Category: Creative Calderwood

Primary Engineering – If You Were an Engineer What Would You Do?

Way back in March Calderwood was abuzz with Engineering…
IDL Topics, Calderwood Connects, Dragon’s Dens and Clan Presentations all led to our children taking part in a National Engineering Competition. The children were posed the question: If You Were an Engineer What Would You Do? My goodness we could’ve powered the inventions they dreamed up with the creativity, thinking and work which went into all the competition entries!
We want to give a special mention to the following people, who were recognised by the competition judges:
Ella – Highly Commended – Top Shelf Grabber
Mason – Highly Commended – See in the Dark Goggles
Lochie – Winner – Flying Shoes
Lucy – Highly Commended – Things to help us
Kiera – Highly Commended – The On Time Roller Skates
Charlotte – Winner – Solar Plane
Mhairi – Highly Commended – The Secret School for Girls
Rachel – Winner – Flying Car
Anveeta – Highly Commended – The Plastic Rocket
Ananya – Highly Commended – The Invisible Cloak
The Champions, children and families attended the Awards Ceremony on Thursday 2nd June, in the Engineering building at the University of Edinburgh, to celebrate Highly Commended and Winning entries to the competition.
We can’t wait to celebrate with everyone at our next Calderwood Connects but for the meantime – keeping STEMing and always look for that engineering opportunity!

Calderwood Choir

Our Calderwood Choir have had a fantastic year so far, performing at various events.  They performed at various Christmas events such as the Nativity, Christmas Craft Fair and the switch on of the Calderwood Christmas lights.  In Term 3, we performed a set of Scottish songs for the poetry recital and for our Calderwood Connects.  The choir’s performance of ‘Caledonia’ was just beautiful and some emotional tears were shed from some audience members who were so moved by the rendition of this song.

The children have been requesting songs to sing at rehearsals and have enjoyed having a go at their favourites.  The choir have now decided on the songs they wish to learn and perform and we will be working on these throughout the rest of Term 4, getting them performance ready for end of term events.

The choir continue to display commitment, dedication and motivation during rehearsals and performances and have developed their confidence to sing in front of our community.  The children give it their all and the joy in singing is palpable.

We can’t wait to perform for you again this term.

In the meantime, have a look on twitter to hear some snippets of our performances.

 

Oceans IDL

At Calderwood, our pupils get autonomy over what they want to learn. We try to ensure we listen and follow along with what they find interesting.

Through  This Mural (click to see what we said at our last pupil planning meeting)

We decided we would learn about Oceans. Through our planning meeting, we looked at different sub-topics and thought about what we already knew and what we wanted to find out more about:

 

 

This week, we looked at where the worlds ocean were and used Google Earth to locate, name and label different Ocean Areas and seas. Mural allows us to work collaboratively on the same document. We used technology, map skills and research skills to complete our geography challenge.

We also found out that the river closest to Calderwood is the River Almond and it runs into the North Atlantic Ocean.

 

 

We think we did a great job at our first attempt – what do you think? Spot any mistakes?

 

We are looking forward to exploring more about ore world’s ocean as we move forward through the term.

FAO Parent of Primary 5 pupils – Bramble & Thistle Clans

Your child has been recently involved with a music initiative called ‘Artistic Rhythms’ with Limelight Music. They have been learning and creating music inspired by world artworks from 3 countries in 3 continents – Tanzania, Brazil and Scotland. These countries have been chosen for their rich cultural heritage, which often brings the art forms of dance, music, poetry, rhythm and visual art together.

The block of learning is due to come to an end and the last session will be held on Tuesday 7th February. While I appreciate the short notice and other opportunities to visit school that week are already in place, Limelight would like to invite you in to share what your children have been learning. We will record the final sessions for any parents unable to attend and this will be shared at our ‘Caledonian Clan Celebration’ event.

There are two sessions, your child will know whether they participate in the first group before break or the second group after break.

Session 1 – 10.00 – 10.25
Session 2 – 11.15 – 11.45

We look forward to sharing this amazing learning and welcome you to join in if you wish.

The Ben’s IDL Showcase

Last week, the Ben’s took over the Discovery Den area.

They has been working on their IDL topic ‘Ancient Civilisations’ and had so much amazing work, they wanted to show it off and plan a school event. Here is what they had to say:

In 4 main groups, we chose our Civilisation of interest: Ancient Romans, Ancient Egyptians, the Aztecs and the Vikings.

We organised ourselves into sub-topics and worked for 5 weeks researching, learning, discussing, planning and creating beautiful, amazing pieces of work that demonstrated what we learned from our research.

