Tay clan have been making Christmas baubles for our Christmas craft fundraiser. We got to decide on the creation we wanted to make and what treats we wanted to put inside. Some of our clan have created baubles for their pets. To advertise our Christmas baubles we have created sways. Please take a look at our Sways below.
You can purchase them on Friday 17th December at a price of £2.50 each.
Today a member of our Ben Lomond Clan had the special privilege of announcing the start of the Sumdog Maths Competition to all our Clans during our Calderwood Connects.
This Competition is open to all primary aged children in West Lothian Council. It began today (26.11.21) and will run until Thursday 2nd December. All members of our Calderwood Community can access Sumdog by clicking here and using their unique username and password. Our School Code is calderwood2.
Within minutes of the competition opening we had a member of our Ben Lawers Clan on the leader board! We very much hope this was the start of a very exciting trend for our Calderwood Community – good luck and happy competing.
Leader board so far …
Mull, Shetland & Orkney
1 – Dylan S
2 – Max
3 – Leah
Bluebell & Bramble
1 – Rachel
2 – Euan
3 – Poppy S
3- Amel
Ness, Rannoch, Tay
1 – Cameron Fe
2 – Max
3 – Ananya
Bens
1 – Belle
2 – Mateo
3 – Jaxon
Ness, Rannoch and Tay clan have been learning about COP26 together, finding out what it stands for, what it is, why it is happening, and what it means for us and have been learning about climate change with Miss Christie in our STEM lessons. Through our learning, we wanted to explore climate change even further.
Today, Ness, Rannoch and Tay clan were visited by Miss Connor, our RAISE Primary Science Development Officer in West Lothian, who gave us an introduction to the science behind climate change.
We discussed what the words climate and climate change meant and why climate change is happening. We then looked more deeply into greenhouse gases that are released into the atmosphere such as carbon dioxide, learning about the links between CO2 and climate change.
Following this discussion, we all carried out an experiment to see if we ‘could see CO2’. After making predictions of what we might see happening in the experiment, we added sugar to a test tube of warm water and mixed it till the sugar had dissolved. We then added some yeast to the mixture before, finally, placing a balloon over the top of the test tube. We waited for approximately 10 minutes to see what might happen. We found that the balloon inflated, showing that a gas had been created. This helped us to understand how carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere and trapped, causing the planet to become warmer. We really enjoyed carrying out the experiment and checking our predictions.
After completing the experiment, we discussed why climate change matters to us and what we can do to help. We look forward to looking deeper into this in the coming weeks. Thank you so much to Miss Connor for allowing us to learn and think more about climate change.
#WL_STEM
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.
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.
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!
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