Nativity Competition Winners
Our clans took part in a Nativity competition hosted by our Primary 1 clans. Well done to both pupils whose designs have been picked to be the background to the Nativity set. We can’t wait to see your artwork in the performance. We know our Primary 1 clans will love it! 
Be an Author Competition
As part of our Book Week Scotland Celebrations, Calderwood took part in a ‘Be an Author Competition.’ This involved all pupils writing a narrative story about a quest or adventure. Each clan nominated a winner for their clan that would go through the final. All entries for the final were judged by an author called Linda Erskine. Well done to all of our clan finalists!
A massive congratulations to our P1-3 winner, P4-5 winner and P6-7 winner. All pupils have received a voucher to spend at Waterstones. Enjoy your celebrations! We are all so proud of your achievement!
Calderwood Can Certificates
We are so proud of last week’s Calderwood Can learners! Well done for showing resilience, hard work and nurture!
Calderwood Primary Presents Christmas Around the World
Primary 2-7 children invite one family member along to the performance below in our Arena. We look forward to seeing you.
If you are attending both performances you can wait in the Arena between times.
(Children should wear Christmas jumper/ accessorise on top and uniform on bottoms).
Flexible Learning Spaces – Ben Lawers
Ben Lawers have been using the space in the clan room, in the discovery den and in the break out space in a way which they find effective and comfortable. The Ben Lawers clan have access to a variety of spaces to learn and have been getting cosy while working independently and collaboratively. Pupils have access to design and shape the room to meet their needs and help them to do their best work. In these environments, we can see pupils are engaged in their learning and trying their best. At home, the Ben’s can discuss their favourite hideouts to work and explain why they love it so much!
Rich Thinking in Ben Lomond
In Ben Lomond, we have been taking part in ‘rich thinking tasks’.
Researched & developed by Peter Liljedahl, in his book ‘Building Thinking Classrooms, ‘Rich Tasks’ are what help us develop thinking, focus, collaboration and problem solving skills.
We have been asking our own questions and working together to answer them. Click on our working Mural to see what we have been investigating: https://app.mural.co/t/p5674878/m/p5674878/1668019801710/a4710e942591b6376ed5ad757ed9507c33a79ff9?sender=u02dad2b8e3b96ab9b15d6187
We have been exploring measure, shape, perimeter and area to answer questions about our own school and playground. We self-direct ourselves by choosing which part of the task to work on, whilst communicating our finding with the rest of the class and contributing to the overall research.
We’re also enjoying using vertical wall spaces for workings!
Cosy Corner Club – Upper Challenge 1
A group of our upper school pupils were tasked with a challenge to fully research what activities are available for kids in Livingston. They had to work in a small group to find total costs, bus times and costs before voting on the best place to go. They invited Miss Burton to listen to their ideas and pitched their proposition. All of the children were able to convince Miss Burton that a visit to our local cinema via local transport and to visit Hot Flame was the best option. The pupils created their own itinerary using the information they had gathered, were involved in the risk assessment and one of our pupils was responsible for booking of the trip by phone.
This group are now our ‘Upper Skills’ ambassadors and some are looking forward to leading the next challenge… Ready, Steady, Cook 👨🍳
Assembly and Narrative Writing in Bramble
Bramble clan have been very busy, preparing for our first Bramble clan assembly at Calderwood. We have all worked together, as a fantastic team, to create our assembly. We all took on different jobs and roles to prepare for this and then brought it all together, to showcase our learning about the Brain, and practised really hard. We had invites to make, props to make, costumes to organise, the script to write, words to practise, displays to make and songs to learn and sing, with actions. We have loved using the stage in the arena and have really enjoyed acting and performing. We have had a fantastic time working on our assembly together and have enjoyed sharing our learning with you all.
We have been exploring traditional tales, fables, myths and legends in our IDL lessons and have learnt what these are and what the main features are. In writing, we delved deeper and looked at the traditional tale of The Little Mermaid. We found that the original story of The Little Mermaid is very different from the one we already know. Together, as a clan, we retold the story using our own words, making sure we used the correct structure – orientation, complication and resolution. Our challenge, was to use this story as a basis for our own. We could use the story and change the characters or setting to make it different from the original. Instead of the Little Mermaid, some of us changed the character to an Arctic Fox, a curious turtle or a dragon. We kept some parts of the story the same and changed others. We created 24 different stories from the one tale!
We worked hard on our stories, focussing on a different section each week. We wrote each section and then re-read it, and edited parts of it. We enjoyed editing our stories- scoring out parts or adding in parts, showing- and feeling what it is like to be an author.
In IDL lessons, we learnt more about the book-making process and researched the different roles involved in this process. We found out that there are many different roles involved in the process such as the author, illustrator, designer, editor and publisher. After researching this we moved on to making our own books. We took the story we had been creating in our writing lessons and designed what we would like our book of this to be like and what materials we would like to use to make it.
We have been busy creating our own books to include our own creative story that we have been writing. It was very exciting to transform our work from a piece of writing in our jotter to our own book that we can read to others. We are super proud of our work.#
