Tullos Primary – Page 2 – 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

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.

Learning Selfies at Tullos

Children need learning to be fun and have important people around them to help them be good learners.

‘My mum, my nana, my friends and my community are important to me. I like to play with my friends. I like to go swimming. I like art. I learned to talk when I was a baby. I learned how to run when I was two. I want to learn more art, to cook and to bake cookies. I’d like to learn how to be a model or artist.’

Laura-Jane

‘In my life I have learned my when my cousin’s birthday is, how to sing and how to take care of a baby. I love playing football, going to after-school club, going on holiday and to my mum’s, reading and look after my brothers. I’d like to go outside to learn about nature and drawing. I’d like to learn how to do gymnastics.’

Skye

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!

Torry Capacity Day

We had a great time at the Torry Capacity Day, showing people the mural and talking with other young people who are keen to make a difference in Torry. And it was a pleasure to have our very own Imagineer, Sean-Paul with us.

‘Imagining Aberdeen is great bcos it shows what children want – a bright, happy and fun Aberdeen.’

Torry Squad

‘I’d have more police at the skatepark to keep it safe’

Imagineer Sean-Paul

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.