We set wrote poems and stories, collected data, made PPT’s, cooked food, conducted science experiments, created art pieces, performed drama pieces and made videos.

We used our teamwork skills to work together to build a picture of what we discovered.

They invited members of staff and other clans around and presented beautifully and confidently, the learning and knowledge they had on their chosen topic. Well done Bens!

Caledonia Clan Celebration

This event is for all the Primary 1 – 7 Clans.

Leven, Linlithgow, Rannoch, Tay and Tummel Clans have their Clan Calderwood Connects this term, that families are invited to. These have a Scottish theme. Due to this, families might want to choose to attend one or the other of these events, or attend both.

Ben Lomond’s Christmas Festivities

The Bens have been incredibly busy with our festive celebrations!

We spent the afternoon making Christmas crafts for our friends and family: we made woolly hats, cards, jewellery, coasters and tiles.

We made our own ‘Aztec’ hot chocolate as part of our IDL topic on Ancient Civilisations. It was pure 100% dark chocolate powder with no sugar or milk. Most of us thought it was ‘bitter’, ‘disgusting’ and ‘terrible’, however a few people thought it was ‘amazing!’

 

 

We also celebrated our Christmas lunch together – the food was yummy and we were also amazing helpers – helping to serve the younger pupils!

 

We also enjoyed our Christmas party for which we planned the games, activities and playlist! We had a best dancer competition, best singer competition, hula hoop pass-the-parcel, corners, musical chairs and of course… party food!!

 

 

Our Christmas Around the World play was also one on Ben Lomond’s highlights! We chose the topic, wrote the script, designed the set, costumes and chose our song. It was directed and lead by the pupils and was a huge success – check out our vid here! https://sway.office.com/gm4BEjrfvmuvnQBw?ref=Link

 

It’s been an incredible year and we thank you for all your continued support.

 

Next term will be VERY exciting as we begin to think about leaving our Calderwood P7 Legacy behind.

 

For now, relax & enjoy the break!

 

Ben Lomond & Mrs McGarvey 🙂

Assembly and Narrative Writing in Bramble

Bramble clan have been very busy, preparing for our first Bramble clan assembly at Calderwood.  We have all worked together, as a fantastic team, to create our assembly.  We all took on different jobs and roles to prepare for this and then brought it all together, to showcase our learning about the Brain, and practised really hard.  We had invites to make, props to make, costumes to organise, the script to write, words to practise, displays to make and songs to learn and sing, with actions.  We have loved using the stage in the arena and have really enjoyed acting and performing.  We have had a fantastic time working on our assembly together and have enjoyed sharing our learning with you all.

We have been exploring traditional tales, fables, myths and legends in our IDL lessons and have learnt what these are and what the main features are.  In writing, we delved deeper and looked at the traditional tale of The Little Mermaid.  We found that the original story of The Little Mermaid is very different from the one we already know.  Together, as a clan, we retold the story using our own words, making sure we used the correct structure – orientation, complication and resolution.  Our challenge, was to use this story as a basis for our own.  We could use the story and change the characters or setting to make it different from the original.  Instead of the Little Mermaid, some of us changed the character to an Arctic Fox, a curious turtle or a dragon.  We kept some parts of the story the same and changed others.  We created 24 different stories from the one tale!

We worked hard on our stories, focussing on a different section each week.  We wrote each section and then re-read it, and edited parts of it.  We enjoyed editing our stories- scoring out parts or adding in parts, showing- and feeling what it is like to be an author.

 

In IDL lessons, we learnt more about the book-making process and researched the different roles involved in this process.  We found out that there are many different roles involved in the process such as the author, illustrator, designer, editor and publisher.  After researching this we moved on to making our own books.  We took the story we had been creating in our writing lessons and designed what we would like our book of this to be like and what materials we would like to use to make it.

We have been busy creating our own books to include our own creative story that we have been writing.  It was very exciting to transform our work from a piece of writing in our jotter to our own book that we can read to others.  We are super proud of our work.#

 

The Ben’s Book Covers

 

The Ben’s have been inspired by their favourite books to create book covers that are now displayed in the discovery den. They have been creative with their work, some using free hand painting and colouring, others tracing, and some clan members used technology to design their covers. They have used their own ideas of what it means to be successful as a means to set a standard at this task, all students have completed it above and beyond these expectations. At home, you could discuss what your favourite book is and why you have chosen this – you could even have another read of that book to remember why you love it so much.

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