With Mr Atkinson we were learning about the meta-skill sense-making. When we use our sense-making skills, we’re trying to process large amounts of information. This helps us to solve problems.

We had to make a Lego model of somewhere we wanted to visit or a future career we are interested in.

P6 were extremely lucky to be visited by 2 members of the Caledonia Gladiators basketball team. They told us about their journey to playing professionally and answered lots of our questions.

We learned lots about the importance of team work and growth mindset.

We created our own tartan patterns by weaving with yarn. We used our fingers and developed our dexterity as we fed the yarn through over and under, over and under.

We had some frequent reminders to use our growth mindset to keep going!

They turned out great and we hope lots of parents and carers will get to see them on display at the Open Afternoons next week 🙂

On Wednesday we enjoyed a fabulous trip to Sky Up Academy Studios in Livingston. We all took on a different role to bring a news report about AI to life. Some of our roles included director, presenter, scriptwriter, editor, camera operator, producer.

We used our collaboration, co-operation and creativity skills to bring our news reports to life. We all had such a fantastic time and are grateful to Mr Atkinson for organising this worthwhile opportunity.

I was so impressed by all the pupils, they were fantastic ambassadors of Crookfur and worked extremely well together 🙂

We hope you have had the chance to watch the video by scanning the QR code that was handed out to see us in action. Here are some behind the scenes photos from the day:

We have started some basketball in PE. We learnt some different passes (bounce pass and chest pass) and we also practised some dribbling.

We dribbled with the ball to the other side of the court. On our way back we stopped half way and passed the ball to the next person using one of our learned passes.

This week we also had a lady called Emma come in to teach some British Sign Language. She brought a translator with her. She taught us how to fingerspell and gave us facts about sign language. We learned that sign language brings people together. We are looking forward to learning more over the next 6 weeks.

Altogether we had a spooky week and we hope you have a happy Halloween 🙂

We hope you enjoyed Mr Atkinson’s update last week. This week we wanted to share some of our learning from last week as we celebrated Maths Week Scotland.

We were investigating the question ‘where can symmetry be found in every day life?’

We looked at some examples of symmetrical buildings and then created our own using Kapla.

We investigated symmetry in nature and created our own symmetrical clay tile using natural materials.

Hello to all the P6B blog readers, it’s Mr Atkinson here! As you will know this year I am doing NCCT for P6B with a focus on developing Crookfurs Enquiry Based Learning approach so I wanted to give you an update of what we have been doing.

Building on our knowledge from the P5 Learning Journeys, the class have explored  what can be constructed on land and investigated the pros and cons. They also applied their curiosity by finding out the impact the different land uses have on the environment. Equipped with this information, the pupils utilised their Meta-Skills of collaborating and communicating to prepare for their debates on this issue. I was highly impressed with their thorough research and well-structured arguments resulting in some compelling points being made. In pairs the pupils have also written fact files about how specific flowers have benefited modern society, such as how they are used for medicine and textile, which they presented and shared to their peers.

The class has recently been learning about two new Meta-Skills, leading and feeling. We first discussed how there are many ways to display leadership qualities and that they can be used differently depending on the situation. Then the pupils were challenged to visualise and think of everyday examples of leaders. We also reflected on why it is important to listen to our feelings but also be considerate of others. Following this, everyone drew a picture of their ‘happy place’ which can be used as a strategy to help self-regulate our emotions.

This week we started our class Learning Journey where we use an inquiry-based approach to investigate a ‘big question’. Our ‘big question’ this time is: How can light be used creatively?

We have come up with smaller questions to answer as a class and last week we investigated shadows.

Once we learned how shadows are formed we used light in a creative way to make shadow puppets!

“In Problem Solving today we were trying to make a 1-step, 2-step and 3-step pyramid. We used these to work out how many bricks are needed to make a 10-stpe pyramid.”

“I enjoyed the Problem Solving because I liked using the Kapla.”

“We used Numicon to help us with our division in Numeracy. It helped us to see the numbers in front of us instead of just in our heads.”

“I liked using the Numicon because I haven’t used it in a while and it helped me with my division.”

We have been doing a mini project creating our own islands.

We had to imagine we found an undiscovered and uninhabited island. We designed what our island might look like.

We used the Chrome Books and using maps, decided where our island would be located. We described our island using correct terminology like southern/northern hemisphere, equator, which sea and continent is it a part of.