CALDERWOOD NEWSLETTER Edition 2016/2017 We need you! Please Vote! Please vote for Calderwood Community Outdoor Classroom We are delighted to have been short listed for the Aviva Community Fund and have a chance to win £25,000. Please can everyone vote for our Dyslexia Awareness Week Outdoor Learning Project? It only takes five minutes. This is what you Last week you may have noticed some of need to do - the children wearing small blue ribbons. This was to raise awareness of Scottish Dyslexia Week 2016. Please register then AVIVA will send you a confirmation link to your email. When you click on this, it will take you to a generic page for all vot- It is very important that all children have an ing. Search for Calderwood Primary School. You can cast up to 10 votes understanding of what it means to have Dyslexia. At assembly Mrs. Kirkland gave a per email account. special presentation to all the children. While dyslexic learners may find reading and writing challenging, the children learned that Now that our path network has been established, we are ready to fire people with dyslexia can be very successful ahead with the next step in our project. Things to look forward to– a mud in their lives and in the future. kitchen, garden art, new planters up in the newly tarmacked area and lots We have been working hard to help the more! children to live our school values in all we say and do in school. Inclusion and Equality https://community-fund.aviva.co.uk/voting/project/view/16- were a key focus for this assembly. Please ask the children about equality! 2809 In This Issue Polar Explorer visits Calderwood Pre-Stem Science Suc- cess Rookie Rockstars Christmas Calendar Achievements Planting our orchard of pear, plum and apple trees. Polar Explorer Comes to Calderwood We are very excited about a very spe- cial visitor coming to Calderwood later this month. Craig Mathieson from the Polar Academy is the Explorer in Resi- dence from the Royal Scottish Geo- graphical Society. He has had many adventures and will be speaking to all the classes about his expeditions! This project is being funded by Clyde Gate- way as part of their Intervention Photo Caption Prorgramme to provide a Polar Explo- ration Workshop for all pupils. Craig has led the 1st Scottish Expedi- Stonelaw Sports Leaders tion to the South and North Poles. We have a very positive relationship with the Physical Education Department at Stonelaw and once again we are delighted to play an important role in the Sports Leader Development Programme for S4 Pupils. Every week for a block of four sessions, the children in P2/3 have visited Stonelaw for their PE sessions. The children are supervised by a member of staff from Calderwood however the S4 Pupils are involved in coaching the children in a vari- ety of sporting activities. The children really enjoy the opportunity to work and learn from the older pupils and also use their gigantic gym hall! The S4 pupils practice their coaching skills and learning how to manage little people! This has been a successful partner project with Stonelaw High School through which many classes have benefitted. Book Banding Craig Mathieson We would like to say a huge thank you to our Parent Council and to the wider Parent Forum for helping to fund £7000 of our wonderful new books. Book Banding is extremely expensive and we could not have achieved this without your support. Book Banding is being implemented in P1-3 this session and we hope to roll this out next year into the upper school. Mrs. Laing has produced an information letter and we hope you will find this useful. We will have many of the books available for all parents to view during Parents’ Night. We would welcome your comments on how the children are enjoying the new readers at home. It is extremely important that children have the opportunity to read a wide range of texts and this is a crucial aspect of learning to read and of Curriculum for Excellence . I am sure par- ents will also be delighted with a little change from Kipper, Biff and Chip! As the books are so expensive, we really want to take care of them! Please ensure that your child looks after their book at home and always remember to return it to the school each day. Last session, we lost a number of reading books which were not returned from home. Pupil Council Visit Glasgow City Chambers Early in the term, our Pupil Council representatives from Primary 5,6 and 7 visited Glasgow City Chambers. The children worked with other schools from across Glasgow to discuss the im- portance of Pupil Voice. We are really pleased to be part of the Glasgow Growing Good Citizenships Project Uzair, Spencer, Sophie, Alex, Olivia and May and we are excited about how the Pupil Council will take this forward at Calder- P7 Pre-Stem Science Project wood. Over the last few months, Primary 7 have been very busy working on the Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics Projects. The children were split into teams to work together and consider how they could go about making Calderwood a more healthy school. In their groups, they had to come up with innovative and creative ideas and present this in the form of a presentation to a panel of judges. This was a super event and all Primary Schools in the Stonelaw Learning Community were involved. Stonelaw High School hosted this event for the feeder Primary Schools. We were delighted to come Teachers Learn too! Calderwood Teachers have always been extremely committed to their con- tinuous professional learning. At the moment, we have a number of staff who are participating in French and also in Spanish training. After the school day, they head off to Hamilton to participate in their weekly lessons! Teachers always continue to learn too! Photo Caption Rookie Rockstar Christmas Concert We are super excited about this year’s Christmas Show. All children in the school perform in this show from Primary 1 through to Primary 7. In previous years we have always had a whole school show, however we have so many children now that it has been necessary to look at a different approach. We have invited Rookie Rockstars to visit Calderwood and they will be supporting us in performing. Further details will be issued very soon along with information about tickets. The school will be split into two groups; an A and a B Group. There will be an A and a B group from each class. Siblings will be in the same group. There will be four evening performances this ses- sion and the children will perform on two evenings out of the four. You will shortly be informed of the evenings your children will perform. Team A will perform Monday and Wednesday Team B will perform on Tuesday and Thursday Using this model, we will be able to offer two tickets per family for your choice of evening perfor- mance. There may also be opportunities to purchase additional tickets too. This year there will be no matinee performances. In previous years, each class has performed a song at the concert, however all the children will perform all the songs with a few surprises thrown in! If this is a model which works for us, we may attempt to do this ourselves in future years! The children will all dress up as Rock Stars so plenty of time to think about a costume; it would great to see a mixture of styles from through the decades; glasses, punky hair, leg warmers will all be welcome! Please do not go out and buy costumes as anything goes! Be as creative as you like! We invite parents to also dress up on the night and join in the fun! DATES— Monday 12th December, Tuesday 13th December, Wednesday 14th December and Thursday 15th December. Christmas Fair We are very much looking forward to Calderwood’s Christmas Fair. This has become one of the most well attended Fairs in Rutherglen because of the huge variety of stalls, home baking etc. Don’t forget to put the date in the diary! Saturday 26th November 10am-2pm Good Luck Lego Mindstorm Team At the beginning of December our Lego Mindstorm Team will be participating in the First Lego League Competition in Glasgow. Calderwood were previous Scottish Champions in 2014/2015 and West of Scotland Team Award Winners 2015/2016. Once again our team will be led by Mrs. Mossman who has been working tirelessly to prepare the children for the presentation element and the lego challenge after school and during lunch breaks. This project is extremely difficult and involves computer programming the robot (also built by the children) to complete a number of challenges in the given time. The chil- dren will be showcasing their skills on Parent s’ Evening in the hall. Please come in and wish the children luck! During the competition, the children are questioned about their robot design and about programming. Please ask the children questions and put them through their paces in preparation for the competition! It would be great experi- ence for them. Thank you Mrs. Mossman for all your hard work preparing the children for the competition. David Goutcher Visit We are delighted to be hosting a visit from author David Goutcher who created the Spy Quest Interactive Game. Rutherglen Library have kindly organised this visit for Calder- wood. Primary 4 to Primary 7 will have the opportunity to ask David about Spy Quest , his books and about life as an author! Something to really look forward to! Achievements Follow Esther Vickers has been successful in gaining a scholarship for The Glasgow School of Art children's development course studying various styles of art and sculpture! Well done Esther! Us Hana Semple got through to the semi finals of the Mini Red Ball Under 8’s Championships at Rutherglen Tennis Club.