Thinking Skills and Personal Capabilities Activities for Primary 6

Title: WaterArea of Learning:Language and LiteracyPossible Learning Intentions:• Use language to affect the reader or engage attention.• Develop increasing competence in the use of grammar and punctuation tocreate clarity of meaning.Thinking Skills/Personal Capabilities:Being Creative: Make ideas real by experimenting with different outcomes.Self Management: Be self directed by working on their own or with a group.Activity:Children discuss poems on water and, using various formats, construct their ownpoems. This activity is best carried out after children have explored the topicof ‘water’.Classroom Management:Groups of 2-4.How It Works:• The children read and discuss the poem Water (Pupil Resource Sheet 1),drawing upon previous knowledge.• Refer to the last four lines of the poem. Discuss the message the poet istrying to convey and why the water might ‘never return’?• Prior to writing their own poems, children will examine the poet’s use ofadjectives and verbs to affect the reader or engage attention.• Using the spider diagrams (Pupil Resource Sheets 2 and 3), children willcreate different adjectives and verbs to affect the reader or engageattention.• At this point the teacher will decide whether the children write their ownwater poems or make use of Pupil Resource Sheet 4 or the suggestions onTeacher Information Sheets 1 and 2 to scaffold their writing.Metacognition:In order for learners to strengthen their thinking strategies they need time toplan, adapt and evaluate their thinking (see Reflective Thinking Grid – page 2).- 48 -