PROJECT TITLE: Jingle Fun

School Name: Calista Primary School

Teacher’s Name: Sophie Tonks

Year Group: 4

Number of students: 27

Creative’s Name: Kirsty Mees

Creative Practice: Music

Main Curriculum Focus: Health

‍

About our project: Jingle Fun

This project explored health and wellbeing, looking at healthy habits and health messaging and how these can influence health decisions and behaviours. Twenty-seven Year 4 students explored different ways of thinking about health and wellbeing, how health information is presented, and what can influence/support healthy choices. Their explorations resulted in a series of ‘Jingles,’ portraying health messages.

‍

About our school:

Calista Primary is a school of 469 students. Often year groups are of 2 or 3 streams. With an Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) of 928, 59% of enrolments are in the bottom quarter of the Distribution of Socio-Educational Advantage. Our school is an Explicit Teaching school that follows a rigorous ‘I do, We do, You do’ teaching ethos that leaves limited room for creative opportunities. Creative Schools was a new opportunity.

‍

What happened:

Teacher Sophie Tonks and musician Kirsty Mees encouraged our pupils to engage collaboratively and creatively in sharing their ideas around health and wellbeing, with a focus on musical exploration, composition, movement, and literacy. The aim was for students to compose and present a series of ‘Jingles’ portraying health messages which resonated with them.

Warm-up activities encouraged pupils to sing, move, explore musical ideas, and connect with the curriculum content and creative habits. One regular warm-up was ‘Hello how should it go?’ introducing musical concepts. We invited pupils to choose a pattern of musical cues (loud/soft, fast/slow, high/low, musical style, sounds, lyrics, and performance ideas). Kirsty combined and performed mini-improvisations highlighting these musical choices and showing how different musical ideas come together to create songs.

‍

It’s amazing and fun because you can upgrade the brain and knowledge and they can learn a lot of things. Student

‍

We explored curriculum content and concepts in a variety of ways: brainstorming, lyric writing, video analysis, discussions, games and reflecting on the creative process. To build confidence in sharing and developing our ideas, we explored musical games from around the world. We learnt the rules of the game, the associated song, and performed it as a class. We then moved into groups and the pupils created their own adaptions, sharing these with the class, and then adding these into the game. This was a highlight activity for the pupils who confidently explored new ideas and adaptions, considered rules around safety and success, and built their collaborative group work skills which transferred to other areas of the project.

Our pupils were active participants with opportunities to create, explore, observe, listen, sing, play, and adapt many of the activities explored. Building confidence through motivating activities promoted engagement and supported everyone in finding ways of exploration which reflected their individual learning styles.

How did we use the Five Creative Habits of Learning?

We aimed to explore the Five Habits in an immersive way where pupils could explore their meaning through reflection and application to the project’s activities. We focused on one Habit area every two sessions, introducing the terminology and having class discussions. We then connected the Habits to the class activities through short reflections after different tasks. We also introduced some Habit-specific activities to extend pupils’ understanding of how they apply to learning.

In the final weeks we invited our pupils to create their own definitions of the Five Habits. They worked in groups and each group was assigned one habit area. Pupils brainstormed ideas, discussed how the Habits applied to different project activities, and then agreed on and wrote their definitions.

PERSISTENT: you can do it!!

Sticking with Difficulty: doing something for a long time until you have got it.

Daring to be Different: believing in yourself, being yourself.

Tolerating Uncertainty: sticking to difficult problems. Working with friends and being kind to others.

Kirsty and Sophie were amazed by these definitions and the way in which they reflected the learning processes observed across the project.

‍

What did we discover?

Each activity invited the pupils to participate and engage in ways which were meaningful and accessible. We had systems in place which supported different ways of participation and we used specific activities to open up discussions as a class about how we could ensure success and achievement for all. This, combined with the musical and flexible nature of the activities, allowed for differentiation of learning, and promoted peer support and encouragement.

The impact on the pupils appeared to be significant and wide ranging. Achievement in musical skill development including composition and song writing, confidence in creating, sharing, and performing ideas, and extended understanding of curriculum goals including health and literacy outcomes, were evident across the project. We observed pupils’ consistent active participation, improved collaborative skills, creation of lyrics and musical pieces, reflections, discussions and interpretations of tasks, and descriptions of the Habits, all cultivating in a magical final performance highlighting the amazing creative journey of the pupils and their absolute joy in sharing the process and product of their commitment.

‍

Sharing in the final performance assembly which included musical performances, reflections of the pupils’ experiences of the project, the Five Habits of Learning, and their creative journey. Feedback from this assembly from other pupils, teachers, families, and staff, was extremely positive. Parent

‍

The impact on the Creative/Teacher team

Coming from an explicit teaching school, this was really eye opening to see what happens when you provide pupils with a bit of information and a skill and then they apply it in their own way. It was less of a regime and something to learn for myself as a teacher and how to apply that in other areas of the curriculum for them. I learnt more about the process of allowing them time and space for creativity, going with the flow and giving them the time to come up with ideas and the time to process it in their own ways. Teacher

I gained so much from working alongside the teacher and observed the benefit this had on pupils’ achievement and participation. Having someone who knows the pupils so well and can support their needs, promote ideas, model participation, and challenge their understanding in a different way than myself, created a wonderful and inspiring teaching team. This offered the pupils such a rich, meaningful, and motivating experience where their creativity could thrive. Creative Practitioner

‍

Impact on the school:

With Creative Schools, our school has had an opportunity to embrace enquiry-based learning in the best way. In addition, straying from the Explicit Teaching Model to provide open-ended learning and creative skills was a great opportunity for students to develop collaborative and critical thinking skills. Our school was lacking any Performing Arts curriculum this year so having a musician be part of our Creative Schools Project filled this creative gap. We were able to marry up the Health curriculum education with a creative outlet and this has been an invaluable experience for the students and teacher. It was a valuable experience to be able to demonstrate cross-curricular learning in a time-poor environment.

Main Curriculum Focus: Health  

Communicating and Interacting for Health and Wellbeing

Cross-Curricular Links:

• Music

• Literacy

• History

‍