What makes a family? Can friends be family? What would it feel like to be a five-year-old and to write a letter to your future self, aged 30? These were some of the questions that 20 Bayswater Primary School Year 1s explored in their 2023 Creative Schools HASS project: a project that dug right into the roots of making a family tree.
About our school
Bayswater Primary is an independent public school in the heart of Bayswater about seven kilometres northeast of Perth CBD. We promote and encourage a sense of community involving staff, students, parents, and the wider community, who work together to provide and develop positive relationships.
What happened:
Planting seeds in pots decorated with family photos initiated the creative learning adventures into the theme of family, guided by teacher Rebecca Connell and children’s author/illustrator Kelly Canby. With students focusing on their own family units, we investigated how families may have changed and/or remained the same, and how disruptions to day-to-day life over generations may have affected the lives of their relatives or people they know. At the start of each term 2 we would read a picture book dealing with the specific family-related topic of that week. Children enjoy being read to, so we found this to be an effective way of capturing and keeping their attention. Then students would embark on family-themed creative tasks, including:
Creative Schools is the best ever! Because we get to play in nature. In Creative Schools, it helps me learn. I get my mind off the annoying parts and it makes me feel happy. Student
We started to work towards a three-dimensional, student-designed and decorated Family Tree. Students split into Architects and Designers. Architects took responsibility for devising the tree’s structure: its appearance, the materials it would be made of and how those would be assembled, while Designers managed the tree’s decorations and what these would consist of. Students could move between the two groups over the term.
The Architects produced a few tree sketches, and the class took a blind vote to select their preferred blueprint for the tree. Designers then put together some decorating ideas and another blind vote narrowed the ideas down to a top ten. Architects and Designers wrote a ‘shopping list’ of materials for Rebecca and Kelly to source.
How did we use the Five Creative Habits of Learning?
It took a little time for our Year 1s to understand what we meant by the Five Habits so the first few sessions involved a lot of talking through what it all meant. Once the students understood we started to colour in paper dolls in habit-coloured blocks each session, an activity which they looked forward to each week.
Getting loud and messy was an important part of each session. We also tried not to set rules or put limitations on the students and encouraged them to work through tasks with a lot of trial and error. We left a lot of the decision-making to them. When problems arose Rebecca and Kelly listened to them talk it through but held back from offering instructional advice. It was important for our students to feel there was no right or wrong answer, just their interpretation. It was quite remarkable to see them problem-solve their way through all sorts of setbacks and tree collapses!
I learned to never give up. The next time there is a problem, don’t give up. Student
What did we discover?
That joy and play works! We noticed a huge increase in confidence from every child. Confidence to offer up their ideas, to take on larger, scarier challenges, to work independently and to solve problems. There were some very quiet students at the beginning who really shone by the end of the two terms. Similarly, there were students that didn’t particularly enjoy working in pairs or groups who, by the end, had broken out of their shell and were busy, active, contributing members of the group.
We knew from talking to students and parents that the Creative Schools day was the one each week that every single student in the class looked forward to the most. We believe this is because students are given the freedom to express themselves in ways they might not have been able to do in other classes and the result of this is that they discovered learning can be fun and playful and joyful. Result: playful, happy, joyful kids!
The kids count down to Tuesday when it’s Creative Schools. They get so excited. Teacher
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