Project Name: Changing for Ourselves School(s): St. Joseph’s Infant School

1. Project Name: Changing for Ourselves • School(s): St. Joseph’s Infant School • Local Authority: Luton • Creative Partner(s) Michele Petit-Jean • Creative Agent: Ed Bartram • Year Group(s) / Young People involved: Year 2 • Start Date: 26th January 2010 End Date: 25th March 2010 Change Schools Case Study

2. How can we engage all children in the school through developing child-initiated learning? We felt that if the children had more ownership over their learning, and more ability to lead its direction then this would be the key to implementing a successful creative curriculum. We were also keen to engage boys more as there are more boys in the year group and to help girls to be more confident in maths. We also wanted to develop Building Learning Power. The children were familiar with the language of BLP but through a creative approach to learning we felt the children would be able to further develop resourcefulness, resilience etc.

3. At St Joseph's we were very keen to embed a skills based creative curriculum. We were also keen to enhance cross-curricular learning in the school. We felt we had already had some success with this, but felt the need to be re-inspired by external partners with more direct experience of creative practices. Our children are changing and we need to develop a curriculum that will engage them and develop in them a love learning. We want our children to become lifelong learners.

4. A small group of children were invited to observe each of the creative practitioners and then we discussed with them who they would like to work with they were very keen to work with Michele the puppeteer. They enjoyed the things she showed them and straightaway they were able to make their own shadow puppet. The children that we wanted to be involved in the project were and still are very visual learners and what Michele did with them really engaged them We decided that we would only involve one class in year 2. We planned when we would start and how many sessions we would have we also had a session with our creative agent Ed Bartram which made us think about our own creativity. For the Spring term children were going to be learning about recycling and Michele’s ideas fitted in well as we wanted the project to be sustainable and Michele was able to show us how to make things from recycling materials.

5. We did see an improvement in children’s enjoyment of learning but the biggest impact was on their speaking and listening skills. They were more confident in expressing themselves, the assembly for parents and the presentation that the children did for the junior school was amazing! The children were also observed being able to apply what they had learnt to other areas of the curriculum. We had lots of photographic evidence and also recorded using video cameras which we bought for the project and would recommend as they were easy to use and the quality of film was good. The children also had ‘Topic Books’ and some evidence was kept in these. The children were also able to talk about their learning they know themselves how they learn through everything being very visual and by making things.

6. All staff working with the children discovered that they were more able and more capable of doing things, they were also very good at teaching each other skills. The class teacher learnt that you have to give children freedom to find out things for themselves as they are then more engaged and learning is deeper. We felt that ‘child initiated’ meant being guided by what children wanted to learn and supporting them in their learning. They were also doing more problem solving as well as collaborating more.

7. The practitioner explained how the children really engaged with the project, for example: ‘storyboarding was very successful…they got terrifically excited by the [shadow puppetry] backgrounds…they were a very visual class and really respond to photographs’. She said J ‘has got mad about drawing…its really helped him develop a passion’. In general, puppetry proved to be a very good medium for the children to work in. Sock puppetry worked particularly well!

8. Our understanding of what a ‘Creative Curriculum’ means has changed it is not just being cross curricular it’s about taking risks and teachers being less controlling. Our year 1 are very keen to be involved with another project and we have applied to do it again. We will again put the creative curriculum on our school development plan so that we can embed it. We know that there are some staff who will need more support to change how they teach. We also have staff going on the local authority course on the creative curriculum which will be reported back to all staff. We are hoping that the teacher assessments for this particularly class will have improved in writing as the project gave them more opportunities to write and for a purpose

9. Next time we would involve whole staff more and try and give more time to all staff to try some of the things that the children were learning e.g. making puppets, making a screen before the children so that we could support learning and also develop skills. Although we felt at the time we had given sufficient time to planning and discussion before the project we could have done with longer. I think it would be a good idea for both the class teacher and practitioner to both observe the class being taught by someone else before starting the project and to then discuss the children and what type of learners they are. We also want to do more on Guy Claxton’s Building Learning Power next term for new members of staff. We also learnt that we need to take more time to look for resources that will ‘hook’ children.

10. From the project the class teacher had a much better understanding of what a creative curriculum looks like. When trying to develop a creative approach across the school we now have the work that year 2 did as a model. In discussions we felt that some staff think they are doing a creative curriculum but are merely teaching in a cross curricular way. For this reason we are now releasing all four teachers in a year group to plan together, year 2 will be led by the class teacher involved in this project and year 1 will be led by a teacher who has applied to do another enquiry question. From our original question we did learn that we can be guided by the children but that it is hard work to guide and plan activities to support what the children want to learn and to extend learning. The teacher has to do their own research to guide the children and they have to be have to be more reflective but the results are rewarding and satisfying for all involved. This has been a fantastic journey for all involved and one we hope to continue.

11. We hope to continue with a creative curriculum and would like to build on what we have done so far by continuing to let children decide which direction they want their topic to go. They have learnt new skills which they can apply to other themes but staff have seen the benefits of letting children have more input in planning and delivery of topics. We will hopefully be able to do another enquiry question to take us further in our journey to develop a creative curriculum. We want Year 2 children involved in the project talk in a staff meeting just as they did for the junior school.

12. www.carnivalarts.org.uk With thanks to Creative Junction (www.creativejunction.org.uk) for the slide template.