Creative Practitioner: Anne Gee
Creative Practice: Visual Artist
School: Wembley Primary School
Teacher: Hannah Cox
Year Group : Year 6
Main Curriculum Focus
HASS – Civic and citizenship, History, Reconciliation
Cross-curricular Links – English – narratives, interpreting stories, research Visual Art and the use of Information Technology
Context
There were 29 students in this class with an experienced and innovative senior teacher in a leadership role. The classroom learning environment was well established and students were confident and competent explorers of learning. There were little to no behavioural issues allowing for maximisation of the learning program.
WHAT WE DID
Project overview
The ‘Casting Light’ project was designed to explore the HASS learning area with an enquiry focus on migrants and Indigenous Australians, drawing parallels in displacement of identity and culture for these two groups of people as a result of Australian government policy and consequent impacts of these decisions. Over Term 2 we introduced these focus questions.
How is identity established, developed and impacted upon as a result of life’s journey?
How have historical government decisions and policies created displacement for migrant and indigenous Australians?
What lessons from the past shape or should shape the future?
How are our personal stories similar and different?
Our plan was not only to introduce and unpack these focus questions, but to explore different ways stories can be discovered, investigated and re-imagined. Over the course of the Term 2 program, students experimented with different mediums through which stories and ideas can be expressed and shared.
How did we make the curriculum come alive?
The school already has a strong connection to social justice and reconciliation of our First Nations people. In the previous year, students questioned why their four house factions were named after early historical figures, all of whom were white and male, one having historically ordered the slaughter of Indigenous Western Australians while in office. The students set about to identify four local figures that represented the values the school endorses. This high level and depth of investigation set a solid base from which to establish our project of enquiry.
How did we make the Creative Habits of Mind come alive?
The 5 Learning Habits wheel was presented alongside an owl drawing as a metaphor to illustrate the Habits and discuss what they mean in action. We looked back over the term at all previous activities and at which of the Learning Habits we had identified each week as our main selection. Students compared differences and their own patterns and habits. We asked “are there any habits you seem easily to use each time?” “Are there habits you seem to avoid or use less often - why?”
We have been visually recording these habits by wrapping corresponding coloured yarn around our ‘Habit Sticks’, to represent the main two habits used each session. The students used this data to create and illustrate these statistics with a range of graphs as part of maths. Students used this data to discover things like:
• if some habits are more often identified by girls vs boys
• how different activities impact on different habits
• which learning habit the class is strongest at vs weakest at
How did we activate student voice and learner agency?
It was gratifying to hear the students genuinely interrogating what each of the habit definitions mean. We talked about the misunderstanding of the word ‘disciplined’ and its associations with being in trouble or just behaving. It was good to break that down and see it as something that individuals owned rather than having something imposed upon them like simple rules. Elements of the creative mini projects presented each week had a clear agenda and focus: individuals and groups were given the freedom to select specific areas of personal appeal, which created self-generated intrinsic motivation. Student voice and learner agency was supported through journaling and our reflective sessions with the Habit Sticks. Here students compared data gathered. Individual sticks were displayed from a larger branch as a kind of ‘collective’ of our habits over the term. Students talked about “what learning is?” and “what learning looks like?” Students put these ideas into words which they hung as leaves from their sticks. Students took pride in sharing the installation and explaining what it represented to staff and parents who visited the classroom.
How did we activate student voice and learner agency?
It was gratifying to hear the students genuinely interrogating what each of the habit definitions mean. We talked about the misunderstanding of the word ‘disciplined’ and its associations with being in trouble or just behaving. It was good to break that down and see it as something that individuals owned rather than having something imposed upon them like simple rules. Elements of the creative mini projects presented each week had a clear agenda and focus: individuals and groups were given the freedom to select specific areas of personal appeal, which created self-generated intrinsic motivation. Student voice and learner agency was supported through journaling and our reflective sessions with the Habit Sticks. Here students compared data gathered. Individual sticks were displayed from a larger branch as a kind of ‘collective’ of our habits over the term. Students talked about “what learning is?” and “what learning looks like?” Students put these ideas into words which they hung as leaves from their sticks. Students took pride in sharing the installation and explaining what it represented to staff and parents who visited the classroom.
