About our project: We Are All Stardust & Zoo ‘zines
It’s a very big universe out there, and Earth and its planetary neighbours belong to only a tiny part of it: the solar system. For 29 students in Year 5/6, a Creative Schools Science-focused exploration opened up understanding not only of our galactic ‘neighbourhood’ but also raised questions of how on Earth we all connect, irrespective of culture and geography.
About our school:
Bramfield Park Primary is an independent public school which opened in 1979. The motto, ‘Strive to Achieve’ and the values of ‘integrity and respect for every person’ provides the foundation for all school community behaviours. Children, parents and teachers are treated as valued individuals. There is a strong focus on wellbeing with access to social and emotional curriculum, student services and local support agencies. All 353 students from 31 cultural groups are encouraged and supported to become ‘thinkers, learners, doers: mindful of the path we create.’
What happened:
Teacher Daniel Pollacchi, visual artist and creative producer Andrea Tenger, and a class of enthusiastic students collaborated in 15 authentic, highly inquisitive, participatory and multisensory sessions over two terms, concentrating on the curriculum area of science understanding. Sessions were based on questions devised by students themselves: they had to answer a question or tell us something, using the resources provided—all pre-used and readily available—in any way they chose. Supporting student agency by designing activities from the questions they created and allowing them to approach and report their findings in their own way (e.g. drawings, lists of features, statements and interesting facts) resulted in a rich variety of research outcomes and enabled everyone to succeed.
I’m learning to be more imaginative. The teacher says ‘how can you be more imaginative?’ We created monsters and mine is not what you would expect. Mine has so many things you would not expect. Before Creative Schools I did have imagination but it wasn’t very strong. Now it’s much stronger. Student
Term 2 focussed on identifying the planets, comparing their orbits, their relative size and distance from the Sun. In Term 3, we created ‘zines (mini magazines) about Asian animals, their habitat, diet, adaptations and threats to survival. These ‘zines replaced the worksheets normally used during an excursion to Perth Zoo. Students still made the decisions about how and where they would engage with the activities but with a tight timeline of only seven sessions, instead of working out what they wanted to know about Asian animals they created their own imaginary animals first. Each animal had a habitat, diet, physical and behavioural adaptation. We then jumped straight into identifying these features in real animals and presenting the findings in a ‘zine.
How did we use the Five Creative Habits of Learning?
Warm-ups were an essential tool, chosen with the conscious intention to invite students to practise being Collaborative (co-operating appropriately), Imaginative (making connections and playing with possibilities) and Persistent (sticking with difficulty) in a variety of increasingly challenging, fun and physical ways, like The Human Knot, Line Walk, Human Pyramid. 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 concepts (the thinking). For more than half of the sessions, students chose the warm-ups. For the last session we asked the students to invent five new warm-up activities, one for each Creative Habit of Learning.
I’ve been learning to use my imagination more. I like using my imagination. Imagination is the thing that is an exciting thing to use your mind for. I have autism, which is where the brain works differently. My mind works differently. Student
Disciplined is tricky. When we do Creative Schools, at the end of it I think, ‘that wasn’t my best work.’ Student
In addition to continuous, informal reflection practice we held formal, planned and intentional reflection times at the end of each session. This helped the students gain the skills and the confidence they needed to reflect on learning processes and their own roles in them, identify the Creative Habits they had practised and justify the thinking behind choices they made while participating in the sessions.
Persistent is hard, because when something is too hard, sometimes I give up. I need to practise telling myself to not give up. Student
Identifying the Habits of Learning as they were practised each day and developing reflective practice has benefitted all of the students. Creative Practitioner
What did we discover?
By the end of Term 2, we noticed our students were beginning to collaborate better, they were being imaginative and persistent. Even though it was difficult, they were tolerating the uncertainty that comes with being in control of their own learning. Instead of being paralysed by a fear of getting it wrong or simply waiting to be told what to do and how to do it they would start thinking and get working. During the final session students were able to make cotton ball nebulae in jars with little to no instruction and without a carpet of paint and glitter.
Creative skills increased. Each student took a blank ‘zine to Perth Zoo and used it to record and share ideas or research. Daniel reported that the students were very engaged during the excursion, very curious and inquisitive about the different animals, more so than students from the other class. He observed students confidently point out both physical and behavioural adaptations during the tour with Perth Zoo Learning staff.
I’m seeing students shine in this program which is amazing to see. Their imaginative side was so low in this class … we were getting cloned projects to start with. It showed their struggle with imagination. Now that we have been focusing on the imaginative habit, we are really seeing the results with them developing their own ideas. Teacher
By the end of Term 3, most students demonstrated an increased ability to be collaborative and imaginative, and to manage their own learning for most of the time. Those who could not do this and needed ongoing intervention and help were either those whose attendance was poor and/or who were neurodiverse. All students demonstrated increased willingness to stick with difficulty during warm-ups, activities and reflection.
I’m head girl and it’s not as easy as it seems. I thought it would be a piece of cake, but there is a lot of pressure. In Creative Schools I don’t feel like that, I can be imaginative and make some mistakes and that’s ok. Student
The impact on the Creative/Teacher team:
It’s been so good working with a Creative Practitioner. It’s given me the chance to bounce ideas off someone else and be collaborative. I point out to the kids that I’m being more collaborative than I used to be. It’s a different relationship. Creative Schools has given me practical tools and skills to use with the students. I feel that I can use this going forward with the class once our Creative Practitioner has gone. Teacher
Dedicating time to work out what the students already knew and then what they wanted to know and were curious about helped them to engage more deeply with the activities in a meaningful way. It also helped to understand the imaginative creative habit of learning because connections to previous knowledge and experiences of the subjects was made explicit. One of the challenges to the project was student absenteeism. Daniel helped mitigate the effects by applying the Creative School methodology to other areas of teaching and learning during the week Creative Practitioner
Main Curriculum Focus: Science
Earth and Space Sciences: Earth as part of a system of planets orbiting around a star (the Sun)
Biological Sciences: living things have structural features and adaptations that help them to survive in their environment.
Cross-curricular Links:
• English: Literacy: plan, draft and publish imaginative, informative and persuasive print and multimodal texts, choosing text structures, language features, images and sound appropriate to purpose and audience.
• HASS: Geography: a diverse and connected world; the location of the major countries of the Asia region in relation to Australia and the geographical diversity within the region
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