Riverbank Primary – Imagining Aberdeen

The Imagineers win big!

The Imagineers rounded up the 2016/17 school year with invitations to accept prizes for all the great work they’ve being doing to ensure children’s voices are listened to. First they met with Gayle Gorman, Aberdeen City Council’s Director of Education and Children’s Services, who presented them with certificates. The following week they were awarded a GREC Anne Frank Award for their amazing work and commitment to human rights.

‘I loved getting an Anne Frank Awards for my hard work as an Imagineer. Anne Frank was a girl who lived during WW2. She kept a diary and wrote in it every day because she was hiding from the Nazis and couldn’t go to school or play. She then was taken to a concentration camp and died. Her awards go to children who help show respect and fight discrimination in their communities. It felt good getting it because I was representing my school.’

Imagineer Abdullah

Dear Tillydrone Community,

‘We made a big poster about what has changed for the better in Tillydrone and what still needs to improve.’

Hunting for Treasure!

Over the last two weeks we have been on a treasure hunt. We have been searching for learning treasures.

‘The treasure maps showed us what we were good at and bad at learning.’

– Nicola

We used our treasure maps to identify the learning skills we were good at and used a lot as well as those we found harder.

When we thought about how this activity made us feel, we used adjectives such as fun, peaceful, joyful and calm.

Abigail found that this activity reinforced what she had already learned in previous weeks which was a helpful reminder.

We agreed to try and use one of the treasures we found harder but would like to get better at this week.

Looking at learning: what helps us and what hinders our learning?

This week at Riverbank we were making learnometers.

‘A learnometer is a thing to show how we learn and what makes it difficult.’

– Wes and Daniels

On one side of the board we wrote what helped us to learn and on the other side we wrote down things which got in the way of learning.

Some of the ideas we came up with include:

‘Don’t distract people while they’re working or laugh at them.’

– Megan

‘I learned lots of different ways of listening.’

– Pyper

I learnt ‘how to fix a (drawing) mistake I made.’

– Dimi

Hopefully these are something we can refer back to if we need a reminder of tools we have to help us learn and to decrease distractions.

Learning Characters visit Riverbank

Today we have been looking at some people with different learning personalities.

This was a fun activity because you learnt how to describe yourself and what your actual learning personality is. When we looked at the cards our personalities where kind of the same. Some of us were very like one character and others of us could relate to two or three!

Finishing off: Praise Poems and Myself as a Learner

As this was our last week with P5b we finished on a high by reading out our praise poems to each other and revisiting Myself as a Learner (MALs).

Tyler discovered he ‘was happy the class knew what he was kind of like’ and Charlotte went from being nervous to happy and thought that the poem was true about her.

Finally, we redid the MALs to see if we felt any different about ourselves as learners than we did before we started the project.

‘I really, really, really liked it because it was fun and we got to do art and learn what does help us learn and what doesn’t. I learnt that sometimes other things don’t help other people. Sometimes I distract other people.’

Eli, Riverbank P5b

‘Yes. I helped someone today because she was upset and let her play with us.’

Elisha, Riverbank P5b

Girls day out!

The girls from the Imagineers group talked about what women in their communities need to be healthy, happy and safe. Why? Well, if children are healthy, happy and safe, the adults need to be too. Then Imagineers met the Community, Housing and Infrastructure Committee. The girls played the fortune-teller game with the councillors, designing their own questions.

Miriam asked the councillors ‘how do you make sure all children have enough to eat?’ Demi-Leigh inquired ‘how do you help to make the parks poo-free?’ and Tijana asked ‘how can you make sure children have a say at home and school?’

Boys day out!

The boys form the Imagineers group talked about what men in their communities need to be healthy, happy and safe. Why? Well, if children are healthy, happy and safe, the adults need to be too. Then Imagineers met the Education and Children’s Services Committee – quite an occasion. The Imagineers did a grand job representing their vision for the city.

Creating Praise Poems at Riverbank

Today at Riverbank we were gathering important information about each member of the class so that at the end of the project we can present each child with their very own Praise Poem! Praise Poems were used by ancient cultures to celebrate great and important people. The idea behind these is to say a big ‘THANK YOU’ to all the children for all their input, ideas and hard work over the last few months and to act as a reminder to them of what they have learnt about themselves, especially as a learner.

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We had to think about how nature can reflect our personality. Leon felt he was like a rainbow of jelly beans, happy, colourful and sweet! Sean decided that he was like a monkey because he liked climbing and could be a bit mischievous at times. Quite a few of us felt like we were like the sea but Bartek added more description by saying he was like the waves.

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We also had to think back to when we did our treasure maps and remind ourselves of some of the learning treasures we felt we were good at. Encouragingly, many of the class said that they would keep going even if it was hard, therefore showing that they were more resilient than they may have been at the start. Imagination was another key one, as was listening to and understanding others showing that as a class they are sensitive to others and good at showing empathy.

Now that I have collected all the information I will make them into poems which we can read out to each other as a class.

What helps us get a good education?

Today at P5b in Riverbank we were exploring what factors can help our learning. The four key themes were: healthy, happy, safe, and doing our best. In small groups we collected ideas for each theme and then discussed what we’d come up with in a larger group setting.

Jennifer felt fruit and vegetables were important to keep us healthy and school helped us by giving us healthy lunches. Exercise, such as P.E helped to keep us fit and healthy as did fresh air.

Story time, playing the piano and Rainbow time all featured highly in things which made us happy in school. Rhiannan particularly enjoyed: ‘making new friends and learning new stuff.’

Deniss felt that the walls around the school keep us safe to stop strangers coming in and fire alarms were good to help us if there was a fire.

Finally, when we were looking at doing our best we thought that listening to our teachers helped us to learn and sometimes it could be helpful to look at thing on the walls or ask someone else for help.