MAIN CURRICULUM FOCUS
Technologies Processes & Production Skills
Investigating & defining: Create a sequence of steps to solve a given task
Designing: Develop and communicate ideas using labelled drawings and appropriate technical terms
Producing & implementing: Select, and safely use, appropriate components with given equipment to make a solution
Evaluating: Use criteria to evaluate design processes and solutions developed
Collaborating & managing: Work independently, or collaboratively when required, to plan, safely create and communicate sequenced steps
CURRICULUM LINKS
Hass Skills: Questioning & Research, Evaluating, Communicating & Reflecting
Hass Knowledge & Understanding: Civics and Citizenship: Communities; democracy, participation
Science Understanding: Biological Sciences. Living things have life cycles
Science Enquiry Skills: Communicating. Represent and communicate observations, ideas and findings using formal and informal representations.
Creative & Critical Thinking
Inquiring: identifying, exploring and organising information and ideas.
Generating ideas, possibilities and actions.
Reflecting on thinking and processes.
Analysing, synthesising and evaluating reasoning and procedures.
Personal & Social Capability
Self-awareness; Develop reflective practice.
Self-management; Become confident, resilient and adaptable: devise strategies and formulate plans to assist in the completion of challenging tasks and the maintenance of personal safety.
Social management; Communicate effectively and work collaboratively.
CONTEXT
Camboon Primary School has a strong ethos of life-long learning and is a courteous and considerate learning community where each child is treated as a valued individual. There is a diverse group of 380 learners, from 36 different language backgrounds. The forty staff utilise research-informed teaching to facilitate learning by inspiring and empowering students to reach their potential every day. The school values are Courage, Perseverance & Respect.
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Our main objective was to use the Olympic Games as a model to design our own version that could include all members of the year group. We researched the Olympic Games and then designed and developed six events that became part of The Camboon Games, which was held in collaboration with another class, Room 10, during the last week of term. An objective for the Teacher, Louise Halls, was to investigate how reflective practise can be developed and embedded across all the learning.
Ten authentic, highly inquisitive, participatory and multisensory sessions were delivered. All used materials that were readily available or easy to access within the school to ensure the sustainability of the project. The sessions followed a similar format which established a secure routine but there was an incremental increase in the expectations and difficulty.
Warm-ups were an essential tool. Mostly held outside, the games and activities were chosen with the conscious intention to invite students to practice being Persistent (tolerating uncertainty), Disciplined (reflecting critically) & Imaginative (making connections and playing with possibilities) in a variety of increasingly challenging, fun and physical ways. E.g., Human Knot, Count to 20, Line Walk. A ‘mini-reflection’ after each warm-up helped students make explicit links between the physical experience of the activity (the doing) and the habit of learning concept (the thinking).
For the main activities students had to collaborate. The groups were called ‘communities.’ They stayed in these communities for each phase of the project:
Research Phase: Communities were initially asked to research and imagine in response to two provocations; Tell me five things about the Olympic Games and What would the Camboon Olympics look like? The role of the creative and the teacher was to notice how each community approached the task and presented their findings. We looked for similarities and differences and supported ideas about how to approach the task, how to work with each other and how to show/talk about their thinking.
Design Phase: Each community selected an Olympic event from an envelope and then had to work together to describe the event, list the resources required and identify the values and habits of learning used while participating in the event. In subsequent sessions they had to design an event that required at least one of the school values (Courage, Perseverance & Respect) and one of the Habits of Learning, but used only the resources available in the school. An instructional video and points system were also designed.
Testing Phase: Communities had to demonstrate the Disciplined Habit of Learning and reflect critically, develop techniques and craft & improve the events, the instructional videos and the points system.
Delivery Phase: After a ceremony that included a torch relay, an Acknowledgement of Country and an Opening Address, the two classes took turns to host the games and/or be the athletes. Room 9 hosted Sgolf (soccer + golf), Darty Party (darts + archery), Bottle Cap Discus (discus), Balloonminton (Badminton), Obstacle Relay (Show jumping) and Vertical Archery (Archery). At the end of the day points were tallied and the was a medal ceremony.