WHAT WAS THE IMPACT?
Student
As the term progressed students seemed more at ease and informed to talk about their learning and their processes of reflecting on personal and collective ways of thinking. Journal entries and end-of-session discussions showed evidence of greater metacognition with students better able to articulate knowing when and how to use particular strategies for problem solving.
Teacher
The teacher had spent much of Term 1 creating an ideal classroom environment for creative thinking and exploration. Over Term 2 the students were exposed to and involved in a great deal of content. The Creative Schools project seemed to give the teacher permission to break the mould of end-point/product-focused programming, enabled her to push the envelope a little further, and stirred her already well-established understanding of valuing the process of learning. While this was not at the expense of the ‘end product’ (which likewise was valued), emphasis was placed more importantly upon the growth achieved through the process of deeper learning practices.
Creative Practitioner
The creative gained a greater appreciation of just how crowded the classroom curriculum can be. The valuable windows of dedicated planning time with the teacher were ultimately the success of the program. The creative valued feedback from the teacher who knew her students so well. She not only could pre-empt possible group friction but also knew when to exploit this to enhance the learning process.
School
It is a testament to the school that flexibility in timetabling meant that we could conduct intensive and extended projects across half days for much of the term. The school in its second year of this program thoroughly endorses the initiative, and regularly included stories of the classroom projects in the newsletter. The term ended with a whole-of-school professional day, led by the two creative practitioners working within the school.
Parents
The teacher reported that questions about and interest in the Creative Schools program were regularly raised by parents at the end of term parent/teacher interviews. Many families had been in interviews with potential schools for their child’s secondary education next year. Parents reported that during these interviews their children were asked about their learning beyond the core subject areas. In many cases students had referred to their experiences in our Creative Schools sessions when articulating their answers.
“What I like about Creative Schools most is [that] it lets me be who I am. Anne [Creative Practitioner] coming from a teaching background really gave me a push. It’s another layer of light to present the curriculum in this way. We already did visible thinking and a lot of those routines link beautifully to Creative Schools. We do the groundwork of knowledge and understanding with Bloom’s Taxonomy then it shifts up a gear to creativity and grasping what the kids have taken in. I was at a roadblock. I felt that I had nailed visible thinking and then with Creative Schools it has added a different layer to my teaching.” - Teacher
“People are more committed. Before, kids were bored and not paying attention. But now they are really listening in. I’m seeing different sides of people. Some people are quiet but Creative Schools gives them a chance to express themselves.” - Student
“I think it’s given people a way to think of different ways of approaching things, rather than doing it just the way the teacher says to do it. We are more open to working with different people. I don’t usually work with some classmates but now I do work with other people. You get lots of different ideas that way.” - Student
“The kids in our class are more focused since they started Creative Schools. In normal class we usually do normal school work and only work with your friends. In Creative Schools we choose different groups and talk about ideas and what we are going to do.” - Student
“Creative Schools is opportunities. We learn one thing at a time but we can learn it in different ways. We get to choose the way we learn. Sometimes it’s a bit harder because you don’t know exactly what to do but in other ways it's easier because there is no right or wrong way to do it.” - Student
“When I can choose my own idea, I’m bursting with them - I now think that’s the easy part, Creative Schools has helped me to fine tune what to do - it’s actually made me more disciplined.” - Student
“It’s my favourite time of the week. I felt that I had nailed visible thinking and then with Creative Schools it has added a different layer to my teaching. It’s another layer of light to present the curriculum in this way. I like the way our creative practitioner thinks: it’s like giving me permission jump beyond the roadblock.” - Teacher
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