PROJECT TITLES: Mapping Our Clarkson & Past Suburb / Future Suburb

School Name: Clarkson Primary School

Teacher’s Name: Grace Salleo

Year Group: 4/5

Number of students: 25

Creative’s Name:  Naomi West

Creative Practice:  Writing

Main Curriculum:

Term 2 Maths - Maps

Term 3 HASS –  Continuity and Change

Cross-curricular Links:

Economics – needs and wants

HASS - concepts of space, place and environment

- longevity of Australia’s first peoples and the ways they are connected to Country/Place and their pre-contact ways of life

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Context: Clarkson Primary School is a Primary School of approximately 280 students in the northern suburbs of Perth. The students are bright and diverse; just under 1/5 of students come from indigenous backgrounds. The school’s index of socio-economic advantage (ICSEA) is significantly below the average for Western Australia. Teacher Grace Salleo is a long-serving member of staff at Clarkson Primary School; Creative Practitioner Naomi has worked as a Creative Practitioner in the suburb previously, at Clarkson Community High School.

Project overview

Learning where we are: both projects were centred around the place where these students learn and live, the suburb of Clarkson.

Term 2 saw students gaining key skills and knowledge about maps whilst exploring and discovering more about their suburb. We mapped the classroom and their bedrooms before building up to making a 3D map of the whole suburb of Clarkson.

Term 3 was a time-travelling exploration of the past and future of the suburb. In their own imagined time machines, the class whizzed way back to investigate what the place was like thousands, hundreds and tens of years ago and then forward to speculate what it might be like for future residents.  

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How did we make the curriculum come alive?

Focussing the learning on their own area and physical surroundings immediately made it more relevant. We explored through a wide variety of activities – a mix of hands-on creative tasks (making a map of their bedroom, building landmarks out of recycled materials, designing a time machine) and creating in Minecraft.

The Term 3 project was also driven by a story – we explored the past and future of our suburb by designing a time machine, imagining our trips back and forward in time, exploring data from the time machine’s black box to learn more.

For this project, we also connected with Clarkson’s local library. I approached librarian Shandra O’Connor to see if we could create a small display with students’ questions about their memories of the suburb and ask local residents to answer them. The library jumped on board and set up an engaging display (complete with loaned items from the Wanneroo Museum) right at the entrance to the library. It was brilliant to be able to bring authentic responses back to the students and tap into the knowledge of local residents.

The teachers are really enjoying the fresh perspective. Doing things that they wouldn’t usually do. They are taking what they are learning and moving it to other subject areas.” Lloyd Morris (Deputy Principal)

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

In each session, we talked together about which habits we were using and developing. Warm up games – which the class always enjoyed - were a great opportunity to explore and practice the 5 Habits, and to understand them better. The class experienced how collaboration was not just one simple skill to develop: we observed that they were impressive when working together on whole-class challenges, but working in smaller groups on longer tasks was tougher and brought more ups and downs.

At the end of each session, we came together for an active reflection routine: for Mapping Our Clarkson, we had a large empty map grid and students were asked to choose a coloured pen which linked to their strongest habit and add a feature to the map each week. For Past Suburb / Future Suburb, we used coloured Lego – each week the students had to choose a coloured brick representing their strongest habit to add to the mini suburb on the base board.

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How did we activate student voice and learner agency?

Because all the learning was tied to their place, their surroundings, students were able to bring their own knowledge to shape everything we did. We chose to set up activities which would be immediately accessible to students so they could feel confident enough to get stuck in and practice new skills and knowledge e.g. mapping their own bedrooms. This was helpful in engaging all students, particularly whose attendance was low or inconsistent.

The students’ confidence and positive engagement with the warm-up activities meant they started to choose and lead warm-ups themselves as we progressed. They took this on responsibly In our final Showcase, a student taught a younger class one of their favourite warm-ups – Splat! – very successfully! No mean feat!

Another decision which boosted learner agency was the choice to use Minecraft for activities on both projects. This was a medium where the students were already confident and skilled, so they were able to work independently and realise their own ideas.

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WHAT WAS THE IMPACT?

Students:

The students grew in confidence and engagement over the two terms. It was so impressive and encouraging to see how they could talk about their project to other students and teachers by the end of Term 3. They showed that they could learn and apply new knowledge in a variety of ways - and that this process was fun!

“We are having fun while learning. We are learning different things about maps. It has helped me understand why maps are important. I wasn’t interested in maps before this.”

Teacher:

Grace approached collaborating with Naomi enthusiastically: the planning stage of the projects together brought both their ideas together and they complemented each other well in the classroom. Grace incorporated new activities into class routines, and instinctively adopted what was working well with the students.

“It’s great to be able to see things from a different perspective working with a Creative Practitioner. We wouldn’t normally do these sorts of activities… It’s great to have the children sharing their ideas during Creative Schools. There are big personalities in this class.” Grace Salleo.

Creative:

I learned a huge amount working with Grace and this class. Grace advised me from the start that structure and clear expectations were important to support these students and we developed strategies to ensure these were in place, while encouraging creative responses. Grace’s strong relationship with the class was fundamental to the success of these projects – it ensured the students felt safe to try new activities and come on the journey. As a result, we saw the students grow in confidence, allowing themselves to engage fully with the learning – and sharing it publicly at the end.

School:

Clarkson Primary School leadership are positive about the Creative Schools projects this year – and observe that their impact is reaching beyond the sessions themselves.

“The teachers are loving having Creative Schools in their classroom. It’s helping set up that sense of creative play in classroom. It’s a fantastic opportunity and I’m already thinking about next year and which teachers to invite to take part.” - Sarah Chaloner (Principal)

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