What a blast this last week has been—and what an incredible year it’s been overall!

From the very beginning, our classroom has been filled with curiosity, laughter and a real love of learning.

This week, we ended the year in the best way possible—with our very own Taskmaster! This was the ultimate test of all the meta-skills we’ve been developing throughout the year, from problem-solving and creativity to communication and collaboration. The classroom was full of energy as pupils took on each challenge with enthusiasm, determination and plenty of humour.

It was fantastic to see everyone working together, supporting one another and celebrating each other’s successes. A perfect reminder that learning isn’t just about what we know, but how we work together to achieve it.

A brilliant end to a brilliant year—well done everyone!

A massive thank you to the Clyde River Foundation for an amazing, hands-on day at Capelrig Burn! P6a had a brilliant time learning all about the aquatic invertebrates and fish living in our local river.

Who knew we had two species of fish living right on our doorstep? We were absolutely delighted to spot both the 3-spined stickleback and brown trout!

Beyond the wildlife, we learned how trees impact the river environment and even practiced sketching our own site maps to help analyse  the habitat. We loved getting our hands dirty, and it is safe to say we have some passionate future stewards amongst P6a. What a great day of learning!

What an incredible Sports Week we have had!

Throughout the week, our pupils had the opportunity to, take part in a karate and judo taster session. It was brilliant to see everyone getting involved, showing focus, determination and lots of enthusiasm.

We also enjoyed a fun-filled World Cup Day, where the children celebrated football from around the globe. As part of this, our class focused on learning about Germany, as are our country in the World Cup draw. Pupils explored key facts, culture and traditions, making great links between sport and learning about the wider world.

One of our favourite moments of the week was our whole-school baton relay. It was so special to see every class come together, cheering each other on as the baton made its way around the school — a real celebration of teamwork and community.

We rounded off the week with our much-anticipated Sports Day.. Every pupil gave their best effort, and we are so proud of them all.

A huge well done to everyone for making Sports Week such a memorable and fun experience!

                 This week, our classroom was transformed into a stage as Primary 6 explored drama techniques inspired by our class novel Wonder. Focusing on the strategies of freeze frame and thought tracking, pupils worked collaboratively in small groups to bring key moments from the story to life.

Working in small groups, the children selected an important scene from the novel and recreated it using a freeze frame—a still image that captures a moment in time. To make their performances effective and engaging, we focused on four key pillars of drama:

• Body – using posture and positioning to show character and action
• Facial Expressions – conveying emotions clearly without words
• Space and Levels (Height) – thoughtfully arranging themselves to show relationships and importance within the scene
• Focus and Tension – drawing the audience’s attention and building a sense of anticipation

Once each group had created their freeze frame, we introduced thought tracking, where individual characters revealed their inner thoughts aloud. This allowed us to dive deeper into the characters’ feelings and motivations, linking closely to our literacy work on inference and understanding.

The rest of the class became active audience members, carefully observing each performance and using clues from the freeze frame and thought tracking to analyse and guess which scene from Wonder was being portrayed.

It was fantastic to see pupils growing in confidence, creativity, and teamwork. Not only were they developing their drama skills, but they were also deepening their understanding of characters and themes within our novel.

A brilliant example of learning coming to life—well done

    We are on a meaningful and creative learning journey inspired by our class novel, Wonder. Through this powerful story, we are exploring an important big question: How our choices shape the world around us?

We began by thinking about kindness, empathy, and the impact our actions have on others. This led us to explore the laws in Scotland that protect children from discrimination, helping us understand that fairness, equality, and respect are not just values we talk about in class—they are protected in society too. The children showed great maturity when discussing rights, responsibilities, and how we can all contribute to a more inclusive world.

Creativity has played a big part in our learning. In art, we developed our skills using watercolours, learning how to create tone and shade to add depth and emotion to our work. We then reflected on our own identities by choosing adjectives to describe ourselves, which we used to inspire a self-portrait in the style of Tod Carpenter. These portraits beautifully captured both the individuality and creativity of everyone in our class.

Building on this idea of identity, we explored the concept of masks—both physical and emotional. We discussed how people sometimes hide their true selves and the impact this can have. The class then applied their learning by experimenting with modelling techniques and choosing to create their own masks using paper mâché. This has been an exciting hands-on project, allowing pupils to express themselves while developing practical skills and resilience.

Welcome back to the P6a blog! We hope you enjoy reading about what we have be exploring with Mr Atkinson in his Learning Journeys.

