Ben Lawers – Page 4 – Calderwood Primary and Nursery

Calderwood Basketball

What a year it has been for our very first Basketball Teams. We have been lucky enough to have not just ONE but TWO teams competing this year – KNICKS & LAKERS

Mrs Morrison and Mrs Robertson have been so proud of how every team member has developed throughout this past year. We have demonstrated fantastic teamwork and an abundance of core basketball skills. Through participating in our conferences at WCHS and Armadale Academy, we have also been able to demonstrate excellent sportsmanship, resilience and utter determination.

Our Knicks have one final conference to attend and will hopefully progress onto the silver playoff weeks – GO KNICKS!

Thank you to all parents who have come along to support us over these past few months!

Championing Coding: National Robotarium

The Bens had a phenomenal opportunity to take a trip to the newly-opened National Robotarium. Ben Lomond and Ben Lawers had the most amazing day being ambassadors for our school, showing off their robotics and coding knowledge, and exploring new AI technologies.

Please see the Sway created by Ben Lomond all about their trip:

Go to this Sway

Euro Quiz WL

A huge well done to our teams who competed in the West Lothian Euro Quiz this week. They represented our school fantastically. We are so proud of you!

P5 – 7: Champion Conversation Helpers Sign Up

The Bens Go Engineering!

At Calderwood we pride ourselves in being at the cutting edge of practice, pedagogy and research. With this in mind, we are currently working with Alana Wilks at Heriot-Watt as part of our Engineering IDL topic.

We are taking part in a number of activities designed by Alana, which will stimulate skills and knowledge around the topic of engineering. In order to further research in this field we hope that parents and guardians would fill out online forms and support our pupils in home learning engineering tasks. Alana’s research topic is ‘The perception of engineering in children and parents from ethnic minority backgrounds‘ and the online forms are around this topic. We would be hugely grateful if as many Bens’ Parents and Guardians could explore the online forms and home learning.

There are two forms to fill out:

Watch this space to see some of the activities and thinking from the Bens displayed shortly!

Ben Lawers – Scottish Myths and Legends

Ben Lawers have been learning about Scottish myths and legends and showing their learning through a creative digital project. Inspired by Netflix, pupils have been working in groups to turn their chosen myth and legend into a documentary series. They have been working on designing and editing skills to create a high quality home page, and their acting skills to share their learning through video. At home, pupils could access their work through their OneDrive/OneJotter and present their work.

Scottish Recital – Clan Winners

Last Friday we celebrated Burns by reciting poems in our clans. The children were absolutely amazing! The hard work, perseverance and confidence was excellent to see, whether on Teams, See Saw or in person. A huge thank you to our families to supporting our children to learn and perform in their own way.

Each clan voted for their winner. Congratulations to our clan winners below. If your child was a winner you are invited to watch your child compete and recite their poem in front of the judges tomorrow.

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!

Ben Lawers – working with parents for our European Context

Ben Lawers will soon be taking part in Euroquiz, a national competition for primary 6 children. With this, pupils will begin learning about all European countries including their; geography, history, political affaires and culture. To extend their learning, we would love to invite any parents or carers who have experiences of different European countries to share their knowledge with the clan.

Please contact the school office if you can help us: 01506 280060 or wlcalderwood-ps@westlothian.org.uk

Burns Poetry Competition

At Calderwood we currently have a Scottish focus for learning. All clans will participate in a Scottish/Burns Poetry competition in clan. All children will be encouraged to participate in their own way – whether that is filmed, performed to their clan or to their champion on 27th January. The finalists will be put forward to a whole school competition on Friday 3rd February.

Please see below the options of poems the children can choose to learn.

Early and First Level