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.
Category: Clan News
Share the Learning – Rannoch
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 Dioramas
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!
Financial Education Sessions
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.
West Lothian Foodbank Collection
Please see the attached regarding a collection for West Lothian Foodbank.
Thank you for your support.
Baird Clan Connects
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.
Rannoch Clan – Maths Week Scotland
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.
Tummel Clan’s Creative Calculations
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!
Tay Clan – Maths Week Scotland
Tay clan have been exploring the water cycle, climate change, habitats and food chains through the context of rivers (our Tay clan namesake). This week we explored our key question ‘why does it rain so much in Scotland and where does it come from?’. We also discussed ‘what is weather and how does it exist?’, looking at where it comes from, how it forms clouds and why and how we measure rainfall.
We learnt about meteorologists and why they measure rainfall and why this is necessary. We decided to make our own rain gauges to measure the amount of rain that falls in our area. We used our measuring skills, that we have been learning in maths lessons, to support us to complete this challenge. We will explore how to collect, record and analyse our data in future lessons.
Leven Clan- Maths Week Scotland
This week as part of Maths Week Scotland, Leven Clan became Meteorologists!
Through our IDL topic – Calderwood Clan Explorers we have been learning about water, where it comes from and what creatures live in and around the water. The questions that everyone wanted to know was.. “Why does it rain so much at Calderwood?”.
In answer to this question we have explored the water cycle and why and how weather differs in different areas around the globe. We then used our knowledge of measurement to create a rain gauge from recycled plastic bottles.
Next week we will collect data from our rain gauges to measure how many centimetres of rain fall there has been.
