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
Second Level
Bramble clan have been exploring Christmas traditions in Spain and comparing them to Scottish traditions. We found out where Spain is in the world, the colours of the Spanish flag, the food they eat at Christmas, the decorations they display at Christmas, what epiphany is, the important dates in December and Christmas Spanish Vocabulary. We learnt to sing a Spanish song called Feliz Navidad and sang it at the Christmas around the world assembly.
We were learning how to write a persuasive text. We learnt about the structure, the language features such as sensing verbs and time sequence words and boastful language such as out of this world and first-class. We decided to create our own toy for Christmas. We worked in groups with each of us taking on a different roles- creative director, team leader and resource manager. We then had to plan and write a persuasive text on our toy and then create a persuasive advert. This could be a poster, video or song. We really enjoyed this task.
“It was really really fun to do” – Isla S
“My favourite part was making the models” – Isla I
We had a fab time in December celebrating Christmas with our Clan Christmas lunch and party. Fun was had by all.
Merry Christmas to all from Bramble Clan and Mrs Scobie
Primary 2-7 children invite one family member along to the performance below in our Arena. We look forward to seeing you.
If you are attending both performances you can wait in the Arena between times.
(Children should wear Christmas jumper/ accessorise on top and uniform on bottoms).
A group of our upper school pupils were tasked with a challenge to fully research what activities are available for kids in Livingston. They had to work in a small group to find total costs, bus times and costs before voting on the best place to go. They invited Miss Burton to listen to their ideas and pitched their proposition. All of the children were able to convince Miss Burton that a visit to our local cinema via local transport and to visit Hot Flame was the best option. The pupils created their own itinerary using the information they had gathered, were involved in the risk assessment and one of our pupils was responsible for booking of the trip by phone.
This group are now our ‘Upper Skills’ ambassadors and some are looking forward to leading the next challenge… Ready, Steady, Cook 👨🍳
Bramble clan have been very busy, preparing for our first Bramble clan assembly at Calderwood. We have all worked together, as a fantastic team, to create our assembly. We all took on different jobs and roles to prepare for this and then brought it all together, to showcase our learning about the Brain, and practised really hard. We had invites to make, props to make, costumes to organise, the script to write, words to practise, displays to make and songs to learn and sing, with actions. We have loved using the stage in the arena and have really enjoyed acting and performing. We have had a fantastic time working on our assembly together and have enjoyed sharing our learning with you all.
We have been exploring traditional tales, fables, myths and legends in our IDL lessons and have learnt what these are and what the main features are. In writing, we delved deeper and looked at the traditional tale of The Little Mermaid. We found that the original story of The Little Mermaid is very different from the one we already know. Together, as a clan, we retold the story using our own words, making sure we used the correct structure – orientation, complication and resolution. Our challenge, was to use this story as a basis for our own. We could use the story and change the characters or setting to make it different from the original. Instead of the Little Mermaid, some of us changed the character to an Arctic Fox, a curious turtle or a dragon. We kept some parts of the story the same and changed others. We created 24 different stories from the one tale!
We worked hard on our stories, focussing on a different section each week. We wrote each section and then re-read it, and edited parts of it. We enjoyed editing our stories- scoring out parts or adding in parts, showing- and feeling what it is like to be an author.
In IDL lessons, we learnt more about the book-making process and researched the different roles involved in this process. We found out that there are many different roles involved in the process such as the author, illustrator, designer, editor and publisher. After researching this we moved on to making our own books. We took the story we had been creating in our writing lessons and designed what we would like our book of this to be like and what materials we would like to use to make it.
We have been busy creating our own books to include our own creative story that we have been writing. It was very exciting to transform our work from a piece of writing in our jotter to our own book that we can read to others. We are super proud of our work.#
Dear parent/ carer,
If your child attends the choir rehearsals at lunch time or at Monday afterschool club, they are invited to take part in the following community events: https://forms.office.com/r/ByLWXEXhH6
Kind regards,
Miss Burton
Literacy
In reading and writing, we have been looking at the different building blocks that make up a story. We have looked at the structure of a story, making sure we know all the names of the different sections and what should be included within each of these. We even came up with our own actions to remind us what to include. We looked at this further in our reading books and, after reading, we used the story mountain to show the plot of the story.
This week, we have been looking at the setting of a story. After reading, we either drew or built the setting from our story, giving evidence from the text to back up our ideas. We really enjoyed using Kapla, the building blocks and lego to build our settings.
Numeracy
In numeracy, we have been learning different strategies to support us when adding and subtracting. We have been learning about the ‘round and adjust’ strategy and found this was an efficient way to add numbers if one of the numbers is close to a multiple of 10. Some of us realised this might be a strategy that gets us to the answer quicker than if we used a different one. We will continue to explore selecting the most efficient strategy in order to answer a calculation quickly.
We have also explored addition and subtraction word problems. We used the method RUCSAC to support us in solving problems.
R-Read
U-underline the words
C-circle the numbers
S-select the correct operation
A-answer the question
C-check the answer.
We worked in partners to solve the word problems. Some us decided to act out the word problems which helped us to fully understand how to solve them. We will continue to develop this in our learning.
IDL
In IDL, we have been learning about Myths and Legends. We have been working across the clans and visiting other clan rooms and champions to develop our relationships with each other. We have been able to work with others in our area and get to know each other better. In each clan room we have been exploring what a fable, myth or a legend is and then listening to different stories from our champions. We enjoyed listening to the story of the Kelpies this week and enjoyed building a scene from the story and including information about the origin of the story. We have realised that stories change over time and are very different from the original!
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