Calderwood Can 10.03.23
Category: Clan News
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!
Calderwood Can Certificates- Friday 24th February
Well done to our learners who received a Calderwood Can Certificate this week! We are so proud of you all!
Oceans IDL
At Calderwood, our pupils get autonomy over what they want to learn. We try to ensure we listen and follow along with what they find interesting.
Through  This Mural (click to see what we said at our last pupil planning meeting)
We decided we would learn about Oceans. Through our planning meeting, we looked at different sub-topics and thought about what we already knew and what we wanted to find out more about:
This week, we looked at where the worlds ocean were and used Google Earth to locate, name and label different Ocean Areas and seas. Mural allows us to work collaboratively on the same document. We used technology, map skills and research skills to complete our geography challenge.
We also found out that the river closest to Calderwood is the River Almond and it runs into the North Atlantic Ocean.
We think we did a great job at our first attempt – what do you think? Spot any mistakes?
We are looking forward to exploring more about ore world’s ocean as we move forward through the term.
Caledonia Clan Celebration
Limelight Music in Primary 5
Calderwood Can Certificates-27.01.23
Well done to all learners who received a Calderwood Can Certificate this week!
Thistle loves Scotland
We have been really enjoying learning all about Scottish words and phrases. We have been creating some very special poems to share with our families at Calderwood Caledonia evening. We investigated the clans associated with our surnames and re-created their tartans.
We have been investigating famous scots and have focused as a whole clan on Mary, Queen of Scots. We have been learning about bias, exploring how people lived in the 1500’s and designing our own crests and shields. We are very excited for all our visitors to see our timeline we have created.
We have been exploring Scottish words and translating them into standard English, we loved hearing stories such as Clan MacWee and Mr Men come to Scotland.
Using Scottish maps we have explored co-ordinates and plotted cities, mountains, rivers and landmarks.
In PE, we have been learning skills such as rhythm, timing and the polka in Scottish Country Dancing. We have also been developing our understanding of tolerance and respect when dancing with new partners.
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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.
Bluebell- Scotland
Bluebell have been celebrating Scotland in lots of different ways this term.
We began this term thinking about ‘What makes Scotland great?’. We did some brainstorming with our learning partners before we carried out our own research. This supported our persuasive writing ‘To persuade someone to visit Scotland’. Bluebell Clan wrote fantastic persuasive pieces where they used lots of bossy verbs and powerful persuasive phrases. It definitely made Scotland seem like the best place in the world! We also learned about ‘Haikus’ and wrote our very own Scottish inspired Haikus that we will be on display for our Caledonia Clan Celebration on Thursday 9th of February. Alongside this, we learned about Robert Burns and recited different Scots poems which led to our Burn Competition. A huge well done to everyone who participated as you all showed great enthusiasm in performing your chosen poems.
In PE, we have been practising different types of Scottish dancing and we look forward to demonstrate this to you.
We have also participating in food technology this term. We started this off by baking shortbread! We made this in small groups where we used our team working skills to take turns and complete the recipe together. We used our communication skills to read the recipe and follow the instructions. We also used our numeracy and maths skills for adding and taking away as we measured the ingredients. We learned about the dangers and risks within a kitchen and discussed ways we can keep ourselves safe. Miss Ali tried our shortbread and she said it was absolutely delicious!
For our topic, we have been learning about the life of Mary Queen of Scots. We have had lots of opportunities for discussion of the events in Mary’s life. We have also had lots of opportunities to carry out our own research and work collaboratively in small groups. As a class, we are currently making our Mary Queen of Scots time line display where we all had different roles to play. Some of the tasks included; making a birth/ death announcement of Mary Queen of Scots, make a poster on the Rough Wooing, write a short diary page on how Mary felt traveling to France and drawing a map of Scotland and pin pointing the different places Mary had visited. Again, this will be on display in class for you to look at during the Caledonia Clan Celebration.
