Calderwood Communicates – Page 4 – Calderwood Primary and Nursery

Term 1 Writing in Bluebell

Over this term, Bluebell will be developing their skills in descriptive writing. We have started to look at, discuss and apply the structures of description using our PM example texts. This will gradually build up into pupils creating their very own descriptive texts, applying their learning independently.

To support the development of our writing skills, pupils have and will continue to throughout the year, to work on the principles of VCOP.
V – quality vocabulary
C- Sentence connectors to construct more detailed sentences
O- Sentence openers
P – Punctuation

We became ‘Sentence Doctors’ to cure some sick sentences by applying VCOP. We were excited to share some of our cured sentences with Miss Burton. Pupils in Bluebell worked extremely hard to make considered choices for their vocabulary.

Remembering Queen Elizabeth II

Today, across our clans we took some time to reflect on this moment in history and celebrate the life of Queen Elizabeth. Some clans made pictures of her, discussed what she did for the United Kingdom and beyond, wrote poems and reflected on her achievements.

Some of the older clans also watched a Newsround clip.

Term 1 Learning Letters

We are so excited for the learning journey all pupils will be embarking on during Term 1 at Calderwood Primary School. Our whole school theme for our interdisciplinary learning this term is on the concept Maths. You will see that our champions and pupils have planned creative and innovative Maths learning contexts. Please find the learning overview for each stage for this term below:

Term 1 – P1 Learning Letter

Term 1- P2 Learning Letter

Term 1- P3 Learning Letter

Term 1-P4 Learning Letter

Term 1 – P5 Learning Letter

Term 1 – P6 Learning Letter

Term 1 – P7 Learning Letter

Bookbug Week at Calderwood!

To celebrate Bookbug Week our younger children have been having fun with Mrs Shemilt at her Bookbug Sessions. They met Bookbug, sang songs, listened to stories and received their Bookbug Explorer Bags which are for 3 year olds.

Play in Primary 1 our Rationale

Please see below our rationale for Play-Based learning and teaching in Primary 1.

Play in Primary 1 at Calderwood

Rannoch Clan Writing

Writing – The Naughty Troll

Rannoch clan were shocked this week to find that one of their learning spaces was extremely messy and Mrs Scobie showed them a picture of the school playground with lots of litter lying around in it. Mrs Scobie suggested that it might have been a cheeky troll that was up to mischief and caused the mess. We decided that we needed to catch the troll so that this didn’t happen again. In groups, we used different materials to create troll traps. Once we made our trolls traps we decided to use this for the subject of our shared story writing. Our whole clan worked together to plan and write a story about ‘The Naughty Troll’. We made sure that we followed the correct structure of a story which we had learnt about earlier in the week. We also edited our story as we went along, changing words to make our story more interesting. We wrote a fantastic story together. We have shared it here to let you enjoy it too.

Term 4 in the Bens

Last term, to begin our celebration of British Science Week 2022, the Ben Clans created a STEM takeover for each Clan in our school! The groups created a variety of lessons to deliver to the younger clans. Tay Clan learned about the skeleton, Rannoch Clan learned all about space and our solar system, Ness created scrap robots and used a sphero to move the robot, Bluebell Clan looked at the layers of the Earth and Bramble focussed on food chains in our oceans. Mull, Shetland and Orkney developed an understanding of space, star constellations and the universe.

The experience generated a lot of discussion around earth, space and the universe, informing the direction of learning for this term.

Our cross curricular topic this term is science based and will be looking at the origins of life and the habitability of earth and other planets. We began this week by watching a short clip narrated by David Attenborough about the tree of life and then researched the evolution of a penguin, inputting our research onto Padlet. Please click here to see our research.

Alongside this, we will also began understanding the different viewpoints offered in the creation stories from different world religions. We started this week with the Christian creation story and began to understand that there are similarities with that and the creation story in Judaism. We created our own versions of the Judeo-Christian creation story using powerpoint, imovies including greenscreen and SWAY.

Literacy

We are beginning to learn about the features and structure of narrative writing. We have been exploring our reading books to develop our understanding of the orientation, complication and resolution found within this genre of text. This week, we had a go at writing a narrative based around a theme of racing. We looked at a good example and deconstructed it so we could understand how to write one ourselves. One of the Bens wrote a story called ‘The Horse Race’. It is a good example as it has a clear orientation stating who, when and where; the complication is clear and includes direct speech and accurate punctuation and the resolution explains what happens and solves the problem, bringing the story to a conclusion.

We are excited about the term ahead and look forward to sharing with you soon. Watch this space!!

The Bens 🙂