This week in Schiehallion we’ve been writing Halloween poems. Our aim was to write riddle poems using six clues to describe a Halloween object. The reader would then have to guess what they think the poem is about.
We used our descriptive language skills that we developed last term to help write our clues. I think you’ll agree that the clan did a great job, and that the poems are a very enjoyable read.
In Ben Lawers we have had a wonderful time doing lots of activities around Halloween. We created Halloween poems in writing in the form of riddles and had a lot of fun guessing each others. In numeracy we have been solving and making our own Halloween code breakers, solving problems and matching the answers to a codex to reveal spooky words. We have been inspired by Vincent Van Gogh, who shares a birthday with our clan member Aarudh, and created Halloween versions of some of his most famous pieces. Finally we have loved creating a “Halloween Hut” outside our classroom full of our own crafts and sharing our Halloween costumes this Friday.
We have had a great start back from the October break in Burn’s clan. We have been developing our public speaking skills, as we get ready for our clan assembly. We have also started a new topic in math’s, we have been exploring different strategies to help us develop our addition and subtraction. We have engaged in fun games and challenges to enhance our understanding of these strategies. In writing this week we did a narrative cold piece. This means we had no help from our clan champion, however we all did fantastic and met lots of our writing targets. We played music and used visuals to give us some inspiration for our writing piece which was really fun.
This week, Rannoch clan had the opportunity to share their learning about descriptive writing. At our Share the Learning event, we invited parents and carers along to demonstrate our hard work and show them all the learning which has went in to making our description writing so amazing!
We demonstrated the text map we had learned about Wolf Spiders, showed them how we structure a description text and explained what needs to go in each section. We also had the chance to show our Communicates and I’m an Author jotter to our adults. We loved reading them our favourite pieces writing and showing how much we have learned from our cold piece to our hot piece!
Thank you to everyone who came along!
Tummel Clan have been very busy exploring their namesake habitats, the Tummel River and Loch. To consolidate our learning, we upcycled materials to make a three-dimensional model of a scene called a diorama. We had to apply what we had learned about the habitat such as the climate, plants and animals. We also had to plan, share tasks and collaborate on the construction as we worked together in groups to complete our dioramas!
Last week, our P3-7 clans took part in Financial Education Sessions, kindly delivered by Money Advice Scotland.
These sessions looked at Introduction to Money, Budgeting for Events, and Banking and Borrowing.
The children thoroughly enjoyed these sessions and learning about such an important subject.
Please see the attached regarding a collection for West Lothian Foodbank.
Thank you for your support.
On Friday morning, Baird Clan came together to share their learning with their families and the rest of the school community through their Clan Connects.
The children told us all about the Cost of the School Day and their important role in deciding how our Participatory Budget is spent. They did an amazing presentation and we are so proud of each and every one of our learners.
Baird Clan then spent some time with their adults, sharing more of their learning.
Thank you to all parents and carers who were able to come along to support Baird Clan on Friday morning.
As part of Maths Week Scotland, Rannoch clan have been using their measuring skills to conduct an experiment! Within our IDL topic called ‘Calderwood Clan Explorers’, Rannoch have been learning about Loch Rannoch, the water cycle and the big question ‘why does it rain so much in Scotland?’.
To answer this question, we decided to make our own rain gauges to measure the amount of rain that falls here in Calderwood. We constructed these using recycled plastic bottles and used our knowledge of measuring to create a scale on the side of the bottle in centimetres. We then placed our bottles somewhere safe in the playground where we can record, explore and analyse the data next week.
This week, we learned about a famous artist called Wassily Kandinsky. We learned that he is well-known for creating abstract paintings using shapes, lines and colour. In Numeracy, we have been exploring place value, with pupils learning to build numbers to 1,000 and 10,000. Inspired by Kandinsky’s “Several Circles”, we created abstract art using size to represent our chosen number, broken into its individual place value parts.
We also had a lot of fun creating our own origami animal bookmarks to celebrate this year’s Maths Week theme, ‘Maths Tales’. Origami involves turning a flat piece of paper into a 3D object, requiring lots of spatial awareness! We also discussed the fractions involved as we folded the paper into halves and quarters. As we creased the paper, we realised how important the relationship between the lines and angles created are to the final design of the origami creation!
