Creative Practitioner: Jodie Davidson
Creative Practitioner Practice: Visual Artist
School: Little Grove Primary School (On-line delivery model)
Teacher: Jenny Jay
Year Group: Year 1/2
(This project was delivered online with Creative Practitioner Jodie Davidson, for 6weeks, it included project planning and reflecting with the teacher after the sessions.)
CURRICULUM FOCUS
Maths
• Number and place value
• Measurement, time and geometry
• Patterns
Health
Communication and interacting for health and wellbeing
• Strategies to include others in activities and games
General Capabilities
• Personal and social capability
• Critical and creative thinking
CROSS-CURRICULAR LINKS
Design and Technology
• Engineering principles and systems
• Characteristics and properties of materials and individual components that are used to produce design solutions
HASS
Geography – People are connected to many places
• Questioning and Research
• Evaluating
• Analysing
• Communicating and Reflecting
CONTEXT
The plan for six weeks of term 4 was to conduct a pilot program for a Creative Practitioner to collaborate directly with a year 1/2 Teacher in a regional area so that she could deliver the Creative School philosophy to her class of 21 students. This method removed the need for students to utilise communication devices such as iPad which, earlier experience showed, resulted in additional behavioural management requirements around the use of online devices. Removing the visual online delivery element of the program that was trailed in term 2, enabled students and teacher to immerse themselves in exploring the Creative Habits of Learning through warmups, activities with an underlying maths focus along with both group and personal reflections.
WHAT WE DID
Sessions were structured to enable the development of ideas and implementation of methods that increased student awareness of the 5 Habits of Learning. This was supported by a class of year 5/6 students who had already participated in the program and who now acted as mentors. Initially focussing on Geography and Design and Technology with an underlying emphasis on STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics), the main curriculum quickly changed to Maths as this is where the teacher felt the students required the most assistance.
Extending from their term 3 observation of nature, explicitly birds within the school grounds, main activities were initially designed to draw on the habits of inquisitiveness and discipline through the observation of how birds build their homes and create their nests. This quickly shifted to measurement by considering and comparing birds and their sizes. Initially done with students through imagination and drawing, they were soon challenged with ways in which they may be able to obtain more accurate results.
“How can you find out the size of the birds?” - Jenny Jay, Teacher
“We can look outside at night and when they are asleep, we can measure them.” - Year 1 Student
Working outdoors proved challenging at first. Use of the Nature Play space appeared to blur the boundary between play area and an outdoor classroom resulting in a lack of concentration and ability to run a planned session. By conducting warmups on a 100 grid snakes and ladders game, discovering patterns in counting by 2’s, 5’s and 10’s, students were able to transition into the classroom, making material choices to continue counting and grouping using blocks, Playdoh, cards and an assortment of other items. The initial 90-minute planned session grew into 2 1/2 hours of discovery and engagement. As activities were tried repeatedly in a different outdoor space, the undercover area, students still struggled to stay on task.
This led the teacher reducing the behavioural management and instead attempting to keep students on task by asking questions and increasing opportunities for self-reflection. Reflections began with winding coloured string onto sticks that represented the most used creative habit.
After a mentoring afternoon with the year 5/6 class who showed the younger class, their own reflection sticks and explained in child speak which 5 Habit of Learning they were good at, the two classes were able to unpack the Creative Habit words and better understand their meanings. Older students spent time with the younger ones outside, making mandalas which had to include the clock times – 3, 6, 9 and 12 o’clock. This was followed up in class using oranges to comprehend links between a clock face and an orange regarding fractions.
Reflections progressed to include drawings that created a visual dialogue of self-reflection that students were able to refer to each week. Slowly they began to demonstrate discipline, develop techniques to work together more effectively. For one child with social and communication difficulties who could often be intense and bossy, began to ask others if they required help and commenting that if they said no, that would be ok. Leaders emerged trying different ways of getting their peers to collaborate more effectively. The smallest child in the class tried to organise the others in warmups by suggesting two lines in height order. Students were able to articulate why goals weren’t being achieved. They were going outside to check on the size of birds. The boys who didn’t initially get it, worked collaboratively together using lines to represent the different heights.
“They are understanding the concepts of each Habit of Learning and they are able to identify which one they are better at.” - Jenny Jay, Teacher
Creative mentoring using a digital format is a constantly evolving process of imagination and persistence; what are possible alternatives, putting the pieces together and tolerating the uncertainty when activities don’t go to plan. Consistent collaboration between Creative Practitioner and Teacher allows us to share both responsibilities and discoveries, reflecting on what is being achieved, what needs to be improved and exploring new ideas and methods of engaging students so that their inquisitiveness leads investigations. Increased student collaboration through warmups, reflections and working in groups allows them to discover more about themselves and others through participation and the sharing of asking and answering questions. They begin to generate the momentum for their own learning.
“The easiest way I can describe the Creative Schools program is like the old first steps language experience – open-ended tasks and integrated learning. Bringing in a Creative Practitioner is brilliant. They just think about things more broadly. It is brilliant. One week I set a challenge where children needed to find another bird of the same height, looking at their sizes first, then sizes of birds in the garden, then thinking how they can represent that in real size. It was a difficult session, they were struggling and not working together well. I was exhausted just trying to guide them.
I realised I kept interjecting to try and keep them on track and we didn’t achieve the outcomes, but that is okay because we reflected positively on the creative learning behaviours and why it didn’t work. The next week I reiterated the task and just stood back. It was amazing. The collaboration and problem solving was so much better and I could see what was happening. It was wonderful to see the little leaders popping up from the most demure children – I didn’t know they had a voice. We just need to step back. Why do we feel the need to interject? We know when they’re on track. I find this very refreshing to shift the focus from teaching to learning. By focusing on their learning, I get to step back.
I am bringing more creativity into my teaching now. This afternoon we explored chemical science. I took the children outside and challenged them to create a mixture in the playground. It was amazing how differently they expressed their learning.” - Jenny Jay, Teacher
Students
“It’s fun because we get to do fun things like measure and investigate and collaborate.”
“We are learning a lot in Creative Schools lessons. I’m learning a lot about birds. I might even get to help my dad a bit because he works with endangered animals. Sometimes I learn from my dad and my teacher.”
“I think Miss Jay enjoys the Creative Schools lessons. She helps us if we get really confused, but she sometimes lets us try to solve the problems ourselves.”
“We also work with the Year 5/6 class. We made a clock in the nature play area together. It’s very nice to work with the big kids because they look after you. I’m going to miss them when they graduate.”
“I prefer learning outside, like in Creative Schools. I love nature and I think I can learn more outside.”
“I like being creative. We don’t get to do a lot of creativity at school.”
“It’s about experimenting and exploring. I like it. It’s not writing. It’s a bit of everything, art, writing, exploring, living, kindness, questioning. It is a lot of stuff put together and each lesson is different. I like that.”
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