Please see below our rationale for Play-Based learning and teaching in Primary 1.
Category: Calderwood Communicates
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 🙂
Autism Awareness Week
This week our clans are celebrating Autism Acceptance. Look out for updates on our clan’s learning this week.
Below are some useful links to find out more:
WLC Understanding Autism Assembly 2022 Primary
Le Clan Cafe
Our Strategies for Improvement
World Book Day!
Today we had great fun in Calderwood Primary School celebrating World Book Day. To spread the love of reading even further your child will have a £1 book token which you can find out more about by clicking here.
To celebrate World Book Day, the Ben Clans were able to be reading buddies with Mull, Orkney and Shetland Clans. The younger children became authors this morning as they wrote all about space. This fun was shared by the older children too, they were given time to free-write and could share this with their buddies later in the day.
Mull Clan, Bens Lawers and Ben Lomond:
Orkney, Bens Lawers and Ben Lomond
Shetland, Bens Lawers and Ben Lomond
In Ness and Rannoch Clan the children have been learning about different setting in books. To celebrate World Book Day they searched the libraries to find books with different setting and then used new and exciting adjectives to describe the settings they found.
World Book Tay Token
As part of World Book Day every child at Calderwood Primary & Nursery will receive a book token to take home.
How to use the book token:
More information can be found here:
Le Clan Café
Introducing our Le Clan Café! Directed, organised and hosted by our fabulous P4s from Tay and Rannoch. We can’t wait for Friday 18th March!
Languagenut West Lothian Competition
Languagenut are running a competition for West Lothian and we would love for all of Calderwood to get involved! This competition will run from the 1st until 31st March. The pupils can compete in this competition at home and in school. They should login to their Languagenut at home and complete different tasks to help them extend their language vocabulary. The pupils should complete any home learning tasks that have been set for them and have the choice to select any other tasks they wish to complete. They will receive points for each activity that they finish. We can’t wait to see you using Languagenut at home and helping Calderwood earn points in West Lothian’s Competition!
