Bramble Brae Primary – Page 2 – Imagining Aberdeen

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

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

Learning selfies at Bramble Brae

For the last two weeks we have been creating our learning selfies. We’ve been looking at who is important to our learning and how we can learn well.

‘My sister is important that to me because she helps me with my homework.’ Jamie

Nicole said: ‘It helped me to do stuff I’ve never done before and to think of stuff I’ve never thought of before.’

We also thought about what we would like to learn and Connon told us about how he would like to learn free running.

Introducing the Doing Our Best classes to Children’s Parliament

Children have rights throughout their life – they should be healthy, happy, safe and have human dignity.

Here are some ideas from the children:

‘Things that can give human dignity are: being yourself, getting hugs and kisses, getting presents, being included, sticking up for yourself, being unique, being happy, helping others, sharing, having a family, having friends, following your dreams, being a jokester, bravery.

Things that can take away human dignity are: someone dying, getting injured, having cancer, being arrested, being left out, getting bullied, fighting, feeling lonely, getting grounded, having your rights disrespected, being shouted at and not being listened to.

Myself as a Learner

We have done the ‘Myself as a Learner’ (MALs) questionnaire with each child we are working with so we can see how they view themselves as learners with the aim to build on this in the following weeks. It was also a great opportunity to get to know each child individually.

Here are some of the thoughts expressed while we were doing the questionnaires.

‘We have just done a questionnaire which will show me how we feel about ourselves and being in school. Surprisingly we have never done anything like this. Children’s Parliament wanted to know about us. We had to answer a big yes, a normal yes, not sure, no or a NO WAY!’ Some of the questions were easy to answer and some were really difficult, like ‘I’m not good at problem solving.’

Introducing Doing our Best!

Children’s Parliament is continuing to work with the four partner schools on a new programme called ‘Doing Our Best’. In Scotland it is every child’s right to an education, however there are many barriers, particular those associated with poverty, that get in the way of a child achieving their full potential. Doing Our Best is about developing learning self-perception and nurturing teacher/ pupil relationships.

Introducing P6 in Bramble Brae: Our teacher is Miss Mitchell. Our topic is ‘The Rainforest’ and this week we have been writing letters as if we were James on the Giant Peach!

Introducing P6 in Manor Park: Our teacher is Mr Murray. We like to ERIC – Everyone Reads In Class for 15minutes everyday. We have been learning about respect!

Introducing P5 in Riverbank: Our teacher is Miss Gardner. Our topic is space and today we wrote a diary entry as if we were astronauts up in space!

Introducing P5 in Tullos: Our teacher is Miss Charles. We like to learn art, maths and science. Today we had First Aid and learned the recovery position!

Imagineers meet with Aberdeen Head Teachers

On Thursday the 15th of September we had a team building morning with the Imagineers. The idea behind this was to get the children working together and to practice listening to each other. We also had to work together to prepare for our meeting with 80 of the Head Teachers from across Aberdeen. When we met with the Head Teachers, Demi, Gabrielle, Shannon, Dylan and Abdullah introduced the film and explained that we were going to be working with them on an activity focusing on how they as Head Teachers can make schools a joyful and happy place.

‘First in the day we played some fun games like drawing and throwing the ball to each other. After that we got the speeches and we made pyramids of things that we think are important. We made one for the head teacher’s too. I had Miss Murray, Mr Hendry and Mrs Reid from my school.’

Imagineer Demi

‘We played a game where you have to throw a ball to each other and we had to put the stick onthe floor. After this game we talked about what we would be doing for the meeting. After lunch we had the meeting with the head teachers. It was scary!!’

Imagineer Malachy

Award won by Imagineers

Children from the four schools participating in Imagining Aberdeen attended the Aberdeen City Council’s Children and Young Persons Award Ceremony on the 12th of October. On behalf of all the Imagineers involved in the project; Shannon, Dylan, Sean-Paul and Ralfs each represented their school at the ceremony. The Imagineers came away with the award for the Children and Young People’s Champions.