This term we have started learning about John Muir. John Muir is one of the most famous explorers and conservationists. John Muir was born in Dunbar, near Edinburgh in 1838. He became known for his fascination with nature and how to conserve it. He introduced the concept of National Parks. These days, there is a charity named after John Muir called the John Muir Trust and various walks and paths in his name.
So far, to gain the John Muir Award we have:
- conducted litter picks
- created a portrait of John Muir
- conducted a Tree Health Survey
- created natural art using various pieces of nature from our school grounds
- conducted a bird count
- clear an area to help us conserve our grounds
- worked with the Neilston Development Trust to plan various vegetables
We will be continuing to work towards gaining the John Muir Award and are looking forward to completing our journey!
We introduce 4 zones in the classroom :- In the Zone , Comfort Zone, Stretch Zone, Panic Zone. We completed some challenges both in the class and in the gym hall .
We positioned ourselves in the appropriate zone having completed the challenge or answered the question. We discussed how we felt in each zone and how we could move our selves from the panic zone to the comfort zone or to In the zone :- try even though you don’t feel confident, work together, try different methods , persevere even though its hard.
Riley – I enjoyed the Zones game – it helped me think how to tackle things I was panicking about.
Renaska – I liked to see how people felt about different challenges and sharing our feelings.
Darryl- I enjoyed taking part in the team challenge.
As part of our learning in Bounceback we looked at resilience and perseverance. We thought about our learning in Social Studies where we had learned the story of Robert the Bruce and the Spider. We discussed the phrase – ” If at first you don’t succeed try, try again” which came from the story of Robert the Bruce.
We linked this with ” Getting Stuck”. We discussed that getting stuck means that we are learning something new and should not be something to be worried about. We decided to celebrate getting stuck. In pairs we thought about different strategies we could try on our own before asking for help. We created a display to use every time we got stuck to encourage us to become more independant.
We learned about childrens rights by learning about the rights given to children by the UNCRC. In groups we discussed which were the most important rights for us to consider in our class. We used these rights to help create a class charter which all the pupils and staff who work in the class signed.
We chose the following rights :-
the right to play, the right to make mistakes, the right to be heard, the right to be educated and the right to be loved ans respected.
By signing the class charter, we all agreed to follow the behaviours outlined in the class contract.
Here is our class charter.
As part of their Health and Wellbeing learning, the children have been thinking about resilience and helpful thought processes when things go wrong. Bounce Back is an acrostic to help us all remember these strategies.
During their Golden Time, the children who chose ICT created a Bounce Back movie. They animated bouncing balls and filmed each other saying the strategies. The film is below (with a special effect to keep our children’s images private).
https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/er/SpringhillandAuchenback/files/2016/02/Bounce-Back-special.wmv
Welcome to our class blog.
