Category: Calderwood Communicates

Mull October Update

In Mull, we have been continuing to explore and practise our letter and number formations. This week, we have focused on a and 4.
With our letter ‘a’ we have practised the formation and investigated the short and long vowel sounds. The short ‘a’ appearing in words such as: ant, apple, alligator where as the long ‘a’ sound appears in: apron, angel, ace. It can be tricky to get our heads around this but this helps build those initial literacy foundations which will be built on.

We have also investigated the number 4. We practised how to form the number 4 and had our friends choose our best formation. We also learned all about collecting and counting groups of 4 item. We noticed that on our number 4 hunt, the number can appear a little bit different, sometimes it looks more like a triangle shape. We also noticed the written word for 4 FOUR and what a 4 looked like on a dot pattern or on a tens frame. Starting to build on to our number bonds and knowledge of addition, we used our bunny ears to show different ways of making a 4. This may be 3 fingers on one bunny ear and 1 finger on another bunny ear or using double 2.

Sparking some curiosity this week was the item in our curiosity box. Lots of questions posed:
What is it?
How does it feel?
Where does it come from?
It must be from a hot country because it is so big!
How heavy is it?
Is it a cucumber?
Can you eat it?

The item was a gigantic courgette that Mrs Robertson grew in her garden. It was the only piece of veg in her vegetable patch that wasn’t eating by the wild bunny rabbits.

We are really looking forward to our Halloween themed week next week with some extra special spooky learning!

Sumdog in Calderwood

 

We’re delighted to announce that very soon your child will take home a card detailing their username, password, and school code for Sumdog.

 

There are some exciting competitions in the not-so-distant future (during which we get the opportunity to try our tenacity against schools in the whole of West Lothian Council) – the first begins on 29th October and ends on 4th November and the second starts on 26th November and ends on 2nd December. We cannot wait to see what Calderwood is made of!

 

These competitions and Sumdog will be familiar to some but please do read on if you need further information or just fancy a refresher:

 

Our clans can develop their Calderwood Communicates skills through accessing Grammar and Spelling on Sumdog. They can also explore their Calderwood Counts understanding through challenging themselves in Numeracy and Maths activities. The fun doesn’t stop when the children exit their clans – they are most welcome to explore learning on Sumdog at home using the log in details supplied on their cards; Children will be periodically set tasks by their Champions on Sumdog to complete at home and can also extend and support their learning through free-choice activities.

 

Please click here to access Sumdog

Primary 1 – 3 Playground Collection

Dear parent/ carer,
A gentle reminder that no adults should enter the playground at collection time until 3:05pm, when our champions will open the gate. Parents/ carers should not open the gate.  Can you please share this information with whoever collects your child from school. The reason this is in place is because children use the playground for learning up until 3:05pm.
Kind regards,
Miss Burton

Orkney Clan Phonics

Orkney Clan have had a fantastic and busy few weeks. It is clear that the children’s confidence has grown hugely with following the day to day routines. They especially enjoy our morning check-in where they find their name and then place it in a pot which best describes how they are feeling. Orkney Clan also love learning new things! An aspect of our learning that we would like to share with you is our learning in phonics.

This week has been very exciting because we have been introduced to some of our initial sounds. The children are learning two new sounds a day as part of a fast track introduction. This will ensure they have some understanding of all the sounds before we look at each sound in more detail after the September break. So far we have learned a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i and j. We have learned a character, sound and action for each of these letters. For example, the character for ‘a’ is Annie Apple and she makes an ‘a’ sound. The action is pretending to eat an apple while saying ‘a’. Maybe you could ask your child to tell you about the letters and the sound they make? Can your child spot any objects around the house that begin with any of these sounds?

One of the children’s favourite learning activities has been colouring in the letters and their characters. They have great discussions about the characters and what they might like. For example, someone asked if Clever Cat likes to eat carrots. It is fantastic to see some of the children choosing to practise writing letters for themselves too. Over the next few weeks we are going to have a look at the rest of our initial sounds. We are so excited to meet everyone else in Letterland.

Orkney Clan had an amazing dress down day today! I hope you have a great weekend and I am looking forward to seeing everyone again on Monday.

Miss Cunningham

Musings from Mull 3/9/21

It has been another busy few weeks in Mull Clan.  We have gotten to grips with our day to day routines and have demonstrated a confident attitude within our school environment.

Our big focus this week was an introduction to our initial sounds through the Letterland characters.  Pupils have a fast track introduction to all the letters characters, their sounds and actions before we look at each sound in more detail after the September break.  Have you heard of Harry Hat Man or Annie Apple yet? Ask your children to tell you all about them and the sound that they make.

We have also been continuing to practice our number recognition and counting skills.  We have used smartboard games, playdoh and monster numbers to help us with a multi-sensory learning.  We are going to be building on our subitizing skills with using dot patterns for quick identification of a number of items in a set.  A set of dominoes are great for this if you want to practise at home.

We continued to engage with our whole school project of ‘Invisible Strings.’  All pupils made a special gift for an important person they have an invisible string connection to, we hope you liked them.  We have also been summarising some of our favourite parts of the book; making connections to our own interests and experiences.  We also looked at some of the interesting vocabulary with the text and discussed this in more detail.

Mull Clan have also started to explore Rights Respecting School and the UNCRC whilst building our class charter.  Our class charter will be our agreed class rules.  Our pupils came up with some really thoughtful suggestions for how they would like our classroom to: feel like, sound like and look like.  We will continue to reflect on and review our class charter once we move to our new home at Calderwood.

 

Please keep on checking your individual Seesaw accounts for day to day learning.

Mrs Robertson

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