About our project: Cardboard Cut-Out People
Paper. It’s such a common thing in our lives. Wrapping paper, newspaper, writing paper, tracing paper. Yet, as 20 Year 1 students discovered in their Creative Schools Chemical Sciences sessions, it’s possible to change the appearance of this everyday material in many ways … and through doing that, learn useful things about things not always being how they seem.
About our school:
Bramfield Park Primary School is an Independent Public School in the Perth suburb of Maddington, catering for 353 students from Kindergarten to Year Six. The school has a diverse, multicultural student body with almost half the students coming from different parts of the world.
What happened:
Everyday materials can be physically changed in a variety of ways. Objects can physically be changed: they can be made of the same material but will look different. Under the guidance of teacher Sheree Sneddon and visual artist Cy O’Neill, Bramfield Primary’s Year 1s investigated all the possibilities of paper. We focused on whole-of-class ownership for everything we made, experimenting with bending, folding, twisting, rolling, pinching, cutting, tearing and dissolving. Collaboratively, we created 11 full-size cardboard cut-out body shapes, and each week we added any new discoveries we had made about paper to these cardboard sculptures. Working in pairs, our students experienced ‘learning through doing’ via collaboration, problem solving, discussion, compromise, and play.
Collaboration and teamwork have taken a little work. Teamwork has been interesting to watch, especially that it can be a challenge to let go. There is a lot of excitement. The kids are really enjoying it. They are taking ownership. I’ve found my agency to be creative in the classroom. It’s not just play; it’s thought processes and it’s collaborative. I loved to see the transformation in the kids. I’ve had one student who used to speak in a whisper, and now she shouts across the classroom, it’s awesome! Teacher
How did we use the Five Creative Habits of Learning?
With the Five Habits in mind, we developed creative, comprehensive, and hands-on learning content, to stimulate inquisitiveness and enthusiasm for doing, moving, and making. Warm-ups always related to the main activity. They were conducted in pairs or small groups, were usually physical and were completed outside whenever the weather permitted.
Whenever our students used the Five Habits we took the opportunity to explain or expand on their understanding. At the end of each session students reflected on the day’s work by choosing one of the Five Habits to discuss in their Reflection Journal. They threaded coloured items onto a Reflection Necklace, choosing purple for collaboration, green for persistence and so on.
They are growing in their understanding of the Five Habits. I’m using the language throughout the week. They have made beads to match the Habits so that we can use them for reflection. Teacher
What did we discover?
That the interest in our Creative Schools project spread across the whole school. We set up the body sculptures outside at our school’s annual ‘Learning Journeys’ event, showing how our collective work had resulted in a large, visual display of our class’s exploration and creativity: tangible evidence of the persistence, imagination, inquiry, discipline, and collaboration our students sustained with enthusiasm throughout the project. The whole school and parent community saw and celebrated the sculptures. The display was an opportunity for the whole school to mingle with one another, parents to meet and students from different age groups to strike up conversations. Staff were interested to see our finished products and were appreciative of all our efforts. Students from other classes spent time viewing the creations and asking questions.
I witnessed some of our students take their parents through the display and discuss elements of the project with them. I could see they were proud of what was achieved and were excited and enthusiastic to share with their friends and family. Creative Practitioner
It became known as ‘Fun Friday’ when Cy walked in and students would know that it was going to be fun. The enthusiasm of the kids when they would come into the classroom, so engaged and ready for the session. And then to go back to the class when the Creative Practitioner wasn’t there and to hear them using the language, so that it wasn’t just in the session that the creative language was being used. Creative Schools Coordinator
Cross-curricular Links
• General Capabilities: personal and social capabilities, critical and creative thinking.
• Literacy: creating texts
• Physical Science
• Media arts and Visual arts
• Health and Physical Education.
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