Clan News – Page 47 – Calderwood Primary and Nursery

Orkney Clan have had a fantastic and busy few weeks. It is clear that the children’s confidence has grown hugely with following the day to day routines. They especially enjoy our morning check-in where they find their name and then place it in a pot which best describes how they are feeling. Orkney Clan also love learning new things! An aspect of our learning that we would like to share with you is our learning in phonics.

This week has been very exciting because we have been introduced to some of our initial sounds. The children are learning two new sounds a day as part of a fast track introduction. This will ensure they have some understanding of all the sounds before we look at each sound in more detail after the September break. So far we have learned a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i and j. We have learned a character, sound and action for each of these letters. For example, the character for ‘a’ is Annie Apple and she makes an ‘a’ sound. The action is pretending to eat an apple while saying ‘a’. Maybe you could ask your child to tell you about the letters and the sound they make? Can your child spot any objects around the house that begin with any of these sounds?

One of the children’s favourite learning activities has been colouring in the letters and their characters. They have great discussions about the characters and what they might like. For example, someone asked if Clever Cat likes to eat carrots. It is fantastic to see some of the children choosing to practise writing letters for themselves too. Over the next few weeks we are going to have a look at the rest of our initial sounds. We are so excited to meet everyone else in Letterland.

Orkney Clan had an amazing dress down day today! I hope you have a great weekend and I am looking forward to seeing everyone again on Monday.

Miss Cunningham

Invisible Strings at Calderwood Primary

Musings from Mull 3/9/21

It has been another busy few weeks in Mull Clan. We have gotten to grips with our day to day routines and have demonstrated a confident attitude within our school environment.

Our big focus this week was an introduction to our initial sounds through the Letterland characters. Pupils have a fast track introduction to all the letters characters, their sounds and actions before we look at each sound in more detail after the September break. Have you heard of Harry Hat Man or Annie Apple yet? Ask your children to tell you all about them and the sound that they make.

We have also been continuing to practice our number recognition and counting skills. We have used smartboard games, playdoh and monster numbers to help us with a multi-sensory learning. We are going to be building on our subitizing skills with using dot patterns for quick identification of a number of items in a set. A set of dominoes are great for this if you want to practise at home.

We continued to engage with our whole school project of ‘Invisible Strings.’ All pupils made a special gift for an important person they have an invisible string connection to, we hope you liked them. We have also been summarising some of our favourite parts of the book; making connections to our own interests and experiences. We also looked at some of the interesting vocabulary with the text and discussed this in more detail.

Mull Clan have also started to explore Rights Respecting School and the UNCRC whilst building our class charter. Our class charter will be our agreed class rules. Our pupils came up with some really thoughtful suggestions for how they would like our classroom to: feel like, sound like and look like. We will continue to reflect on and review our class charter once we move to our new home at Calderwood.

Please keep on checking your individual Seesaw accounts for day to day learning.

Mrs Robertson

Calderwood Connects – 27/08/21

Our First Day at Calderwood Primary

Beyond the Dream – Shetland Week 1

It’s been lovely to welcome the children and parents of Shetland Clan to Calderwood Primary this week. I am so proud of how wonderfully the children have settled into life at school. They have worked hard to learn our daily routines, started to build strong, positive relationships with other Clan members and Champions, found their bearings in a new building and increased their independence with a variety of tasks as the week has progressed.

We have played lots of team games, had Clan discussions and enjoyed engaging in a range of play contexts to help us get to know each other better. Shetland Clan loved using their problem solving skills at the construction zone, developing their fine motor skills at the Funky Fingers station, displaying their creativity through imaginative play and exploring the sand and water trays.

We also had our very first STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths) session with Miss Christie. We explored the story of an adventurous mouse and made our very own rocket mice. We had to use our STEM brains to decide which bottles we could use to shoot our rockets into space. We had so much fun!

We’re looking forward to more learning adventures next week!

Have a lovely weekend.

Miss Greig