Last term we finished the Learning Journey, Roads of the Future which encouraged  the pupils to explore the Sustainable Development Goals. P6A investigated how the SDGs could be incorporated into designing a new road and reflected on what were the most important factors to selecting the best place to build them on. They also learned about the properties of a variety of materials and used atlases and online maps to locate different roads in Scotland.  The class also compared different types of road crossings and we discussed some examples that exist in the local area.  Whilst debating the construction of the HS2 the class examined the pros and cons of using other modes of transport which led to some great conversations. The final experience of this Learning Journey involved working in teams to successfully construct a sustainably designed road for the Transport Scotland – Academy9 Sustainable Solutions Challenge which is linked to the A9 road project. The groups displayed excellent communication, collaborating, critical-thinking, initiative, adapting and creativity skills when designing their Tinkercad prototypes which they successfully used to assist with building their models. I was so impressed with everyone’s efforts and thank you again for donating materials.

We have just recently started our new Learning Journey, Adapting to Climate Change. P6A has been researching how far animals can communicate and then we revisited different types of measurements. We started off with converting and then the pupils were challenged to solve calculations involving measurements. Building on this, the class explored how to draw using scales and then we all went outside to draw scaled distances of how far animals can communicate using chalk.

This week in class, we have been focusing on the importance of working together in both small and large groups. Through a variety of learning activities, pupils have been developing their ability to collaborate effectively, share ideas, and support one another to achieve common goals. This was demonstrated through paired reading sessions of our class novel, discussions and research of religious milestones and building and measuring the volume of 3d models. It has been fantastic to see the children encouraging each other, listening respectfully, and building confidence as they work as part of a team.

This was also developed In PE, where we have been developing our athletics skills, with a particular focus on jumping. Pupils explored different jumping techniques, thinking about balance, control, and power. They worked in groups to practise and improve their skills, offering feedback and celebrating each other’s successes. It was wonderful to see such positive teamwork, with children motivating and supporting one another throughout the session.

We have settled quickly back into the swing of things after the Spring holiday and it has been fantastic to see everyone so engaged in their learning.

In maths, we have been developing our understanding of volume. We have been reading scales, measuring and predicting volume, and converting between litres and millilitres. Taking a hands-on approach has really helped us apply our learning to real-life situations and deepen our understanding.

As part of our wider learning, we have also been using K’nex to build football goals by following a set of criteria. This challenged us to think carefully, solve problems, and work collaboratively as a team. We then put our creations to the test by playing a game of table football, where we worked together to create our own set of instructions and rules.

It has been a brilliant start to the term, and we are looking forward to continuing to build on these skills in the weeks ahead!

This week, we arrived at the end of our learning journey exploring “How can materials change?” by investigating how materials freeze and how temperature can impact the speed of freezing. The highlight of this lesson was making ice cream in a bag! The class got hands-on experience as they used ice as a variable to see how it changed the freezing speed of a liquid. They learned the importance of fair testing by keeping all other factors the same, ensuring that their results were reliable and valid. It was a fun way to connect scientific understanding to a real-world process, and of course, they got to enjoy the delicious outcome (we decided if doing this to home, we’d probably add some sugar/sweetner.)

Finalising our lesson off,  we played a game of Cops and Robbers to review everything we’d learned. Each pupil shared five key facts they had discovered during the journey, then “stole” five more from their peers. This was a great way for the class to reinforce their knowledge, while also practicing teamwork and communication.

Throughout this learning journey, P6a practiced important scientific skills like forming hypotheses, observing results, and recording data. They also developed their collaboration skills, sharing insights and learning from one another; one of the Metaskills.

What an on point week we’ve had! Our class have been exploring the fascinating world of angles. We’ve been busy measuring, building and moving to understand how angles shape the world around us.

We used K’nex to rebuild the Eiffel Tower! As we built, we had to identify the specific angles required to give the tower its iconic shape. We saw plenty of angles helping to create those sturdy triangles that keep the structure standing tall.

We headed outside in small groups for a game of Pac-Man. Instead of joysticks, we used mazes used from sticks and directional language and angle turns (90°, 180°, and 360°) to navigate the “maze.” It was a fantastic way to see how angles relate to movement and position.

The rain didn’t stop us creating stick art outside. In groups we created images, ensuring they had different types of angles. We identified and classified angles, using angle names, we estimated angle sized and then measured using a protractor.