PROJECT TITLE: Describe Our Character

School Name:  Calista Primary School

Teacher’s Name: Brittney Tyson

Year Group: Year 3/4

Number of students: 23

Creative’s Name: Sally Bower

Creative Practice: Visual and Textile Art

Main Curriculum Focus: LITERACY

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About our project: Describe Our Character

How best to describe the world around and within you? How does what you wear express aspects of yourself? Our Literacy project invited 23 Year 3 / 4 students to consider and articulate their own characters, with the aim of developing a costume for their character to wear at an end-of-year performance.

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About our school:

Calista Primary’s values are to provide a space to be safe, aspiring, inclusive, life-long learners, aligning with Creative Schools’ values of striving to bring creative thinking into all aspects of learning.

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What happened:

World and character-building comes from language: descriptions, adjectives. Description adds detail. Detail adds understanding, makes information tactile, rich and realistic. From a curricular Literacy point of view, the core objective for teacher Brittney Tyson and visual and textiles artist Sally Bower was to expand and excite our students to use language and adjectives confidently, and to pull inspiration from the world around them. So we asked them to describe something they are expert in: themselves. We asked them to create texts by developing story lines, characters and settings, and by drawing connections between personal experiences and the worlds in their stories. An example: if you play basketball, you know what it feels like to be part of and play in a team. What can you use from that experience to take into your character development?

We additionally touched on Colour Theory to help with designing characters’ costumes, each week creating a colour wheel consisting of all the students' drawings.

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How did we use the Five Creative Habits of Learning?

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I’m inquisitive. I ask loads and loads of questions. It’s fun when you can do things like Creative Schools. Student

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We tapped into Imagination by:

• Playing with possibilities

• Encouraging students to test run ideas without the end point in sight

• Asking them to create their own character

• Getting them to identify with their character by ‘putting themselves in their shoes’

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We encouraged Collaboration by:

• Group work in world-building

• Listening to others

• Asking one student to describe another’s costume

• Identifying similarities between colour, texture, shape

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We practised Persistence by:

• Learning and sticking with new skills and techniques, even when they’re repetitive

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We sparked Inquisitiveness by:

• Exploring and questioning options as students’ knowledge and skills increased

• Equipping metaphorical toolkits with costume construction techniques

• Investigating colour, shape and function

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We learned to be Disciplined through:

• Developing techniques to create costumes

• Seeing it through to the final product

• Making an annotated costume design map

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What did we discover?

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Lessons are better in Creative Schools. Student

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As a visual and textiles artist teaching both adults and children, Sally was interested in classroom dynamics and seeing how children learn day to day. It was refreshing to follow the guidance provided by Creative Schools that creatives wouldn't be teaching their art practice, but instead be using the Five Creative Habits of Learning and working directly with mainstream curriculum.  

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We have many students with Autism, ADHD and Dyslexia, Tier 3 behaviour students and this program has allowed them to feel included in our environment which has been very impactful. We are very grateful for Creative Schools. Teacher

I feel there was joy in our classroom. We were encouraged to ask different questions, as opposed to the ‘right one.’ Student

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The impact on the Teacher/Creative partnership

I felt supported in the classroom. It was a positive experience and students would say that it was something they really looked forward to. Teacher

The teacher that I’m working with has been super encouraging. I call on her as she knows her class best. Creative Practitioner

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Main Curriculum Focus: Literacy

Confidently using adjectives, constructing a fictional character though a series of workshops.

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