Today we were delighted to host the Primary Science Development Officers from authorities across Scotland. They were all given a tour of our school building and heard all about the amazing STEM learning which is going on every day at Calderwood Primary School!
Click here to see the Sway for yourself and catch up on the highlights from a Year of STEM at Calderwood.
The West Calder High School Cluster Cross Country Competition took place on 24th May 2022 and saw the children from Ben Lomond Clan take on 1.3km of undulating terrain. All the children in this Clan completed the race, hit the targets they had set for themselves and showed huge positivity throughout.
The results are in and we are delighted to announce that a child from Ben Lomond Clan came first in the Boys Race! As a result, they will be attending the Pan-West Lothian event next session to compete against the winners of the other Primary School Clusters.
Many thanks to Kat Stark and all at Active Schools West Calder for organising the event and supporting us on the day.
Below is everything you need to know about your child starting Primary 1 at Calderwood.
Welcome & Induction Pack
Welcome to Calderwood Primary 1
Parent Information Evening
Clan (class) formation
Calderwood Clans Formation 22_23
Play in Primary 1
Play in Primary 1 at Calderwood
Transition Project
We’re going on a Buddy Bear Hunt Transition Project
Weekly Home Transition Challenges
Rannoch clan have been learning about the different strategies we can use when multiplying and dividing such as making arrays, repeated addition/subtraction, skip counting and making equal groups.
This week, we explored the relationship between multiplication and division. We created arrays, using different items, to show multiplication calculations and learnt that if we swap the numbers round, we get the same answer. We explored even further and found that we could use the same array to find division facts. This led us to exploring fact families. We built arrays and found all the multiplication and division facts related to them and put these into our fact family houses.
We realised that a fact family is made up of 3 numbers and that we can solve division calculations if we know the related multiplication facts. This might help us to solve division calculations more quickly.
At Calderwood, digital technologies is at the heart of our curriculum as we believe it is a fundamental tool for supporting learning and providing pupils with the skills for life, learning and work. Therefore, we would like to offer the Primary 4s from Tay and Rannoch the opportunity to participate in ‘Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)’, where the pupils are permitted to bring their own personal device in to school to support their learning in the classroom.
The P4s from Tay and Rannoch have been discussing BYOD at school by exploring the risks and benefits for their learning. The pupils and champions have collectively created a BYOD charter that highlights the rules and expectations of using your own device. The pupils have also created a video to further explain what BYOD is and to demonstrate the rules that must be followed. Please take some time to read the charter and video we have created with your child. The video can be accessed through this link:
If you would like your child to participate in the BYOD programme, please fill out the form below by Wednesday 18th May 2022. Please get in touch if you have any questions regarding the BYOD programme.
While we were looking at the creation stories through the religious context, we also explored the scientific timeline of events leading to how life is today. Very interesting discussions ensued comparing and contrasting different explanations of the creation of the universe.
Below are the completed research challenges displaying learning from this. The paintings were created following a lesson on using watercolour as a medium for creating paintings.
Following our previous learning, we have built on this to explore how life develops on earth and the likelihood of finding other living beings in our solar system. We look at how we detect life on earth and linked this to our ‘Internet of Things’ learning through analysing data we have collected; Lux (light); Degrees (temperature); humidity and CO2 level.
We are excited to celebrate our very first Clan Championships on 26th May 1pm-3pm.
The activities our clans will participate in are:
Families are invited along to the event, we would request that we limit guests to two adults per family. As we start to move out of covid restrictions, towards whole school events, we want to support our children with this, as these events are very new experience for some of them.
On this date, children should wear their usual navy joggers/shorts, outdoor trainers and on top their house community colour:
It would be fantastic if families could join in and wear their family house colour too!
Below are some posters designed by our clans to share more information with you!
Please see below a social story for starting Primary 1 at Calderwood
Starting Primary 1 Social Story
