Another lovely acknowledgement for Primary 4’s efforts raising money for a local charity. Jak’s Den offers emotional, social and practical support to children and young people with cancer-related illnesses. They sent us a lovely thank you card and certificate this week – well done again, P4!
I hope all of our families have a relaxing break over the summer. In the meantime, I have created some social stories so that all classes can familiarise themselves with their teacher, playground, class and entry/exit doors.
In the lead up to the schools coming back, it can be particularly helpful to go over the social story with your child to help support them with their transition back to school. I hope you find these helpful.
Take care and have a lovely summer when it comes,
Alison Hamilton (Principal Teacher)
Well done to the dancers who represented East Calder Primary School on Friday evening for the crowning of the Gala Queen 2025.
The girls danced to Wings by Little Mix and demonstrated their use of creativity and collaborating meta-skills.
Back in Term 2, Primary 4A and 4B researched different charities and used the information to create Powerpoint presentations. Each class voted for their favourite charity and we then raised funds by selling Christmas cards around school. We recently received this certificate of thanks from one of our chosen charities, the R.N.L.I. Great effort, P4!
Congratulations to one of our P7 pupils who achieved a bronze award at the Scottish Mathematics Challenge, he is one of two pupils from the whole of West Lothian to win. Here are some photographs of him at the prize-giving ceremony at Edinburgh Napier University’s Sighthill campus. A huge well done!
A huge thank you to a very talented parent who came in today to share her experience in photography. We learned about composition, complementary backgrounds and how to use lighting.
Each group had a photographer, director and model. We worked on our team work skills and communication.
Our context this term is ‘Sports’ and our aim was to create some action shots, posed portraits and a still life.
Have a look at some of our results! 
By exploring climate zones around the world, I can compare and describe how climate affects living things. SOC 1-12b
By exploring a natural environment different from my own, I can discover how the physical features influence the variety of living things. SOC 1-13b
Having explored the landscape of my local area, I can describe the various ways in which land has been used. SOC 1-13a
P4A have been exploring their new IDL context for this term, which is all about our environment, climate zones and comparisons between them.
So far, they have completed their key questions which they want answered and have identifies the 3 main climate zones on the world map.
They have also begun thinking about the animal and plant life in different climate zones and how they have adapted.
‘We were making Earth Day pictures for Earth Day’ Zoe.
‘We learned to look after the planet’ Michelle.
‘We learned to pick up litter so sea animals don’t die- they might become extinct. We should not be cutting down so many trees.’ William.
‘We have to learn to look after plants’ McKenna.
‘We made little Earth door hangers’ Mia.
‘We were learning the ay sound’ Emily.
‘We were learning to share in maths. We were learning halves’ Zoe.
‘Were learning quarters in maths’ Abbie.
This term we have moved on the learn about writing Explanations. We started off looking at an Explanation titled Why a Goalkeeper’s Job is Important. We learned about the sections of the writing Title, Identifying Statement, Explanation Sequence & Summary Statement. We then looked at the text and highlighted the nouns. After that we spoke about present tense verbs and highlighted them. We found this quite hard so will continue to work on them this term.
We have started learning to create pictograms. We started by drawing a small picture of ourselves making sure to show our hair colour. We then added our pictures to the graph on the board. By doing this it was easy to see what colour of hair most of the class had. We then answered questions about the information shown by the graph. We then did the same with eye colour. We also learned that a graph needs a title and both of the axis need to be labeled. Mrs Spence is really missing her square board that she had in the old school!!
With our new ‘Sports’ conext, it seems fitting to post about our success across a variety of sports in Primary 7. Here are some of our P7 learners celebrating some amazing achievements in swimming, motocross, ballet, skiing and dance. The pupils chose to learn about Sports as our final context this term; we are researching sporting history, equipment, how sports have evolved and gained popularity. All of us are working on a personal project this term and we can’t wait to share our learning when we complete them. Some pupils have already brought in some of their sporting equipment to share! 
