Category: Calderwood Curriculum

Tay Clan -Christmas Party

Tay clan had a fantastic Christmas party on Monday morning.

To kick off our Christmas party, we put on our playlist of chosen songs, and had a wee boogie to get us warmed-up.  After that, we had a fantastic game of Christmas Corners.  We also had a best dancer competition.  Dancing and taking part in the games made us thirsty and hungry so we took time out for a snack and juice, provided by our lovely helpers, which was served on our Christmas placemats we had designed ourselves.  Finally, we took part in some fun dances – chu chu wa and the Macarena.  We loved dancing to these!  The time went by so fast and were sad to see it come to an end.  We had a blast together.

We loved learning, practising and performing our song for the Christmas Celebrations – Count on Me at Christmas.  We loved exploring the value of kindness and spreading kindness to others because…..kindness costs you nothing!  We hope you all enjoyed it too.

We also had a fantastic Christmas lunch together too.  Such fun and wholesome times to spend together as a clan.

 

Primary 1 Show Tickets

We are delighted that our Primary 1 show “Ready, Steady, Elf!” performances will take place on:

Tuesday 10th December

9.15am Mull and Orkney

2pm     Shetland and Skye

Wednesday 11th December

9.15am Bluebell and Bramble (P1s only)

2pm      Mull and Orkney

Thursday 12th December

9.15am Shetland and Skye

2pm    Bluebell and Bramble (P1s only)

Tickets will be in your child’s bag today sent home by their champion. Each child has 3 tickets per show for you to attend. Tickets will be collected at the main door when you arrive.

iPay will be open for any donation’s families would like to make towards the P1 Christmas shows. The money raised will be used for the costumes used in the performance and refreshments at the shows.

Tay Clan – Drama and Advent

Tay clan have been enjoying drama lessons based around story telling.  This week, we had a go at hot-seating.  In hot-seating, we pretend that we are a character and answer questions, from others, as if we were in that particular character’s shoes.  We listened to the end of a story, as we have been working on endings to our own stories in writing, and then our group members asked us questions based on the story we had heard.  We all had a turn and loved pretending to be someone else.  It really got our imaginations switched on!

We have also been learning about advent this week: what it is and how it is celebrated.  Through this learning, we decided to create our own clan advent calendar and base it around the value of kindness. We came up with a kindness challenge for each day of Advent and created our very own kindness calendar.  We are very excited to start using this next week.  We have also made our very own, unique, Tay clan Christmas wreath to hang in our clan room.

 

From Bear Island to the Stage: Tummel Clan’s Adventures in Storytelling and Performance

This week, Tummel clan finished reading The Last Bear by Hannah Gold. The Last Bear follows 11-year-old April Wood on a journey to Bear Island, where she discovers a stranded polar bear affected by climate change. Despite being told no bears remain, April befriends and helps him, embarking on a courageous mission to return him home. The story taught us the importance of protecting our planet, showing kindness, and remembering that young people can make a difference!

As we approached the novel’s conclusion, we planned and performed a short drama to depict April and Bear’s final journey to Svalbard. Our performance focused on key narrative elements—orientation, complication, and resolution—which later guided us in writing our own narrative scripts based on the drama.

Our Tummel Primary 5s had an amazing time at the pantomime watching Cinderella! The excitement reached new heights when one of our lucky clan mates was invited on stage with the mischievous Fairy May. After weeks of hard work crafting our own narrative scripts, it was truly inspiring to experience a live performance. We all agreed—it was a fantastic show!

Book Week Scotland in Schiehallion

Schiehallion have had a really fun week doing lots of different activities linked to Book Week Scotland. We started the week by designing new covers for our favourite books. Some of the clan chose to create a new cover for our class novel ‘The Last Bear’ – while others chose their own books.

We also took part in a number of quizzes as well. The clan had a lovely time guessing the ‘Staff Shelfies’ where they played detective to try and work out which book shelf belonged to each member of staff. They also took part in a book quiz organised by Mrs Rodford from Primary 6.

