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Memorandum submitted by Dr Jonathan Rodgers, Brunswick House Primary School, Maidstone, Kent
Flow - a Creative Partnerships project - January-February 2007
Background Earlier this year artist practitioner Siobhán Timoney worked with LKS2 on creative approaches to teaching the geography topic of rivers, identified as one that traditionally fails to inspire children, and where (so perhaps because...) teachers had established materials and lessons for covering the program of study. This was the second year of collaboration with Creative Partnerships: last year Sharon Potter worked with Year 2. Year 3 and 4 were keen to access the skills of the artist practitioner, as they enjoyed the creative approaches to literacy championed in our three-year project with CCCU and were excited about applying them to foundation subjects.
Activities · For children the project began by meeting Siobhán and brainstorming on enormous rolls of paper everything they knew about water, and everything they wanted to find out; prior to this the teachers had brainstormed ideas that took the children (and teachers) outside their usual learning environment. · We began the topic by walking down to the River Medway, which many children had never visited, and staff and children sketched, photographed, filmed and discussed whatever they saw. The visit generated questions as well as answers and also provided material for poetry about water that the children wrote with Mark Scott. · The next day the children sampled fresh and dried fruits, and made sculptures from the dried and smoothies from the fresh, which offered a maths lesson about measures and subtraction. · On the following afternoon each year group made an Art Attack depiction of the water cycle, an incredibly energetic and frenetic activity as sixty children at a time scavenged the school grounds for materials they turned into huge representations. · Another outdoor activity followed; making a river! Each class designed its own river course and collaborated to build a frame, which they covered in modroc (fabric impregnated with plaster of Paris), then decorated when dry. · The weather stayed cold but dry, and we were able to compose water music outside. The children used tubs, sieves, jugs, bottles, pipes, straws, funnels and tubes to make every conceivable kind of noise, which they recorded using their own notational score, then practised and performed.
Key findings · The key things we learned during the project were to take risks and let the children run with their ideas, giving ownership of the learning to the children. When we did so we saw learning take the place of teaching, and with the children discovered countless cross-curricular links. · It is impossible to overstate the importance of the sheer fun the children had: we laughed a great amount, and the children learned and remembered a huge amount, surely no coincidence · Donah Billinge, then a TA but from September a GTP student, carried out research into the importance of using the senses in learning, adding a fascinating extra dimension to the project: she found that sensory stimulation enhances children's ability to store memories, and that tactile stimulus is key in this respect. · LKS2 staff are thoroughly convinced of the benefits of multi-sensory approaches that encourage collaborative, cross-curricular activity, and shift the focus from teaching to learning; they are evangelical about the need for the children to take ownership of the learning and have fun.
Future plans The three final days of the project will see · Gifted and Talented children from Years 3, 4, 5 and 6 working with Siobhán and their teachers to plan creative approaches to areas of the curriculum that tend to be hard to teach creatively, which will benefit our G&T students as well as encouraging cross year group and cross KeyStage collaboration; · a day to begin planning a new school allotment that builds directly on the thinking of the project; · an evaluation day where children, teachers, artist practitioner and Creative Partnerships administrators will assess the findings and successes of the project; · a celebration day where a teacher, artist practitioner and Headteacher will present the project to other Creative Partnerships schools.
July 2007 |