In addition to continuous, informal reflection throughout the sessions there was a formal reflection at the end each session. Reflection was planned and intentional in order to help the students reflect on processes and identify and justify the thinking behind choices they made and the way they behaved. To help make reflection more meaningful and to reinforce connections between the sessions, responses were recorded in a ‘learning journey’ book alongside photos of the activities, instructions, provocations and planning ideas. Reflection gave the students agency in the learning process and provided the teacher and creative with feedback that was used to inform future sessions. For example, during one reflection the students made suggestions for next time – more space, more time, different materials. With this in mind Louise and I changed our plans and spent more time creating, less time talking.
In Term 4 our objective was to consolidate the learning about discipline and persistence. Students were asked to work collaboratively to create five stop motion films that could be used to teach Pre-Primary classes about the life cycles of a chicken, penguin, turtle, ladybird and dragon fly to the Pre-Primary students at the school. The method of approach was the same with a research, design, testing and delivery phase. Students were required to reflect critically, develop techniques and craft & improve their stop motion films several times against the criteria that they established themselves.
WHAT WAS THE IMPACT?
Students were able to imagine possibilities and connect ideas from a range of sources to design events that were not simply replicated from the Olympic Games but were specific to the resources available and the value and habits they wanted to promote.
They were able to evaluate the effectiveness of how they used their ideas to design the events and have students from the other class participate. There was a demonstrated ability to reflect on learning processes and their own roles in them; they could identify the creative habits they had practised and could justify the thinking behind choices they have made while participating in the sessions.
Four of the six communities increased their ability to be collaborative and were able to manage their own learning for most of the time. The remaining two communities could not do this and needed ongoing intervention and help. All students increased their willingness to stick with difficulty during warm-ups, activities and reflection.
Five stop motion films were produced. Three groups were able to work independently to create their films while the other two required a lot of assistance. All students discovered that using an iPad as a learning tool requires a different skill set to playing games or watching YouTube. While the students found it frustrating to have to re-do their films several times, they were able to see the value in being persistent and disciplined as the final animations were interesting, informative and fun to watch.
Their Teacher, Louise valued the opportunity to spend time observing the students, paying attention to how they engaged in the activities and how they responded to reflection. The busy-ness of the school day does not always allow for this to happen. She liked the activities that encouraged thinking about communication as the students do not have very good skills in this area, but it is hard to come up with ways to improve these skills. The lack of listening skills often means that the students do not always stay on task and simply invent their own outcomes. Louise reinforced the habits of learning and reflective practise at other times during the week; the community groups designed their own uniform, an opening and closing ceremony and Olympic Torches for The Camboon Olympics.
To support development of reflective practise across all learning she created a Reflection Journal, and the students used it during the week. We decided to keep the two journals running parallel to each other so we could notice similarities and differences in approach and in how the students respond.
“The end product for our work this term will be an Olympics Games Day. We are connecting it to the school values and the children are creating lots of ideas, working towards the end goal. They are working in teams, and they have also made T shirts. The children have enjoyed the Creative Schools lessons. The warm-up games have been good and really integrating the Creative Habits of learning. I am now using them in other areas of my learning on a daily basis. I can see a shift in their creativity. The first week they really struggled. There is a real shift in their thinking and how to link their ideas to the Olympics. Each week we are changing it up a bit and that has been good for them. It's good to get their thinking going.” (Teacher)
As the Creative I was interested to see what effect the intentional warms ups and immediate reflection would have on the students. Would this approach help them make connections between using the habits in a warm up and then in an activity? I believe that it did. By the fifth session both Louise and I noticed a shift in thinking and doing; students were starting to use the Habits of Learning in an intentional way during both the warm ups and the activities. We saw them developing techniques during Line Walk; there was evidence of more complex thinking and problem solving. Instead of shouting at the each other ‘You’re doing it wrong’ and/or simply giving up, some students began to make suggestions “Let’s try it this way.” Afterwards during reflection, different students could identify this as a turning point, an action that led to them finishing the game successfully.
“I have become more explicit in scaffolding the creative thinking process, rather than just being organic and leaving the students to figure things out themselves. I'm learning to get the balance between getting the creativity going and not just seeing them struggle. We could just have fun and do warm-up games and reflections and have fun, but they wouldn't get the creative thinking process. But by being more explicit about creativity, the penny can drop for them much quicker.”
(Creative Practitioner)
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