Category: Calderwood Curriculum

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

Bring Your Own Device – Ben Lawers & Ben Lomond

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is an initiative offered across all West Lothian schools to give children the opportunity to safely use their own devices in school.

At all times, children will also have access to school devices such as netbooks and iPads, this is an opt in programme.

Please watch the video below that the children have made. If you would like your child to take part, please read and complete the contract with them. This will start on 19th October. 2021.

 

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

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