About our project: Special Days
What makes a day special and worthy of celebration? What does a special anniversary mean on a personal and collective level? These questions were at the heart of our Year 3 class’s Creative Schools HASS project and informed the mission of 24 students to create their very own Year 3 ‘special day’ celebrating friendship at Camboon Primary.
What happened?
Teacher Brooke Purdy and visual artist and life coach Kristin Connolly wanted to facilitate a deeper knowledge, awareness and understanding of how we connect to our communities through celebrations and commemorations, and how that relates to understanding ourselves. Our class explored celebrations and commemorations in Australia and around the world, breaking down all of the elements that go into what makes an occasion worth celebrating or commemorating, from both a tactical external perspective and an introspective socio-emotional community perspective.
Through a range of activities exploring the process of research, application, empathy, awareness of self and others/community, the wider world around us, and the connections between these areas, we designed, planned, implemented, and measured a ‘Friendship Day’ in hopes it would build community in the classroom and beyond.
Our creative/teacher partnership made BIG efforts to let the students lead and direct their project and learning. We approached our sessions with a basic structure (which we know helps fuel creativity, safety, and confidence) and a loose goal, an activity to facilitate the creation or exploration of that goal, and a loose plan to try to make sure we were moving along in the long buildup to our final special day. Within this basic structure, our students made as many of the decisions and plans as possible. When they got stuck, our approach was usually to have a conversation and reflect back what I was hearing, checking in along the way. This gave students an opportunity to make new connections and still feel they had agency yet offered guidance in order to make their ideas come together.
I learnt that from the first day of Creative Schools I wasn’t that creative, but now from my Creative Schools Journey I am way more creative than before. Student
How did we use the Five Creative Habits of Learning?
We used the Five Habits throughout our sessions, incorporating them into our standard language, both in addressing the entire group, but also in supporting individuals or small groups of students. At the end of each session, we chose beads related to the Habits’ colours (on our handy chart), which was a helpful visual representation. Sometimes Kristin also challenged our students to act out the Habits or make facial expressions for them, to try to embody the habits and understand them more deeply. At our final reflection and celebration session, Kristin offered coloured sprinkles in each of the Habit colours, and each student decorated a cookie with the Habit they either grew into or used the most.
I learnt that I should never give up and try my best! Student
What did we discover?
We noticed that our students were so enthusiastic about Creative Schools, something that stayed consistent throughout. The program definitely seemed to inject energy and curiosity into their learning. Some less engaged students become more engaged, and more confident in participating. Our project gave them a sense of purpose and something they could be really proud that they created.
In Creative Schools we make our minds more creative. We do warm-ups to get into the creative mood. We think of things and then build on to think of more things. We’re celebrating how far we’ve come from the first day of year 3 and celebrating our progress, how much we have learned and the friends we have made. Student
Teacher: Brooke and I spoke a lot about how much the process helped us “let go” and go with the flow. She mentioned that she was really amazed at what the students were able to accomplish when we stepped back and let them.
Creative Practitioner: In addition to helping me focus on a mindset of “progress over perfection”, working with the students inspired me a lot. Their enthusiasm and admiration inspired my work outside of this program. The Habits of Learning also inspired my own practice a lot as reflecting on them weekly with the students built that way of thinking into my reflection practices.
School: The school Principal was very supportive from the get go, which allowed Brooke a lot of flexibility in continuing to explore and expand our project outside of our time together (which we needed to get everything done)! She’s such an advocate of the Creative Schools approach, and I think our project was no different.
Parents: We had a great turnout at Friendship Day, which they were invited to attend towards the end, which showed support. They seemed really proud knowing their kids had created the day.
I learnt that I should never give up and try my best! Student
“Creative schools is better than normal work we do at school. We do fun things like colour in, paint and move around more. It goes for an hour so it’s a longer time which is good. We started learning about celebrations.
“Creative schools has really helped me to think of ways that I can be creative and do things differently in my teaching. It’s reshaped the way I run lessons. Like in phonics we normally do a ten minute activity but the other day for spelling we used craft and the kids were so engaged for over an hour.” Ms. Purdy (teacher)
Main Curriculum Focus – HASS
Cross-curricular Links: Science, History, Health, Design Technologies
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