Primary Engineering – If You Were an Engineer What Would You Do?

Way back in March Calderwood was abuzz with Engineering…
IDL Topics, Calderwood Connects, Dragon’s Dens and Clan Presentations all led to our children taking part in a National Engineering Competition. The children were posed the question: If You Were an Engineer What Would You Do? My goodness we could’ve powered the inventions they dreamed up with the creativity, thinking and work which went into all the competition entries!
We want to give a special mention to the following people, who were recognised by the competition judges:
Ella – Highly Commended – Top Shelf Grabber
Mason – Highly Commended – See in the Dark Goggles
Lochie – Winner – Flying Shoes
Lucy – Highly Commended – Things to help us
Kiera – Highly Commended – The On Time Roller Skates
Charlotte – Winner – Solar Plane
Mhairi – Highly Commended – The Secret School for Girls
Rachel – Winner – Flying Car
Anveeta – Highly Commended – The Plastic Rocket
Ananya – Highly Commended – The Invisible Cloak
The Champions, children and families attended the Awards Ceremony on Thursday 2nd June, in the Engineering building at the University of Edinburgh, to celebrate Highly Commended and Winning entries to the competition.
We can’t wait to celebrate with everyone at our next Calderwood Connects but for the meantime – keeping STEMing and always look for that engineering opportunity!

Nursery Chronicle 12.05.23

Calderwood Nursery Chronicle 12.05.23

Calderwood Calendar

KEY DATES

19/05/23-26/05/23 C in the Park tickets on sale on iPay
22/05/23 School Closed. Nursery Open.
22/05/23-26/05/23 Nursery Sports Week – Stay and Sport Family Event
22-06/23-26/05/23 Dress Down Week: Dress down and please donate an item. More information to come. No football top or crop tops please.

 

UPCOMING DATES

You can find upcoming dates here

 

Calderwood Commitments Actions:

 

Calderwood Communication (For information):

Stay and Play Sport Week

A signup sheet will be put up in the cloakroom next week for you to sign up to a Stay and Play Sports Week session. We will have sport activities set up in the garden that you can participate in with your child.

Each child will get a wellbeing indicator sticker for being active and how they demonstrated this over the week.

 

HOME LINKS:

The children have been interested in learning about sharing items into groups and sharing out items, counting in 2s and counting in 5s.

Practise this skill at home using everyday items.

As always, please share any experiences with us on Online Learning Journals.

As ever, thank you for your continued support. If you would like to leave us any feedback, please click here.

Kindest Regards,

The Nursery Champions

Cultivating Calderwood

We have a brilliant start to Term 4 and have had lots of opportunities to carry out experiments within our ‘Captivating Calderwood’ topic.

Water Cycle Experiment

We carried out a water cycle experiment where we drew the process on Polly bags, added water and placed onto our windows to see what happens to the water. We also made predictions and have been observing the experiment. We discovered that the evaporated water vapor usually goes into the atmosphere, but in our bag, it has nowhere to go, so it ends up sticking to the sides of the bag, turning back into a liquid as condensation.

Planting 

We have planted our very own sunflowers and placed them onto the windowsill. We are watering them everyday and observing their growth by recording this onto a line graph. We have observed some plants have grown much faster than others and have discussed why that might be the case. We think some pupils have placed the seeds deeper than others and that may be a factor. We have discussed the life cycle of a sunflower and made posters to show this visually. In addition to this, we have recently dissected flowers and carried out research the purposes of each part. We were so interested in the different purposes of each part. This then led onto discussions on ‘pollination’ and why this is a vital process within the food chain.

Literacy

We have linked our topic with our reading and writing. Last week, we made notes on sunflowers based on where they are located, what they look like and how they behave. We are now working on creating an information report on sunflowers. We have discussed our writing targets in detail and pupils have loved the link between their topic and literacy!

Have a look on the following sway to see how much fun we have had on our ‘Cultivating Calderwood’ journey so far!

 

Go to this Sway

Our nurturing spaces

This year, through the participatory budget, our children chose to buy items to design their own nurturing space within their clan. This is a safe space that would be accessible to all pupils when they need it. Some clans chose to create a sensory space, others chose to make a comfortable seating area. All nurturing spaces are used to support children to self-regulate, they chose items which were calming including lights, comfortable cushions, tents, and activities such as sensory/fidget toys or books.

20230328_171556_resized.jpg

20230328_171115_resized.jpg

20230328_171446_resized.jpg

20230328_171509_resized.jpg

Nursery Chronicle 05.05.23

Calderwood Nursery Chronicle 05.05.23

Calderwood Calendar

KEY DATES

01/05/23 School closed & Nursery closed
02/05/23 School closed & Nursery open
03/05/23 School Children resume
08/05/23 School & Nursery closed

 

UPCOMING DATES

You can find upcoming dates here

Calderwood Commitments Actions:

Calderwood Communication (For information):

Curriculum Rationale

Thank you to our children, parents/carers and champions who have had a key role in deciding our values and developing our Curriculum Rationale. Please see below our Curriculum Rationale, we would like your feedback on this.

https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/wl/calderwood/2023/04/27/calderwood-nursery-curriculum-rationale/

Holiday Monday

A gentle reminder Monday is a holiday for both Nursery and School.

HOME LINKS:

This week we have been learning about being safe in our community.

Safety Walk
Walk around the house/community and count how many unsafe items (open cupboard doors where someone could bump their heads, toys on the floor where they could trip etc.). Discuss ways to keep safe at home and in the community e.g. looking both ways before crossing the road.