The clan then had a surprise visit from Miss Melrose on Thursday, who came to do some reading with the clan while Mr Allan went down to read to Bluebell.

Schiehallion had a lovely week, and are looking forward to continuing our reading over the coming weeks.

Book Week in Tay Clan

Tay clan have had a great week celebrating Book Week Scotland!

We worked collaboratively to make a book cover of our clan novel – The Land of Roar.  Some clan members drew the cover of the book and the rest of the clan drew small pictures of characters or scenes from the book that we attached around the cover.  We were very proud of our teamwork.

We completed a book quiz and we think we got all the answers correct, Some of us swapped books with each other and were excited to have a new book to read at home and we enjoyed guessing the champions book shelf in the book ‘shelfie’ quiz.  We got Mrs Scobie, Miss Burton and Mrs Findlay’s book shelves straight away!

We enjoyed a visit from Mrs Findlay who read us the beginning of ‘Rivet Boy’ which we loved so much that we want to read more at another time.

Finally, we dressed up as our favourite book characters.  We had some characters from Harry Potter, Gangsta Granny and even some mythical creatures – I wonder if you can spot a very well-known green monster hiding in our pictures.

We have had a great week, enjoying lots of books and stories and these have helped us to gather new and interesting words that we can use when writing our own stories.

 

Book Week Scotland in Baird

This week, Baird have enjoyed a range of reading and writing activities to celebrate Book Week Scotland. We were given the opportunity to deliver the book bags to the Primary 3 clans and read their books together. Both Baird and P3 loved this experience! We have also created some new front covers for books we have been reading, completed a Book Week Quiz and created fact files for characters from our novels.

In writing, we have been focused on creating narrative texts. This week, we became authors as we looked at creating a sci-fi story. Before writing, we revised the different features of a narrative. We used a diamond 9 diagram to identify the importance of each feature from most important to least. We then reflected on our previous stories and chose a feature to focus on this week. 

We began planning for our writing by creating our own planets to visit. We drew these in our jotter and labelled our planets with any key information we wanted to add. We then filled out our plans, wrote our stories and shared them with our peers, who then gave us some feedback before we edited and self assessed.       

Book Week Scotland at Calderwood 2024

Book Week Scotland  – see poster for details of what is happening this week.

Book Week Scotland at Calderwood PS

 

Book Week Scotland (18th -24th Nov) is a national celebration of books and reading. During this week pupils in P1-P3 will be gifted a ‘Book Bag’ in school.  Gifting the bags during Book Week Scotland will draw pupils’ and parents’ attention to this national celebration and encourage everyone to participate in the week’s events, laying the groundwork for further engagement in reading.

In school, Book Week Scotland can provide a platform for lots of activities celebrating books.

Details of how to use the Book Bags at home can be found below.

Bookbug P1 Bag Parent letter 2024

RWC P2 Parent letter 2024

RWC P3 Parent letter 2024

 

Burns Clan Connects

On Friday morning, Burns Clan came together to share their learning with their families and the rest of the school community through their Clan Connects.

The children told us all about Equity at Calderwood and their important role in deciding how our Participatory Budget is spent.  They did an amazing presentation and we are so proud of each and every one of our learners.

Burns Clan then spent some time with their adults, sharing more of their learning from the year so far.

Thank you to all parents and carers who were able to come along to support Burns Clan on Friday morning.

Astro Gymnastics Free Trial

Astro Gymnastics is a West Lothian accredited community sports club and a charity based in Livingston.
🌟Do you know someone who would love to try gymnastics?
(And just to remind you it’s not just for the kids!)
🌟Is 2025 going to be THE year to learn something new?
🌟Could gymnastics be for you?
🌟Want to try it but just not sure?
Astro Gymnastics is a local not for profit business with charity status (SC043346) and we’d like to offer a FREE TRIAL for those who want to test the water and try before you buy.
Use the code HOI360 to book a free trial class before 31 Dec ’24.
(Excludes camps, parties and private lessons)
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