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.
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!
Halloween in Ben Lomond Clan
Ben Lomond Clan have been having a blast in clan this week with some spooky Halloween-themed activities.
We kicked things off by taking a look at Vincent Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ before adding our own Halloween twist to it. The children then crafted some amazing artwork inspired by this stunning piece, focusing on colour and creating texture with paint.
We also took on a Halloween Code Breaker challenge, in which we used our teamwork skills and knowledge of four-digit addition and subtraction to crack a fun Halloween joke. We really enjoyed the challenge!
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!
Halloween at Calderwood Social Stories
Almondvale Karate
Speech and Language Therapy: Parent Boardmaker Session & Parent Helpline
West Lothian Family Languages Event
Calderwood Primary Chronicle: 11/10/24
Every fortnight we will issue our chronicle to families via email and our blog.
All other information about Calderwood is on our blog and on Twitter we highlight our achievements.
Calderwood Calendar:
- Updated: 2024-25 Calendar
- 14/10/24-21/10/24: School closed: October Break (Nursery open)
- 22/10/24 – 24/10/24: West Lothian Food Bank Collection: Click here for more information.
- 24/10/24: 2:00pm – 3:00pm: Sharing the Learning: Leven, Rannoch & Tay: A visit to the clan room to find out about their Literacy context for learning and to look at your child’s jotters. One adult per child please. Please enter through the Glencoe Gate (car park gate) and meet in the playground. If you are running late please report to the office.
- 25/10/24: Halloween Dress Down Day: All clans: No masks please and school age-appropriate costumes. Primary 1 – 2 Clans Halloween Parties: See more information here.
- 28/10/24: After School Club Block 1 (P5-P7) starts: Successful applicants will receive a letter to notify them of a place.
- 29/10/24: Parent Council Halloween Discos P3-4 clans: 5:45-6:45pm – P5-7 clans: 7:00-8:00pm: See more information here.
- 30/10/24: Flu Vaccinations
- 01/11/24: 9:15-10:15am: Clan Connects: Doune: Doors Open 9:05am: An opportunity for our Doune children to share on stage their learning in the Arena and then adults can look at their jotters in the café. 2 adults per child.
Calderwood Communication:
- Parent Council: Halloween Sweetie Bags Fundraiser
- House Meeting: This week we had our first House Meeting. Find out more about it in this blog post.
- Financial Education Sessions in P3-7: Last week Money Advice Scotland visited our clans to support our numeracy curriculum. Click here to find out more.
Routines:
- Parking: There are spaces in our carpark for blue badge holders, only those with a blue badge should park in this space, and leave room for families to enter and exit their vehicle. There is no parking along the side of the building on the Nethershiel Road.
- Bikes/ scooters: A gentle reminder that the school cannot be held responsible for the safekeeping of bikes and scooters. We would recommend that bikes and scooters are locked during the school day. The community police team are visiting after the holidays and they will speak to the older clans about respecting others property.
Calderwood Cares:
- Sustainability Station & Community Cupboard: In our foyer we have a range of school uniform items and household supplies. You can find out more here.
- Blair Clan had our first Clan Connects of the session all about the Cost of the School Day and how we will use our Participatory Budget. A huge well done to Blair Clan for sharing their learning on this important theme.
- Find out more about what we do to reduce the cost of the school day here.
- Calderwood Couture purchasing options: Click here to find out different options on how to purchase our school uniform.
- Thank you to our Parent Council for organising a Halloween Costume Bank.
Calderwood Compliments:
- We had a Connects all about our value of Integrity! Ask your child what integrity looks like in Calderwood.
- Thank you to our Parent Council for purchasing new PE equipment for us through the Magic Miles fundraiser.
- Thank you to our Calderwood Chiefs for presenting our term 1 update, at our Parent Council meeting last week.
- We loved seeing such a big turn out for Champion Conversations this week. Thank you to all our P5-7 children for supporting the event, and to our partners who joined us. We are very grateful to everyone who purchased a book, money raised from this will go to topping up our clan libraries, novels collection and Discovery Den.
Our Very First House Meetings!
This afternoon, we had our very first House Meetings in our four houses:
Fallow, Red, Roe and Sika.
Our Junior Leadership did a fantastic job introducing themselves properly to all of our houses and sharing more about themselves. The children then got the chance to speak to someone they didn’t already know, or find out something new about someone that they did know.
There was such a sense of belonging, particularly as the children wore their house colours.
We look forward to our next house meetings!
