hear your feedback here too.

Enjoy…

 

P6 Author Study Reading Activity
P6 Author Study Reading Activity

#DigiLearnScot Week

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Do you follow us on twitter, if not, please do! Here you will find daily updates on children’s learning and ‘What’s On’ across the school.

We are… @williamstonps

This week it’s National Digital Learning Week. We continue to explore the benefits digital learning and teaching can bring to every level of the learner journey across the school. In addition to this we are keen to share these through our BLOG and Twitter and would love to hear your thoughts on these too.

Technologies: Where are we at?

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Within Curriculum for Excellence, the technologies curriculum area relates particularly to contexts that provide scope for developing technological skills, knowledge, understanding and attributes. At Williamston we are striving to do this through creative, practical and work-related activities. In order to meet our own high expectations this year we have been using AAL (Anywhere, Anytime Learning Network) a protected wireless system available to some schools in West Lothian. What does this mean for your child and their learning?

  • Every class has a small number of devices (ipads/Samsung nexus/kindles) to allow children to experience the variety of technologies on offer.
  • AAL is used in classes to make learning more flexible and applicable to real life, e.g. if they wanted to extend their learning as they had an unanswered question during an activity, they could personally go research the area quickly and efficiently, using a device and AAL. This type of learning enhances their own and others learning.
  • AAL and devices have been used in some classes to communicate with other schools through our Glow Meet platform. This has allowed discussions and debates with children across schools.
  • The use of Apps. in lessons and activities is currently being explored by all teachers in their professional development time. While some have been successfully trialled, we hope to make more progress with this next year in order to fully embrace the technologies available to us.

In addition to this P6 and P7 classes have been adopting the WL initiative BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). This has allowed children the option of bringing their own device into school to use when directed by their teachers. In these classes the use of technologies has been:

  • Accessing and using email accounts in the world of learning
  • Using Glow and email platforms for Homework Tasks
  • Exploring use of Apps. to support learning
  • Researching, collating and communicating information in creative ways

This opportunity has been further enhanced by the enthusiasm of our parent and carer community and the responsible nature of our learners. As well as speaking locally as events, pupils from Williamston are being recognised at a national level for their work with BYOD. We can’t wait to see where this will take us next year…!

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P6 have been GETTING CREATIVE and exploring Glow Mail…

BYOD... opening new doors of creativity at all turns for P6.
BYOD… opening new doors of creativity at all turns for P6.

 

On Friday P6 entered into the realms of sheer and absolute creativity, and, perhaps even without knowing…

In our ‘Digital Technologies Across the Curriculum’ (D-TAC? We’re trying to think of a name!) session we were looking at emailing. We all ‘assumed’ we knew how to do it. 85% of use already have personal email accounts. So we know how to email right? NOT QUITE YET…we discovered!

Key Skills we learnt about EMAIL IN GLOW:

1. Know your login/password (And if it is your device – click ‘save for future’, little box, saves time!).

2. Click on Microsoft Outlook 365 tab. Wow it looks different to my other email account!

3. Find out my own email address… ‘My Profile’

4. Add contacts through ‘People’ – this makes it easier to see my friends, add groups, email quickly.

5. Send an email to Mrs Gray. Wow we filled her inbox, didn’t we P6?

6. Found out what ‘CC’ stands for/means in emailing. Yeah, we had seen it before, did we know what it meant? Nope. It means ‘Carbon Copy’, like if you want other people to see what you’re emailing but it’s not exactly for them. Pretty good idea, right?

7. We all got excited about changing our profile picture, and then had to be even more creative. All our devices were very different. Everything appeared very different on all of our screens. Let’s start real exploration – we found out how to change/create lots of stuff through doing this!

FEEDBACK FROM MRS GRAY…

~ P6 trust yourselves and each other more, remember I am no expert either. Let’s ask each other, before we ask me, if we are unsure about something.

FEED-FORWARD FROM MRS GRAY…

~ What now? Shall we set up an email group? Shall we use email within a lesson/activity (peer assessment method?). You will have better ideas than me…

 

SO P6… let’s have some FEEDBACK/FEED-FORWARD IN THE COMMENTS…

P6 have been taking inspiration from the late, and great, Steve Jobs...
P6 have been taking inspiration from the late, and great, Steve Jobs…

James’s story

The technology group has been researching how and why James invented the dyson vacuum and wheelbarrow ect. We went round asking some people what would life be like if we didn’t have design technology they came up with some quotes (e.g ) ‘life would be boring without designers’. ‘Design is everything’. Being a designer is an important job’. ‘ If we didn’t have designers then everything would be simple and boring’. The groups really enjoyed this task because they got to learn how designers came up with ideas and learnt this by using iPads and laptops.📷👍🏻🎶

P6 Update

I loved Hopetoun House – Kayleigh.

I really, really, really enjoyed making the News Report at Sky – Alexander.

I thought Christmas Lunch was YUMMY! – Olivia.

I loved making the news report at Sky, particularly using the camera – Lochlan.

We’ve been getting on really well this week with our #RandomActsofKindness – have you seen us around? – Daisy.

At Hopetoun we got to make butter and buttermilk – in class we then tasted this on pancakes and crumpets! I’d give it 10/10! – Shefali.

 

Come to our class to see more….!

Scottish Wildlife

This week in Primary 2 and Primary 2/1 we have enjoyed learning about our Scottish animals.  Primary 2a were learning about the otter, Primary 2b were discovering facts about the gull and Primary 2/1 enjoyed learning about the red deer.  We have learned many facts using our research skills and were able to tell them to the class and then use them to create a fact-file.  This was the first fact-file we had ever written and we think we did a splendid job! This has taught us more about non-fiction writing and reading, note taking as well as using bullet points.  Why do you not quiz us the next time you see us, as we are full of facts and enjoy sharing them!

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