Uncategorized – Page 10 – Imagining Aberdeen

What gets in the way of learning

The learnometer are measurers of what helps children to learn and what gets in the way of learning. Children at Tullos have been making their own learnometers. Here are some of their thoughts:

‘Noise can get in the way of learning. People chatting over or interrupting the teacher.’ ‘I find writing gets in the way of learning because it is very hard.’ ‘Everyday when I try and do my homework in the house I can’t hear because people are screaming at each other.’ ‘I do like reading my book in golden time but other books at school are too easy and boring and this gets in the way of me learning.’

‘Music helps me learn because it helps me concentrate – it calms me down.’ ‘My mum helps me to learn – she helps me with homework.’ ‘The pictures on the wall are pretty helpful as I can use them and copy them.’ ‘Assembly helps me as people tell you about stuff and I learn.’ ‘The teacher, as she helps me to spell.’

Niamh, Chloe, Jay, Victoria, Dean and Kaitlyn

Learnometers at Riverbank

Today we created our learnometers at Riverbank. These are a simple tool to help us look at what helps us learn and what makes learning difficult.

We had a lot of discussion about how we can get distracted easily, and we identified a few different distractions such as having something to play with or other people.

‘I get easily distracted by my brother’

Jennifer

We also talked about the importance of listening to teachers, family and each other when we are trying to learn.

What helps us learn

Children think about what helps them to learn and what gets in the way of of their learning by creating learn-ometers.

‘PSAs help you learn because they are always kind and they understand you and will listen to you. I’m Polish so my sister helps me with my homework as my mum and dad don’t understand. Maths games like Unlucky 13 help me remember more and more things.’

Julia

‘Things that get in the way of me learning are chatting to people when you have to work, when the teachers is busy and my phone because I don’t go off it and then I am very tired.’

Sara

‘When my teacher says ‘good work’ it helps me learn. I also like the spelling and maths sheets on the wall in our classroom and using YouTube.’

John

‘Running out of time, writing being hard and being distracted by people talking and shouting gets in the way of me learning. My mum, dad and teacher give me tips to help me learn. It is good when you get to work outside the room at school.’

Conal

‘When people get bullied it gets in the way of learning because you are angry and you can’t concentrate on your work. Sometimes I get sad because my dad works offshore and I this gets in the way of me doing my best. Doing Reading Wise with my PSA and doing challenges with my brothers helps me learn. I also like when my friends help me with the answers.’

Matas

Learning: helps and hindrances

This week we we creating learnometers which allowed us to think about what helps us with our learning and what can get in the way. To do this we made a ‘learnometer’ which is an adjustable scale allowing us to think about these helps and hindrances and where we are on the scale.

Scott found specific tools helped him to learn: ‘When I am doing maths, rounding helps me do my work fast.’

One thing we felt was really unhelpful was bullying.

‘Bullying makes your work difficult in class if their nagging at you and it’s stuck in your head and you can’t concentrate.’

Ashleigh

I am like…

To help children think about themselves as learners they have been introduced to some learning characters who have different learning characteristics.

‘I’m like Robert. When I am at football and I’m losing I try and do my best and keep going. Also when I run the daily mail I keep on running even though I am tired. I’m not so reflective or good at planning.’

Kacper

‘I chose Rebecca because I like making plans and being careful about my jobs. When I am doing my writing I check.’

Shannon

‘I’m like Ruby because I love to go to the library. I just feel like her. I ask a lot of questions about different stuff if I don’t understand, I think and I think. If I still don’t know I ask the teacher. I’m a bit like all the characters but mostly Ruby.’

Diana

‘Ryan because I like relationships. I like learning with other people – like maths games. I’m not like Rebecca as I’m not reflective. I like to go for stuff, not plan.’

Julia

Learning characters on Tour!

The Learning characters made it to their forth and final stop today at Tullos Primary School. Once again we went on an adventure to find out which learning character we are most like and who we would like to become more like.

Some of us struggled to pick just one character as we felt we shared a lot of similar characteristics with multiple characters.

