Calderwood Nursery – reporting an absence over September Weekend

Dear Parent/Carer,
Calderwood Primary will close for a holiday on Friday 16th September and remain closed on Monday 19th and Tuesday 20th September.
Calderwood Nursery will be open on Friday 16th September and Tuesday 20th September, however will be closed on Monday 19th September to mark the passing of Queen Elizabeth 2nd in line with West Lothian arrangements.

To report an absence/share any information On 16th and 20th of September please call the nursery phone on 01506 280070 as the school office will be closed.

Kind Regards

Term 1 Writing in Bluebell

Over this term, Bluebell will be developing their skills in descriptive writing. We have started to look at, discuss and apply the structures of description using our PM example texts. This will gradually build up into pupils creating their very own descriptive texts, applying their learning independently.

To support the development of our writing skills, pupils have and will continue to throughout the year, to work on the principles of VCOP.
V – quality vocabulary
C- Sentence connectors to construct more detailed sentences
O- Sentence openers
P – Punctuation

We became ‘Sentence Doctors’ to cure some sick sentences by applying VCOP. We were excited to share some of our cured sentences with Miss Burton. Pupils in Bluebell worked extremely hard to make considered choices for their vocabulary.

Pokemon and Football Cards

We would appreciate if children could leave Pokemon or football cards at home. There have been some incidents where children have lost them, have swapped cards (and then realised they didn’t want to swap them), etc. leading to them becoming upset. Thanks for your help in advance.

STEM in The Bens

STEM is a huge part of who we are at Calderwood.

Recently, the Bens have been exploring the area of chemistry and chemical reactions.

We started by giving the pupils the chance to experience first hand a basic chemical reaction – water, oil and an effervescent tablet! – They were given the instructions but no adult support to carry it out.

This encouraged independent and collaborative learning & problem solving skills.

 

Next, we watched and observed the magic that took place! The comments, questions and curiosity from them was fantastic.

-“why is mine fizzing so much?”

-“why does the oil sit on top of the water?”

-What makes it do that?”

 

With our curiosity activated, we learned all about the chemical reaction & creation of carbon dioxide.

 

The following week, we conducted a fair test and began to explore how scientists set up testing by ensuring variables & conditions were all the same, only making one change at a time.

 

Children worked amazingly together to investigate their own scientific enquiry questions such as:

 

“what happens to the amount of fizz if I change the amount of tablets?”

“what happens to the oil bubbles if I use milk instead of water?”- (warning, it smelled awful!)

“what happens to the amount of fizzing time if I use less water?”

 

Well done, Bens – it was fantastic to watch you experience the wonders of STEM on your own.

 

Remembering Queen Elizabeth II

Today, across our clans we took some time to reflect on this moment in history and celebrate the life of Queen Elizabeth. Some clans made pictures of her, discussed what she did for the United Kingdom and beyond, wrote poems and reflected on her achievements.

Some of the older clans also watched a Newsround clip.

Lunch Time Supervisors

We have vacancies for lunch time supervisors to help indoors and outdoors at lunch times, these roles are vital to ensure we can keep all areas of our playground open for children to play in. The hours are 12:15-1:15pm, Monday to Thursday.

 

If you are interested in these posts, please contact the school office on 01506 280060 or wlcalderwood-ps@westlothian.org.uk

Description Writing

In Bramble Clan, we were given the challenge to write a description text about our favourite animal.  Through this piece of writing, we had to show what we knew already about how to write a description text.

To start, we listened to a description of an animal and had to guess what it might be and explain our reasons why.  Next, we listened to the description again and tried to draw what we thought it looked like.  We had to listen hard to the words in the description to support us with this.  We compared our drawings and discussed what words helped us to draw the animal and how some sentences could have given us a bit more information or detail.

We then embarked on our challenge of writing a description about our favourite animal.  We had to include what it was, what it looked like, what it did and why it was our favourite animal.

We enjoyed writing about this.  We will continue to learn about writing a description text to develop our understanding and writing skills further.

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