Main Curriculum Focus
English: Language, Literature, Literacy
Cross-curricular Links
Maths – shapes, The Arts: Dance, Drama, Music, Visual Arts
Context
Westfield Park Primary School is a lovely school nestled in the foothills of Perth. The Principal has a keen interest in the arts and the school is alive with sculpture. This is a lively, enthusiastic class who are keen to make, do, learn and play. They are taught by a passionate, caring and creative teacher. A student teacher and class aid were present for all Creative Schools sessions. The last few sessions provided the student teacher an opportunity to be more involved in the planning and delivery of Creative Schools sessions.
WHAT WE DID
Project overview
This term we focused on the English curriculum, specifically storytelling, along with character development and a focus on adjectives.
Students took a deep dive into learning the well-known, traditional story of The Ginger Bread Man. Using the story as a framework, students explored character development and the purpose and use of adjectives. Next term, we will use this learning as a foundation to create new and interesting characters with the creation of individual student stories.
How did we make the curriculum come alive?
A visit to Remida gifted me with a very large piece of material. I used this to cut out a giant Gingerbread Man and he formed the basis of many fun and entertaining warm-ups. For example, we sat on him, played on him, decorated him outside in the playground with ephemeral art and even played musical gingerbread man with him. We also held a session were the students worked on giving him emotions by cutting out facial features on coloured paper to assist in building their descriptive vocabulary and character development.
Students initially learned the Gingerbread Man verbally via storyboarding and the accompanying actions. Then, over a few weeks, using found objects from Remida and from the class supplies, students each created a pop stick puppet and at least one mask. These were used as creative aides to make the characters come alive and assisted students to get to know the characters and to learn the story. Students used the puppets and masks to work collaboratively, to learn and to share the story via live and recorded performances.
We also participated in a shape treasure hunt around the school and then used the shapes as a jigsaw puzzle to create the Gingerbread man characters.
How did we make the Creative Habits of Mind come alive?
We made the Creative Habits of Mind came alive by wrapping sticks in wool. At the end of each session, students reflected on the session and chose coloured wool to represent a habit they most related to during the session. We then sat in a circle and bound our sticks in colourful wool.
How did we activate student voice and learner agency
Students were provided with multiple opportunities to independently create their own interpretation of characters and sets and to use these in performances. The reflections at the end of each session gave them the opportunity to think about their learning process via the 5 Habits of Learning and this should hopefully hold them in good stead for the rest of their school life.
WHAT WAS THE IMPACT?
Students
Students took a deep dive into learning a traditional story. Every student could tell the story aloud by themselves and with confidence. Students were required to provide an example of why they had chosen their particular colour and have now become familiar with the 5 Habits of Learning and are comfortable to refer to them in their everyday learnings.
“This is really challenging but I’m going to keep going. If you keep going when it’s challenging, even if you loose one time, but if you keep going, you will eventually win.” (Student)
“I actually did team work. And I never give up. If you give up then you can’t try anything.” (Student)
“Its fun because we play games, we learn to never give up, and we learn to be strong.” (Student)
“You get to use glitter and paint in Creative Schools, two of my favourite things.” (Student)
Teacher
These creative sessions provided a great opportunity to collaborate and bounce ideas with each other to come up with different ways of implementing the curriculum.
“The students look forward to Mel’s creative sessions and ask if she will be here, just about every day!” (Teacher)
“It’s been wonderful watching the kids flourish. Their persistence is coming through in spades. This class really struggled with persistence’s at the start of the year. This was our focus. They weren’t keen to take risks at the start of the year, and now I’m seeing much more willingness for them to take risks. It has been helpful for me to see how to integrate the Creative Habits of Learning into my teaching, and making them accessible and engaging. It has really helped me giving targeted feedback to the children on focus areas like persistence. It has given me the time, the focus and the language to focus on different skills. At the end of term 1 one of my students would be in floods of tears, showing no persistence, she is used to having everything done for her, now she is persisting. I can see the frustration in her face but she is choosing to switch to persistence. It is giving different kids opportunities for leadership, and not always the ones that you would expect.” (Teacher)
Creative Practitioner
It is a joy to teach this class, they are so enthusiastic and eager to learn. They love the practical, hands on side of things as they get to experience the story, rather than just listen to it and write it down.
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