‘I’m like Ruby and Rebecca because I think about everything and I talk to the teacher a lot.’

Caitlyn

Rhianna decided she would like to be more like Ryan.

‘I’d like to get better at learning with people.’

Others of us thought really hard about what we did or could do to help with our learning.

‘I go home [at lunch] and come back and calm down at my house and rest and make my brain all better. [Then] I feel nice and fresh,’

Jack

As you can see the class had already made snitches with the 4 different learning characteristics on them and this helped us when we were discussing who we were like.

A visit to Union Terrace Gardens

Manor Park and Bramble Brae Imagineers have been walking around Union Terrace Gardens looking at the art, thinking about what’s good and bad and how to change the gardens. It’s part of the City Centre plans for Aberdeen.

‘We like the mural but not the mess and stuff lying about. We will write a report when we see the plans for the Union Terrace Gardens in December.’

Bramble Brae Imagineers

Learning characters at Riverbank

We were looking at different types of learning today at Riverbank and learned 4 new ways of learning. Each learning style is attached to a character. We have Robert who is resilient. Rebecca who is reflective. Ryan who likes relationships and Ruby who is resourceful. We asked each of the children to choose a character who they could relate to and spoke about what we had in common with each of the characters as well as looking at our differences. We also had a think about which characteristics we would like to work on.

Sean identified with Ryan because: ‘he’s good at encouraging people!’

Keela felt she was most like Ryan because: ‘I like having relationships with my friends. I think it helps me learn because Tyler showed me something I was good at and I never knew I was good at it until I tried it.’

Nico wanted to become more like Ryan as he felt this would make him a better learner: ‘I want to get better at working with people as it’s hard to work on my own.’

Samantha wanted ‘to be more like Robert so I can challenge myself.’

Dennis even thought of a way to improve: ‘I want to get better at handwriting by doing more practice.’

Celebrating Children and Young People

For Aberdeen City Council’s Celebration of Children and Young People, Imagineers ask staff and visitors at Marischal College what they can do to make their vision of Aberdeen as a healthy, happy and safe place happen.

I was asking people if they would like a tour of the mural. Many people said ‘No, I am too busy’ or ‘I have a meeting’ but the people who did it liked it!

Leo

‘We were giving tours of the mural. Telling grown ups about how the inside of the bubble is how the Imagineers imagine Aberdeen to be. Before we started talking to the grown ups we felt nervous but excited. We were really happy giving tours.’

Aidan, Mikey, Ralfs and Gabrielle.

‘We were asking what can you do to make the ideas in the mural happen? We decorated cards and then asked grown ups to write down their ideas. The tree looked amazing and colourful – an Imagineer Christmas tree. We hope the adults do what they said they would.’

Sean-Paul, Katie and Keira.

Here are the commitments that the adults made to helping make the Imagineers vision happen:

Be more friendly to others. Keep the streets clean. Make sure everyone picks up their litter. Never be mean to children. Love the city. Try hard. Smile more. Invest in our children. Be helpful to people. Make children happy. Invest in the environment by building more parks, playgrounds and better buildings. Love everybody all of the time. Listen to children’s views. Care for our children. Be supportive. Encourage creativity in everything we do. Tell children they are great! Recycle and look after my grand-daughter.

Bramble Brae meets our learning team!

Today in Bramble Brae we met 4 new learning characters. Each character has different learning attributes which we may already possess or might like to work on.

‘I’ve learnt that different people have different characters and you can see which one you got and maybe take the advice written.’

Kate

Cameron felt he was most like Robert ‘because I love a challenge and am quite resilient.’

As well as identifying attributes we already have we highlighted some which we would like to work on.

‘I need to work on being independent so people don’t distract me.’

Marcin

Distraction was a key theme which came up in the majority of groups and the need to learn how to manage such distractions. Our groups came up with a number of suggestions of how we could best tackle this issue.

‘Ignore them or go and sit somewhere else [and] it’s good not to listen [to them].’

Rhiannon and Scott