Big questions...

After our tour of the community, middle school worked in their groups to select the most important things in their community. They had to justify their choice and explain the impact on the community if that aspect were to be removed.









Next, the class discussed which of these aspects they think were not about in 17thC Edinburgh.

Finally, the class worked on acrostic poems about our community here in the school. These will be finished at home for next week!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Do we need community?

As Middle School study Edinburgh in the 17th Century they are going to ask some big questions about communities, how they work, the role of the community in an individual's life and vice versa.



Today, they are walking round our local community looking for as many things they can find that make up our community.


They have identified schools, churches, lawyers, dentist, MPs, hair salons, beauty shops, houses, street cleaners, builders, lollipop ladies, buses, sweet shops, hotels, coffee shops, bins, families, nurseries, houses, tenements, college, street signs, roads, Estate Agents, drainage systems, council bins,


















- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Improving our geography

In guidance this morning, middle school were playing CountryStack on the iPad. Here, they are using their cities topic map to help...






- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Visual literacy

As part of our cities topic middle school pupils were discussing the power of advertising in an urban environment. We looked at a wide range of adverts and deconstructed them to work out how they get their message across. Here are a few of the images we looked at:

Introduction to Cities

We started a new topic in middle school today - cities. Here are some of the areas we will be working on around this topic:

1. A history of cities, focusing on Edinburgh
2. Info about 18 of the most interesting cities in the world (and why they're interesting)
3. How to deconstruct a video, advert and image
4. How a camera and video camera works
5. Some basic photography techniques
6. Photo editing
7. Important street artists and their work
8. Important architects and their work
9. The role that computers and other technology play in cities
10. Public health and sustainability issues in cities

Today we discussed different places in the world we have visited and put markers on the map where we have been. Pupils then created city fact files for one of the places they had visited.

S1 - S3 drama students took a trip to the Kings Theatre to see Slava's Snowshow - have a look at some pictures and a video on the home blog.

Successful exhibition!

Thank you to all who supported our 1st ever digital art exhibition today. It was a super success with over 90 paintings sold!

Middle school pupils were excellent at welcoming visitors, showing them round and demonstrating different apps. They were a credit to the school- well done!


I will send home as many of the purchased paintings as possible with the relevant children before we break up for the holidays. Some paintings will have to be reordered over the holidays but will be ready for as soon as we come back.

If you have bought a painting and it has not arrived by Tuesday 1st November, please do not hesitate to email me as it is possible that there may have been the odd mishap with our ordering system at busy times! jo@cedars.inverclyde.sch.uk

If you couldn't make the exhibition but would like to order a painting, you can view most of the exhibits on our flickr site. You can access it from the page that lists all the blogs on the school website.

Please email me at if you want to order any paintings and I will arrange it. jo@cedars.inverclyde.sch.uk