PROJECT TITLE: Every Role Plays a Part

(Term 2 and Term 3, 2024)

School Name: Calista Primary school

Teacher’s Name: Mrs Conway

Year Group: year 3

Number of students: 23

Creative’s Name: Sally Bower

Creative Practice: Visual Art and Sculpture

Main Curriculum Focus – HASS:

● Civics and citizenship -

       ○ Decision making/community groups

● History-

        ○ Exploring different cultural groups who play important roles in local communities.

        ○ One example of change - continually over time in the local community

An overview of the class, creative practitioner and teacher.

Class diverse range of needs, multicultural, indigenous, neuro diverse.
In the 5 habits Shanelle identified Inquisitive as the strongest in the class and Collaboration with some work to do.
Shanelle and Sally connected on the interest of empowering students to feel like superheroes in their learning journey and that there are multiple ways of succeeding. Adding texture and understanding that we all may take different paths to get places but the important thing is to try and keep going.
Placing that lens on how a greater community functions along a similar landscape.
We want to highlight that every role is important and assist in the larger success and direction of the community.

WHAT WE DID  

To explore local community groups as a class we investigated and zoomed into the Suburb of Kwinana. Seeing what local art and historic clues were around town.

leading to the collaborative creation of 4 departments of our community.

We had

- Future

- Cultural

- Wellbeing

- Safety

These were the most important aspects of the community according to our class.

Design , voting and agency

We allocated and gave responsibility purpose. responsibility and self advocacy.

Focus on the individual voice through voting for how the class should be run. Discussing options harnesses the Children's self advocacy giving them

- a strong sense of identity and values

- confidence to express themselves

- decision and problem solving skills

- ability to manage emotions

- understanding their rights and responsibilities

“I’m learning how to cut things. My hands aren’t so strong. I’m learning to be more creative and working in groups. If you work in groups and teams you get more ideas.” (Student)

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How did we make the 5 Habits of Learning come alive?

The focus on collaboration was woven through our term 2 project. Through conducting a vote for each student to nominate themselves to a “department” they most identified with.

A way to consider their interests and values , how it connects to the outer community. with an added benefit of working with new classmates.

● A focus on Collaboration-

        ○ Plan to work alongside each other

        ○ to share ideas and let other people speak

        ○ listen

        ○ work with classmates that they don’t usually

● Persistent

        ○ We had an AMBITIOUS embroidery project this term. The students worked hard through the challenges of embroidering a team flag.

        ○ When students wanted to ‘give up’ we were able to use the 5 habits wheel to speak to the benefits of being persistent

        ○ Working towards large detailed projects gives the students a sense of accomplishment. Physically seeing the work behind the end result.

        ○ Instilling an idea its ok to get things “wrong” but focus on how they tried and what they learnt

● Imaginative

        ○ At the end of term 2 we had our students in their “departments” and role played scenarios that may occur in the community, the class then had to vote on which department it would be referred to.

        ○ High level concept and thinking

● Inquisitive

        ○ Brainstorming! this class is so wonderful at coming up with ideas.

        ○ A series of warm ups I really enjoyed was bringing in artists from all over Australia and seeing the classes ideas.

                ■ asking questions of why? how does that colour work? what stands out to you and why?

        ○ Asking questions and playing with possibilities

                ■ Who makes up the community?

                ■ What makes a good one?

● Disciplined

        ○ Crafting and Improving

        ○ sticking with a challenging task-

                ■ for some children in the class this will be some fine motor skills

                ■ others it will be reflecting and improving.

        ○ Fine motor skills were heavily used

“Miss Conway and I really align in the way that there's no wrong way of doing things, so everyone is just trying and if you just try the activity then you're a superhero for doing that.” (Creative Practitioner)

How did we activate student voice and learner agency?

Voting, brainstorming

Creating lessons that instill a space for play and free reign, focussing on the journey and celebrating the variety of the outcomes.  The example that comes to mind, our first lesson of term3 introducing collage. The class was instructed to collect magazine pages and cut them into strips, anyway they’d like

- diagonal

- long

- short

Then make a scene using only the strips. I was so impressed to see the results, the encouragement around the classroom was so positive, as there was no right way of doing it. The students were curious and complimentary about their peers' work. building confidence with self directed work using play and intuition.

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WHAT WAS THE IMPACT?

“I love Creative Schools. Absolutely love it all. The kids are amazing. We have a lot of different emotions in this class and a lot of struggles and challenges. I think that seeing the students grow has been the best thing that I've seen in the classroom. I've had a lot of these students for two years. And I think that just knowing that they've really worked their way up and accepted some of the challenges and are building their resilience, I think that this program has really helped them to get out of their shell a little bit more, and tackle something new. I think that's what I really liked about Creative Schools. It has been absolutely amazing working with Sally. She's so enthusiastic. And having somebody in here that isn't part of our school, I think it makes it so much nicer when you know you've got a new person coming into the school with fresh ideas. And the kids love having somebody new in here, and I love having her in here too” (Teacher)

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