As always, please share any experiences with us on Online Learning Journals.

As ever, thank you for your continued support. If you would like to leave us any feedback, please click here.

Kindest Regards,

The Nursery Champions

Thistle Clan 5.5.23

What a fantastic start to term 4 for Thistle Clan!

We have got straight in to exploring our Cultivating Calderwood Focus. Have a little look at our journey so far

In PE we have been investigating cross country running, spot us developing our stamina, endurance, pace and strength here:

In Literacy we have been investigating information reports. We have had a go at our cold piece, remembering what we knew from last year. We then marked this against our targets and got to work investigating  the key language features of an information text. Once this was done we used our notes from reading to build a plan as a whole clan and then write a model piece all together. This will now help us as we begin to write with more independence.

Published
Categorized as Thistle

Bramble Clan ‘Cultivating calderwood’

Bramble clan are well under way with their new IDL ‘Cultivating Calderwood’.

We have been learning about the water cycle through reading and decided to create our own water cycle in a bag.  We added our predictions of what we might see happen on to a post-it note and then discussed what was happening and learnt about the process of the Water Cycle.

Next, we have been looking at recycling and what reduce, reuse, recycle means.  We did some note-taking in our reading lessons and then created posters about what we had learnt about these 3 areas.  We are more aware of what we do already and what we might do to look after our planet by recycling.  We have chosen to create art from items that need recycled as part of our home learning grid.

We planted sunflowers and have positioned them in our area on the windowsill.  We are going to plot their growth on a labelled line graph.  After day 13, we have seen a lot of growth and are very excited to see these each day, especially after the weekend.  One of our pupils has planted an orange seed he brought in from home to see if it will grow.  We planted 2 in different conditions – 1 in soil with water and sunlight and 1 with water and sunlight only.  So far none of them have grown.  We will continue to monitor this.

We planted some seeds at the end of last term, in our school garden and discussed what a plant needs to grow.  We applied this knowledge to explore what a sunflower needs to grow and what the life cycle of a sunflower might look like.  We drew the life cycle of a sunflower, showing each stage of its life and what it will look like.  These are displayed on our IDL learning wall in our corridor.

Art

We explored different art methods in different clans with Mrs Scobie, Miss Ali or Miss Quinn.  With Miss Quinn, we looked at 1 point perspective art looking out of a greenhouse towards a house.  With Mrs Scobie we looked at 1-point perspective looking into a greenhouse.  With Miss Ali, we used watercolours to draw flowers.  We were very pleased with our results.  These are displayed in our area.

Finally, we have been exploring the different parts of a flower.  We have learnt the names of each part, their purpose and what they look like.  To look at these and identify these in real life, we dissected a tulip.  We then placed each of the parts on a flower lab mat, stating the length and purpose of each.  We enjoyed this exploration and even extracted pollen from the stamen.  We were fascinated to find out that a flower has both male and female parts.

We have been extremely busy and are so excited to learn more!

Published
Categorized as Bramble

Calderwood Primary Chronicle: 05/05/23

Calderwood Chronicle_05_05_23

Calderwood Commitments (Actions):

 

Calderwood Calendar: 

  • Term 4 Calendar link Updated – updates in yellow
  • 01/05/23- 10/05/23: iPay Impact open to Purchase Rookie Rockstars Tickets
  • 05/05/23: Chiefs, House and Vice Captains, please wear your Primary 7 shirt and ties as supporting with visitors/ tour.
  • 08/05/23: School and Nursery closed.
  • 10/05/23-11/05/23: Validated Self Evaluation from West Lothian Council – Visitors in school
  • 10/05/23: Ben Lawers Excursion: Active schools: Cross Country: Unfortunately failure to return the EE2 means they will not be able to go on the excursion. Please see separate email.
  • 11/05/23: 6pm: Parent Council Meeting: Arena or online: Join Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4321333221?pwd=WmlFc0I1TTVUdDJtMWNER2N3Y01PQT09

Meeting ID: 432 133 3221   Passcode: 202305

Parents and carers can submit suggested items for discussion to: chair@calderwoodpspc.org or through your clan rep.

  • 19/05/23: P5 Excursion: Active schools: Swimming Assessment: Unfortunately, failure to return the EE2 means they will not be able to go on the excursion. Please see separate email.
  • 19/05/23: 11:15am: Skye Clan Calderwood Connects – 2 family members welcome.

 

Calderwood Communication: 

 

Calderwood Compliments:

  • On our inservice day this week, all our champs took part in outdoor learning training from Love Outdoor Learning as part of our school improvement plan. A huge thank you to our Parent Council for paying for this training and a subscription to resources for us from the Magic Miles 2022 fundraising pot! Without the support, this opportunity would not have been available to us and we can see the impact on the clans already this week. Thank you.
  • This week we received a child protection audit from West Lothian Council, which highlighted that all our paperwork and processes were correct with no points for improvement. Our Pupil Council reported that:
  • staff look after them and make them feel safe : “all staff are approachable”
  • an ethos of community and kindness within the school: ”We don’t just take care of ourselves, we take care of each other”
  • they have at least one trusted ‘champion’. They spoke about other ways they can share worries such as emotional check-ins, worry monsters, worry boxes etc.
  • school helps them look after their physical, emotional and mental wellbeing through HWB lessons, assemblies and activities
  • they learn about keeping themselves safe by using online, bonfire/firework, road and personal safety strategies.

 

I hope you all enjoy the long weekend!

 

Miss Burton

 

Report a Glow concern
Cookie policy  Privacy policy