Category: Calderwood Counts
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.
Building Our Calderwood Curriculum
Orkney Clan’s Numeracy
Wow! I can’t believe that’s us five weeks in already and it was our last day at East Calder Primary School today. We have such an exciting few weeks coming up as we will be settling into our new school building and classroom. For this blog Orkney would love to share our learning in numeracy with you.
We have been practising our number recognition, number formation and counting skills. The children have enjoyed learning outdoors, playing smartboard games and engaging with various number activities. We went outdoors and used chalk to make games of hopscotch. Orkney Clan had so much fun practising their number formations and hopping! I was very impressed. We have also been practising subitizing by looking at dot patterns. This is where the children try to identify the number of dots in a set by quickly looking at them. They are very good at being able to discuss the different ways that they noticed the dots too. If you want to practise at home, dominoes are brilliant for this.
Orkney Clan are going to continue to develop these skills in numeracy because it will help them with their understanding of number. They have been very engaged and I am so proud of what they have managed to achieve so far.
I hope you all enjoy your well-deserved September break.
Thank you for your continued support,
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
