For 20 Year 3/4 young people, our project was a creative learning journey into self-expression and relationship building, via sustainability and the connection to a place, culture and country. Several of our students have learning difficulties, trauma-informed lives and come from culturally diverse backgrounds. The importance of nurturing, fostering and supporting wellbeing was therefore a priority in this creative learning setting.
We are so different and we have different hobbies. Creative Schools congratulates you on being different. Student
About our school:
Belmont Primary has a great deal to offer children. Being one of the smaller schools in the metropolitan area, we find ourselves in the enviable position of being able to offer many advantages not found in some larger primary schools. Staff and parents have developed an excellent working relationship and together have created a warm, friendly and secure learning environment for all students. Belmont Primary has a very successful learning environment catering for the variety of needs of students. Students are encouraged to develop intellectually, socially and physically to the best of their ability and potential.
What happened:
Our focus was to improve and foster positivity for our students' sense of belonging. Many in the class lacked this, so we wanted to open a dialogue ensuring all children felt supported in the best way possible. For several of our students, this required a combination of practising discipline and self-awareness. For others, understanding and developing techniques that stimulate confidence and perseverance became more important.
Teacher Claire Baxter and textile artist Annick Akanni encouraged the children to engage in a deeper learning, knowledge and awareness of nature and its response and relationship to sustainability, through narrative, symbols, patterns, and elements of materials. Each session began with drawing exercises, a great way for our students to express feelings and thoughts, followed by exploratory and experimental sensory play-based activities. We explored key concepts such as:
• country/place
• similarities and difference of place
• identity and cultural diversity
• environment and sustainability
• interconnection and embracing perspectives
• community acknowledgement, celebration and traditions.
It has different creativity. Some other lessons can be confusing. Like there is a lot of instructions and it’s confusing what goes where. In Creative Schools it is easier to follow. You get to draw and it is easier to draw than writing because writing is hard. Student
We introduced dramatic play. The movement, role-play, improvisation and self-expression this involved became incredibly valuable and rewarding.
It’s been really fun. Annick makes us do stuff that is really peaceful and calm and relaxing. And today she said we will go outside. We did an activity about hearing, smell, taste and touch. I liked it a lot. Student
How did we use the Five Creative Habits of Learning?
The best part is seeing the kids that don’t usually engage be really engaged with the Creative Schools program. The Five Habits are embedded in the style of teaching at this school. In the morning we do our reflection journal and set their goals for the week. So I use prompts from the Five Habits to get them thinking about the week. Teacher
The Five Creative Habits of Learning are such an exceptional tool kit. They can be brought into schools and interpreted in multiple ways. We introduced the Habits into our daily prompt questions, encouraging children to reflect critically and share stories or experiences in their journals based on these Habits. The more we used them, the more they became embedded in the teacher and students' everyday practices. Students were able to identify the Habits in multiple verbal and non-verbal ways: through moments of dance, movement, public speaking and interactive play.
Persistent. I keep thinking about my learning when I go home from school. I’m thinking what does it mean if it’s an adjective or pronoun or verb? I keep thinking and thinking about it and then I talk to my sister about it and try and work it out. She is in high school. Student
What did we discover?
Overall, our project objectives became very flexible due to challenges faced and the response from the students. Our activities still held a focus on sustainability as a whole with the notion of reuse, repurpose and recycle as the key factors and its importance in the everyday world we live and breathe in. We noticed we started to pull elements from a variety of key curriculum areas to support this idea further, which meant our planned sessions were fluid and often improvised. We left our explorations and investigations open to the many possibilities and interpretations due to our culturally and linguistically diverse classroom.
Main Curriculum Focus: Humanities and Social Sciences
Key skills involve Questioning & Researching, Analysing, Evaluating, Communicating & Reflecting.
Geography: investigating how people are connected to many places. Ways in which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples maintain connections to their Country/Place.
Cross-curricular Links:
• English: visual Language, language variation and change.Text contexts, listening and speaking interactions, purpose and audience, personal response.
• Maths: Shape, pattern, location and information, chance and identity symmetry in the environment.
• Visual Arts: use of visual art elements and materials to create specific artwork, shape, colour, line, space and value. Exploration of artwork from various times, presentation and display of artwork.
• Movement: physical education and movement to help with student wellbeing.
• Technologies: collaborating and managing, materials and technologies specialisations, designing, investigating and defining, technologies and society.
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