Livingston School and Community Sports
Please click the link above to find out more about after school community sport clubs available for your children.
Category: Calderwood Curriculum
Into Calderwood – Shetland Clan in Calderwood
Shetland Clan have said goodbye to East Calder Primary and are ready for their new adventure in Calderwood! Over the past five weeks we have learnt new things, made lots of new friends and explored different situations in our play. Most importantly, we have had great fun doing it! We are so excited to continue our adventure in our new school.
As part of our transition into our new school, during writing, Shetland Clan drew themselves in Calderwood. We developed our understanding of how to share feelings and ideas through pictures. We focussed on adding detail to our pictures, ensuring what we drew was relevant and specific. Some of us even labelled the different parts of our picture. We also discussed the use of capital letters, full stops and finger spaces during this. With support, Shetland Clan even wrote a sentence about their drawing (and added their own title)! Miss Greig was very impressed with their determination and focus.
As I’m sure you can see from these drawings, our Clan can’t wait to be in Calderwood together. We have had a very successful start to the school year in East Calder and are ready for our new and exciting adventure in Calderwood.
Thank you for your commitment and continued support,
Miss Greig and Shetland Clan
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
Invisible String Adventure
Learning Intention: I can use adjectives to describe a setting.
This week as part of our Invisible string topic, Bluebell clan choose a destination they would most love to visit. With a partner, we researched our chosen destination on the netbooks looking at real life photographs.
Within our Calderwood Communicates lesson, we identified what an adjective is and used lots of different adjectives to describe what we might see and hear at our destination. Bluebell Clan thought of lots of amazing adjectives such as:
- Deep blue sea
- Crunchy leaves
- Birds twitting
- Splashing waterfall
We then wrote a postcard to someone we are connected to and including adjectives to describe our destination.
Hope you have a lovely September break and looking forward to seeing you all on Wednesday in our new Calderwood school.
STEM – Into Calderwood
This week we have been extending our skills, knowledge and understanding through exploration, investigation and play in STEM.
In Orkney, Mull and Shetland we have been learning about toys whizzing faster or slower down a ramp, depending on the angle of the ramp and the force applied by little hands. We have lots of great photos to show us learning through play and collaborating with others in our gallery. I wonder if you could explore: ‘how does the surface of a ramp (whether it is rough, shiny, smooth or bumpy) change the speed or distance a toy travels?’ at home. You could give it a go with a car, train, bus, lorry, any mode of transport which takes your fancy or even see if this movement changes if the toy doesn’t have moving wheels. We can’t wait to see how you get on!
In Bramble and Bluebell we put on imaginary wellies and headed off to the beach to extend our learning about under the sea to explore food chains at the seaside. We learned new vocabulary such a predator, prey and tides. We applied this new knowledge through imaginative play and games outdoors and had such fun doing this! We also took time to sort different types of animal and plant we would find at the seaside and learned a bit more about carnivores and herbivores at the shoreline. If you want to extend your learning you could click here to find out more about rockpools. We can’t wait to hear about your research next week, in Calderwood!
In Ness we were imaginary intrepid explorers in the Amazon Rainforest this week. Last week we managed to conceal ourselves well enough to go unnoticed on the Amazon Rainforest’s floor; as we lay in hiding we watched Capybaras grazing, Caimans lurking in the water nearby and Goliath Tarantulas hiding in their burrows until nightfall. This week we fashioned camouflage from cocoa tree leaves and, when satisfied with our disguises, steeled ourselves to venture out of our hiding spot into the Understorey. Our first encounter was with a Praying Mantis, hunting prey with deadly precision. We had a few too many close calls with a jaguar so decided to make a speedy getaway into the Canopy Layer ready to explore further in Calderwood, next week!
In Rannoch we donned our imaginary rock pooling gear and waterproof jackets (to make sure we didn’t get splashed in the spray zone!) to explore the intertidal zone. We clambered to high ground as tide rushed in and the wave action caused conditions like a washing machine and as the tide rushed out we watched as crabs burrowed into soft sand and hid in small holes in the rocks. Through this imaginary exploration we were able to understand the specialist adaptions afforded to animals and plants which reside in this extreme environment. We used this newly-acquired understanding to put our sorting skills to the test – deciding which animals and plants would live in the high, mid and low tide zones. At home could you explore the types of food webs and chains which can be found in these environments and share all your great ideas with your adults in school next week, in Calderwood!
In Tay we built bridges to round off our amazing research into types of bridge and bridges in the world around us. You can find some great shots of us with our bridges in the gallery. We have had great fun exploring shapes which make a bridge stronger and the sorts of problems civil engineers need to overcome to build structurally sound bridges. We think the smiles on our faces definitely show how proud we were when applying our research!
In Ben Lomond and Ben Lawers we explored the concept of Algorithms. We learned that algorithms are sets of precise instructions used with digital technology. We then extended our understanding, and put our coding skills to the test, by creating our own written algorithms for different tasks. We had great fun acting out these instructions to check how precise they really were. You could explore this further at home by using free online coding games – we can’t wait to see how you get on next week, in Calderwood!
In Calderwood – Community Video Calls Request
Champion Conversations: STEM
One Trusted Champion
One Trusted Champion
At Calderwood Health and Wellbeing is at the heart of our school. We strive to build positive relationships and create a nurturing environment for all pupils to have the best opportunities to learn.
As part of our transition Into Calderwood, over the next two weeks we will be introducing our Trusted Champion Approach.
A Trusted Champion is an adult at school chosen by your child. Someone your child feels they can talk to about anything, supports them, listens to them and has their best interests at heart.
Your child will have the opportunity to book an appointment with their Trusted Champion whenever they need it.
The Wellbeing Indicators
Every child or young person should feel safe, healthy, achieving, nurtured, active, respected, responsible and included.
These eight indicators help make sure everyone – children, parents, and the people who work with them have a common understanding of wellbeing.
The eight wellbeing indicators connect and overlap. When considered together the different elements of wellbeing give the whole picture of a child’s or young person’s life at a particular point in time.
A child’s or young person’s wellbeing is influenced by everything around them. It is up to all of us as parents, teachers and other agencies to work together to promote, support and safeguard the wellbeing of all of our children and young people. Children and young people have different experiences and needs at different times in their lives. Understanding how this affects their wellbeing, and providing the right support when they need it, helps them grow and develop and reach their full potential.
Our children will therefore use these indicators at school to self-report on how their wellbeing throughout the year through our ‘Wellbeing Check In’s’. Follow up Trusted Champion Conversations and support will be offered for those who need it.
Because #CalderwoodCares !
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
