Category: Bramble

Learning about Scotland in Bramble Clan

This term our learning has been focussed on Scotland.

In writing, we have been learning how to write Haiku poems.  After learning and practising the rules, we decided to write Haiku poems based on a Scottish theme.  We created a tartan design as a background to our poems, taking care to follow the line patterns and shapes commonly found on tartan.  These are displayed on our clan area wall and we hope to share them with you when you come to visit us next week when we share our learning.

In reading, we have listened to and read lots of Scottish stories and texts and have been understanding and reciting Scottish Poems for our poetry competition. We have learnt a variety of Scottish words such as dreich, bairn and fankle.  We gathered a list of words together and matched them up to the correct meaning.  Some of the scots words have made us really laugh like bahookie, crabbit and keek.

In P.E, we have been working together with Bluebell clan to learn Scottish country dances.  We used skills in resilience, tolerance, co-ordination and stamina to support us in learning these dances.  We have learnt the Canadian Barn dance, Gay Gordons, St Bernards Waltz and the Flying Scotsman.  We have enjoyed this learning and have realised it is fun but exhausting too!

In outdoor P.E, we have been learning to play traditional outdoor games such as rock, paper, scissors, hoop and Peevers.  We are learning to play games that need as little resources as possible that we can play together at school or home and we are using our creativity skills to come up with new rules and games.  We have loved learning and playing these games together and have shown great sportsmanship, teamwork and creativity.

We have been learning about the life of Mary, Queen of Scots and have been investigating all the key moments in her life.  We learned about where and when she was born, about James V, how she became Queen at a very young age and about her life in France.  We worked with Bluebell and thistle to learn about her early life.  We have used our researching skills to find out more using devices and books we have borrowed from a local library.  We have been creating a timeline of all the important events in Mary’s life and have chosen different ways to share what we have found out.  We have chosen to draw pictures, build models, write birth/death announcements and created drama freeze frames with added captions which we have then collated and added to our timeline displayed in class.  We are enjoying the freedom of choice in sharing our learning in different ways and seeing our work added to the timeline as we learn more about Mary’s life.

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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.

 

FAO Parent of Primary 5 pupils – Bramble & Thistle Clans

Your child has been recently involved with a music initiative called ‘Artistic Rhythms’ with Limelight Music. They have been learning and creating music inspired by world artworks from 3 countries in 3 continents – Tanzania, Brazil and Scotland. These countries have been chosen for their rich cultural heritage, which often brings the art forms of dance, music, poetry, rhythm and visual art together.

The block of learning is due to come to an end and the last session will be held on Tuesday 7th February. While I appreciate the short notice and other opportunities to visit school that week are already in place, Limelight would like to invite you in to share what your children have been learning. We will record the final sessions for any parents unable to attend and this will be shared at our ‘Caledonian Clan Celebration’ event.

There are two sessions, your child will know whether they participate in the first group before break or the second group after break.

Session 1 – 10.00 – 10.25
Session 2 – 11.15 – 11.45

We look forward to sharing this amazing learning and welcome you to join in if you wish.

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 

Primary 1 Scottish Poems

Primary 2 Scottish Poems

Primary 3 Scottish Poems

Primary 4 Scottish Poems

 

Second Level 

Primary 5 Scottish Poems

Primary 6 Scottish Poems

Primary 7 Scottish Poems

Bramble at Christmas

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

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Calderwood Primary Presents Christmas Around the World

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).

Cosy Corner Club – Upper Challenge 1

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 👨‍🍳

Assembly and Narrative Writing in Bramble

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.#

 

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