Miss Quinn

This Term in Stirling clan we have loved investigating our namesake Stirling City. We have looked at mapping the town using grid refrences and key landmarks. We have created symmetrical landmarks and looked at shadow and perspective in art. Through our grid refrences we have explored cardinal points, angles and transformation.

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Thistle Clan 5.5.23

What a fantastic start to term 4 for Thistle Clan!

We have got straight in to exploring our Cultivating Calderwood Focus. Have a little look at our journey so far

In PE we have been investigating cross country running, spot us developing our stamina, endurance, pace and strength here:

In Literacy we have been investigating information reports. We have had a go at our cold piece, remembering what we knew from last year. We then marked this against our targets and got to work investigating the key language features of an information text. Once this was done we used our notes from reading to build a plan as a whole clan and then write a model piece all together. This will now help us as we begin to write with more independence.

Thistle 31.3.23

What a fantastic term we have had in Thistle. Our Engineering focus has been so much fun and you can follow our lesson and journey here:

We have also really enjoyed learning all our new skills in Basketball. We have developed our triple threat, defence tactics and applied them all to games. Check out our progress here:

We are also all so grateful for all your donations, we began our planting journey this week and hope to continue this after the spring holiday.

Careers Talks – Parent/ Carer Support

We are looking for volunteers to come in and speak to primary 3 to 7. The week we are looking to do this is 15th to the 18th May 2023. It will also be within school hours 8:45 until 15:15. We would be looking for a small talk about your job and what it entails. It would be only one presentation and we would look to match you with a clan who have been learning about a similar subject to your occupation. Feel free to bring in any resources, videos or props to help. It would be to speak to individual clans.

If you are one of the amazing members of our community who have already signed up last year using our careers form then we don’t need you to fill this in again.

Thistle loves Scotland

We have been really enjoying learning all about Scottish words and phrases. We have been creating some very special poems to share with our families at Calderwood Caledonia evening. We investigated the clans associated with our surnames and re-created their tartans.

We have been investigating famous scots and have focused as a whole clan on Mary, Queen of Scots. We have been learning about bias, exploring how people lived in the 1500’s and designing our own crests and shields. We are very excited for all our visitors to see our timeline we have created.

We have been exploring Scottish words and translating them into standard English, we loved hearing stories such as Clan MacWee and Mr Men come to Scotland.

Using Scottish maps we have explored co-ordinates and plotted cities, mountains, rivers and landmarks.

In PE, we have been learning skills such as rhythm, timing and the polka in Scottish Country Dancing. We have also been developing our understanding of tolerance and respect when dancing with new partners.

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Thistle at Christmas!

We have had such an exciting time at the end of Term 2. We had our final rounders competition against the children of Bramble where we use all our skills and teamwork that we have been developing to secure a victory.

We had also decided we wanted to raise some money for those more vulnerable at this time of year. In small teams we chose a charity that was important to us, researched a recipe and worked to a budget. We then came together in the STEM studio to make our bakes, created adverts through our persuasive writing and sold them to primary 4 and 5 children. We were delighted by our success and raised a joint total of £74.06 for Sick Kids, Cancer Research UK and Children in Need.

Finally, we had a tremendous time on Tuesday at our Christmas party with dancing, games, prizes, snacks! Merry Christmas everyone!!

Thistle 2.12.22

This week in Thistle we have been working on using Teams to keep track of our learning throughout the week. We have been learning new skills when using a keyboard and using the Teams app. We are happy to share these assignments at home so parents can see and leave feedback too.

We have been enjoying PE outdoors and have been developing bat and ball skills as well as team work and team tactics when playing field games. We have been gaining confidence when following the rules of a game and taking time to reflect on how to manage our emotions when the game does not go the way we wanted.

In health we are focused on building up our self-esteem. We have been discussing together how negative words and environments can cause our self esteem to spiral downwards. We have been practising talking about the good things in our day and how to find the positives in any situation. We have also been working out how to turn a situation round and discovering that, with the right tools, no situation is too big.

We are very excited about Christmas and have began to learn about Christmas traditions all around the world. We are very excited to learn from other clans and find out what traditions that they have discovered!

Thistle 4.11.22

This week in Thistle we have been really enjoying our exploration of fables, myths and legends. We have been rotating between Bramble, Bluebell and Thistle and learning about Norse gods, origins of Scottish mythical creatures and Greek legends and their themes. We have been creating dioramas, plasticine models and booklets to share our learning. We have also been working on team projects across P5 in Bramble and Thistle. We have been using technology and books to investigate myths from around the world and then have been using our creativity to think of different ways to share these stories. Groups have been creating songs, pantomimes, dances, posters, quizzes and stop motion videos.

In literacy we have been exploring narrative writing. We have been focused on the plot, setting, characterisation and the key grammar of speech marks. We have been looking at how stories have changed over time and we have investigated the origins of Beauty and the Beast. We will begin to retell the story and make our own alterations to the story so that it becomes a unique retelling.

In maths we have been using a variety of materials to help us explore angles. We have learned that a right angle is 90 degrees and found out that bigger angles are obtuse and smaller are acute. We really enjoyed the right angle challenge where we had to use maths resources to make a shape with the most right angles in it.

In PE we have began to develop our skills in badminton, learning forehand, backhand and serving shots. We have been working in pairs to see how long we can rally for and next week we will be introducing a low hung net to begin to learn all the rules of a formal game.

Thistle Maths Week Scotland 30.9.22

This week we have been enjoying Maths Week Scotland. We have been hearing number through stories and then using the number concepts to help us better understand challenges in our own learning. For example, we read “A Million Dots” by Andrew Clements and then challenged ourselves by trying to do our own million dot wall, number ordering to a million and finding the craziest facts around one million. Some pupils enjoyed finding the roman numerals and others tried to work out what could be bought for £1,000,000.

We loved celebrating Calderwood Primary’s first birthday on Tuesday with a conga and a silent disco.

We have been working really hard on a research project on 3D shapes. Pupils have been using the assignment on teams to work to a criteria and then find a new and creative to share their learning. We are really excited to see what they come up with!