PROJECT TITLES:  

TERM 2: Responding to Poetry  

TERM 3: Myths and Legends

School Name:Kalamunda Senior High School

Teacher’s Name: Kelly Walker

Year Group: Year 7

Number of students: 32

Creative’s Name: Ben Crappsley

Creative Practice(s):Visual artist

Main Curriculum Focus: English

Cross-curricular Links: Visual arts

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About our projects:  

Responding to Poetry.  

How to respond to poetry in a way that is different to writing and talking about poetry. Can creating visual art as a response to a particular poem help to better appreciate the text? Could making a  painting or a sculpture inspired by a poem give you a deeper understanding of the poem? In what  way will you experiment with visual art as a way of responding and reflecting on a particular poem?  

Myths and Legends.  

Students were asked to create a mini graphic novel to help understand and appreciate a myth or  legend of their own choosing. This project has been part of the English program for a while so Kelly  Walker was comfortable guiding the students through this project. As the creative practitioner I  brought my skills a s a cartoonist and visual scribe and helped students with some sequential  storytelling fundamentals.  

Delivering an oral presentation with the creative use of visual and audio aids was also part of the  curriculum for term 3.  

This was a chance to appreciate and show understanding in another way. It was nice to work on  these two visual art based projects that allowed the Creative Schools input to enhance tried and  tested class projects.

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About the class:  

The students in the year 7 group with teacher Kelly Walker are an enthusiastic group of high  achievers. In general the class worked better in small group although they did respond well to  warm up activities and workshops that involved the whole class. These students are always willing  to share with and help others to achieve set tasks and self initiated projects. Hula-hooping  before the class session and engaging in the classic Mr Squiggle drawing game were some of the  warm ups that engaged the students before workshopping creative ideas for the class session.  

“Creative Schools is helping me be more creative and imaginative. Usually, I want things neat and perfect. This is pushing me outside of my comfort zone.” (Student)

What happened:  

Responding to Poetry

Rather than write analytical reflections on a given poem students were asked to consider the idea  that perhaps making a painting, a sculpture or other form of visual art, may be a way of  understanding a particular poem in a way that talking about and writing about might not be able to achieve. The creative practitioner work-shopped ideas about abstract art being a response to the stimulus of  a poem that is either read or heard. Initially students were excited but confused about this idea and  the general consensus was that it was all too abstract. This led to students being more comfortable in responding to their chosen poem in a more  illustrative way and the project of creating a book sculpture was decided upon by the group.  The idea of considering the text as similar to song lyrics was popular and led to one student  choosing “Beds are Burning” by Midnight Oil as their poetry text.  

The most challenging and fun aspect was utilising the recycled resource of old poetry books and  altering them in ways that “transgressed” the usual ideas about books and respecting property.  The final book sculptures are varied enough in their outcomes but many students kept within a safe  space. Those that branched out started to make objects that were less literal and became something other  than illustrative responses.  

Myths and Legends.  

Students chose a particular Myth or Legend and through the making of a mini graphic novel the  students engaged themselves in the challenge of conveying the essence of their myth or legend.  Class discussion, designing visual aids and practicing telling the tales out loud all contributed to their understanding of how to best distill the myth or legend into a graphic novel format. I helped  with some basic layout ideas for page design and encouraged, through a class drawing workshop,  the use of basic techniques rathe than accomplished art. Comic book conventions were explored  to help design their graphic novels.  

“Creative Schools is challenging in a good way. It makes you think in different ways. You use different sides of your brain. It’s challenging working in groups with different people. There are challenges in the projects.” (Student)

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How did we use the Five Creative Habits of Learning?  

Both projects helped to foster collaborative learning as students looked to one another for ideas,  ways of making, reassurance and encouragement. Collaboration seemed to come easily when  making objects and engaging in activities that were based in manual skills was the focus rather  writing, talking and being left to think.  

This was definitely the case with the hands on approach to the book sculptures.  These book sculptures and the graphic novel pushed students to use imaginative ways of making  and this led to students being inquisitive about how and why these objects could be made.  Students that may not have been good at finishing projects were shown to be more persistent  when the element of a hands-on project was incorporated. Discipline was definitely focused around  time management and learning that small chunks add up over time to a bigger picture.

This class was definitely keen on more literal responses to challenges suggested and the idea of  making abstract paintings to respond to poetry was perceived as too vague and even lazy. A  different kind of imagination was required for this.  

The graphic novel project also fostered the discipline of having to convey a complex idea in a very  brief and compact format.  

Students overall engaged well with all 5 habits of learning and none of them were totally foreign to  this group.  

“I’m usually not very imaginative . I’ve very inquisitive though. I’m always asking lots of questions and I like to find out how things work.” (Student)

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What we discovered:  

Literal over abstract thinking was definitely favoured. This is usual for the age group. Some  students came up with very novel solutions to challenges given and students that may have been  usually shy found a new voice with the sculpture project in particular.  

Students that already showed a propensity to imaginative, inquisitive and collaborative work  benefited greatly as the Creative Schools team helped to bring that to the fore.  Overall students started off excited but confused and moved to a space where they were still  engaged but had taken on board some new approaches.  

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The impact on the Teacher/Creative team:

The Creative Schools program is new to KSHS and to the year 7 English teacher, Kelly Walker.  Introducing some new ideas and approaches was well received and did help to create a more cohesive class.  

“Creative Schools is less about grades. It’s about learning in a different way. I’ve never turned a poem into an artwork before. Having an artist helping us and is teaching us new ways to interpret things and express different feelings has been amazing.” (Student)

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