Category: Ben Lawers
The Bens @ Camp
What a way to end the term! This week we were lucky enough to get out to Lowport at Xcite Linlithgow to spend the day splashing about on the canal in canoes and working through some challenges as a team.
We all thoroughly enjoyed canoeing 🛶 on the canal. It took us a bit of time to figure out how to move the boats effectively but eventually managed forwards and backwards to play some fun games. We had fun, we laughed and got soaked.
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The first challenge being about listening to each others ideas and coming up with solutions to quite a simple challenge, pass the ball to each other without dropping it. This was much more challenging that initially thought. After some time, some great (some not so great) suggestions, the team worked out that concentration, communication and listening to each other was absolutely key. Â Â
Next the challenge, called ‘Bang Grid’, tested memory, perseverance and communication. We started out the challenge on a grid of unmarked squares. After standing on the square the group discovered whether it was a safe square or BANG square. If we stepped on the bang square we had to return to the beginning. Eventually we all worked together to direct each team member across.
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Another challenge was to get all the water in the tub. However, a series of obstacles and challenges were set and the groups worked hard using the communication skills they had learned to be successful. Some clear leaders shone through and it was very apparent that our practice of STEM in school helped in the engineering part of the challenge.
Lastly, how to communicate without talking. Some amazing gestures and strategies to arrange ourselves along a bench without falling off. We had to arrange ourselves in order of height, month of birth and an animal of choice.
Overall a cracking few days where memories have been made!
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Even our champions had fun!
Bens at C in the Park
Dear parent/ carer,
Ben Lawers and Ben Lomond have been creating some craft enterprise projects for C in the Park. We would love them to help out for half an hour on Friday. Please complete the form below if they can:
Kind regards,
Miss Christie & Mrs Clarkson
Clan Changeover Transition Challenge 1: Clan Capsule
Calderwood Clan Championships
Term 4 Learning Letters
Term 4 in the Bens
Last term, to begin our celebration of British Science Week 2022, the Ben Clans created a STEM takeover for each Clan in our school! The groups created a variety of lessons to deliver to the younger clans. Tay Clan learned about the skeleton, Rannoch Clan learned all about space and our solar system, Ness created scrap robots and used a sphero to move the robot, Bluebell Clan looked at the layers of the Earth and Bramble focussed on food chains in our oceans. Mull, Shetland and Orkney developed an understanding of space, star constellations and the universe.
The experience generated a lot of discussion around earth, space and the universe, informing the direction of learning for this term.
Our cross curricular topic this term is science based and will be looking at the origins of life and the habitability of earth and other planets. We began this week by watching a short clip narrated by David Attenborough about the tree of life and then researched the evolution of a penguin, inputting our research onto Padlet. Please click here to see our research.
Alongside this, we will also began understanding the different viewpoints offered in the creation stories from different world religions. We started this week with the Christian creation story and began to understand that there are similarities with that and the creation story in Judaism. We created our own versions of the Judeo-Christian creation story using powerpoint, imovies including greenscreen and SWAY.
Literacy
We are beginning to learn about the features and structure of narrative writing. We have been exploring our reading books to develop our understanding of the orientation, complication and resolution found within this genre of text. This week, we had a go at writing a narrative based around a theme of racing. We looked at a good example and deconstructed it so we could understand how to write one ourselves. One of the Bens wrote a story called ‘The Horse Race’. It is a good example as it has a clear orientation stating who, when and where; the complication is clear and includes direct speech and accurate punctuation and the resolution explains what happens and solves the problem, bringing the story to a conclusion.
We are excited about the term ahead and look forward to sharing with you soon. Watch this space!!
The Bens 🙂
Calderwood Tours – Ben Lawers/Ben Lomond
Term 4 Calderwood Careers: P4-6
Calderwood Can: 11/03/22
Our Ben Lawers and Lomond Clans started British Science Week by organising and teaching a Science Friday Takeover with all our clans.
They nominated children from each clan for a certificate for their contribution and participation in the science tasks!
Congratulations everyone and thank you to our Ben Clans for organising such a successful event.