Memorandum submitted by Huyton with Roby CE Primary School

 

1. Huyton with Roby CE Primary School took part in a creative writing project, organised by Creative Partnerships, and a network of local schools. A particular year group was chosen to focus on. The class teachers attended valuable training before the sessions to learn and discuss how the project could be implemented and developed to gain the best possible outcomes.

 

2. What the project involved:

 

The class teachers selected a male creative practitioner who would be able to focus on the children's narrative writing. The practitioner whom they chose was a children's author and poet. The class teachers and the creative practitioner decided to run the project once a week for 5 weeks in two Year Three classes. Both classes did exactly the same. They discussed with the objectives and what they wanted the children to gain from the experience and the creative practitioner aimed to base his sessions around this.

 

3. Objectives:

 

These were closely linked to the National Literacy Strategy:

 

· To compare forms or types of humour.

· To listen to a story and retell the main points in sequence.

· To write paragraphs openings to stories or chapters, to focus on language to create effects, e.g building tension, suspense, creating moods and setting scenes.

· To improve the standard of writing, especially in boys.

· To encourage/promote co-operative group work and thinking.

 

Pupil Achievement and Attainment:

 

4. The children progressed well in their narrative writing, their attitude was more positive and their enjoyment of their learning increased. The children progressed well in their verbal narrative stories by retelling stories using interesting vocabulary and using their own imaginative versions to improvise some parts of the story.

 

5. The children had the opportunity of expert teaching from a creative practitioner who had skills which the class teachers did not have.

 

6. The novelty of the particular creative practitioner chosen had a significant impact on the children's motivation to learn, as the practitioner related to the children well, he had a good sense of humour and he was able to capture the children's attention. The children did not view it as a literacy lesson, as they were able to 'escape' from the normal structured lesson.

 

7. Some parents stated that they were surprised to see their children writing at home, always talking about the creative practitioner and felt their child's attitude to writing was more positive.

 

 

Teachers' skills and ability to work with creative professionals in the classroom:

 

8. The class teachers feel that some issues could have been improved and have considered how they could go about doing this. They personally feel they would have liked to have completed more joint planning rather than solely focusing on the practitioner's particular expertise. For example only having the practitioner for half a day and following this up with art or drama or possibly having two creative practitioners, with different expertise to work with the class.

 

9. The class teachers learnt a lot from the creative practitioner and have gained good ideas which they can use to enhance their teaching and improve their literacy lessons. However they have also learnt a lot from the other schools involved in the projects by attending the evaluation session. For example they now know that writing can be a part of any lesson in the curriculum, and have taken away several ideas such as; the opportunity for every child to have a special 'inspirations' note book to be used along side any lesson. It will enable the children to stop and write a quality descriptive paragraph. This resource will then be used for more structured writing and help maintain children's association of writing with creativity and other subjects. They also gained various ideas and copies of planning which was implemented in other schools, and generally felt more confident to be creative in their classrooms.

 

10. The Creative Practitioner learnt a lot about himself and how he delivers his sessions. He values the role he has, although does not always view himself as the 'important' adult in the classroom. He has begun to evaluate his teaching styles and think about the best way to include all of the children. He also attended a course organised by creative partnerships which helped him evaluate his teaching styles and think about how he could improved the delivery of the sessions.

 

Equipping young people with skills:

 

11. Although the long term effects of the project remain to be seen, the children have developed a lot of skills to equip them in the future. They have developed good team work skills, and really developed their speaking and listening skills.

 

Conclusions:

 

12. The class teachers feel that although the children's writing did improve while the practitioner was in school, the achievements and outcomes of the children can not necessarily be measured. For example some of the Special Educational needs children completed excellent pieces of work on various genres. Normally they would have not felt confident or inspired enough to produce pieces of writing.

13. For creative projects to work, risk taking and experimental learning is needed, which not all teachers are prepared to do. However the more reluctant teacher was surprised by the children's writing and what they produced through the creative practitioner.

 

July 2007