Stivichall Primary School: ‘Creating a learning environment for the 21st Century’
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Date:2005 - 2008
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Categories:Cultural engagementEnvironmentOutdoor Space
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Introduction:
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Article:
Our Achievement
- The interventions that took place at Stivichall gave the teachers opportunities to observe their pupils, seeing how they responded to different spaces and different approaches to learning.
- 100% of staff asked felt that they understand the children more and we better able to understand how their pupils learned.
- In Reception, staff noticed a distinct change in the children's behaviour when working outside - there was less arguing and reduced need for teacher intervention.
- Staff also noticed a change in the children's confidence in their own ability. Children were no longer reluctant to "have a go" and "get stuck in". Children were significantly more focused and purposeful in their activity with the majority engaged for the whole of the sessions.
- Pupils had a direct impact on the new building and left behind a physical legacy reminding the school of the achievements of the previous three years with Creative Partnerships.
The Feedback
"It was a chance to be spontaneous. It gave me the opportunity to learn more about the children in my care."
"We have all been on an exciting journey, staff are - "thinking outside the box"; things are changing. People are willing to have a go and take risks."
"Attitudes have changed over the three years of the project and anxiety about change is becoming less of an obstacle."
"The projects resulted in high levels of motivation, with pupils largely being 'on-task' and having positive and enthusiastic attitudes."
"I enjoyed experimenting - how well I could draw and make tricky things."
"It's the best work we've ever done because we helped each other."
"We're finding out about worms. We know that they move really slowly and they're good at crawling and most of all really fun, we can dig them up and put them in buckets."
The Cre8us effect...at Stivichall Primary School:
'Masterplan'
Masterplan was a wide ranging project, based on a strong collaboration between the school and 'Talking Birds', a Coventry based theatre company over the period of three years. In the final year of the project the emphasis was on working with teachers and pupils to enable them to explore the potential of using spaces in different ways so that they could take new ways of worknig with them as they moved into a new building. Every teacher and child in the school also worked with visual artist Nicola Richardson and dancer Fran Higginson to plan activities and make curriculum links.
Visual artist Barbara Jones helped to embed the Early Years practice, developing creative play in the outdoor spaces as provocations for the children to explore. Children explored, experimented, dug things up, planted things, built constructions, asked questions, worked in teams, developed stories linked to role play - all following their personal ideas.
Collaborative working clearly emerged during the project as different groups of children developed their shared ideas. The sessions offered teachers an opportunity to observe how the children responded to different spaces, and to learn more about their pupils.
Across the sessions many links to curriculum areas became apparent, including numeracy, science, design & technology, and literacy. As the project progressed, the creative partner noted that teachers were embedding the practice, idenifying specific objectives they were looking for and observing how children responded to activities.
The whole school approach gave opportunities to explore a more creative curriculum as a whole staff, but in different ways, tailored to the needs of individual year groups - pupils and teachers. It gave year groups and individuals the chance to generate and explore ideas in a supported way, helping pupils to develop greater confidence. The projects had helped teachers take risks more willingly, identifying the school's "Experiment Week" as a chance to be creative and adventurous with their teaching and gave a higher profile to the importance of creativity across the curriculum.
Creative Agent: Lesley Whelan
Creative Practitioners: Talking Birds Theatre Company; Barbara Jones; Nicola Richardson; Claire Spooner; Fran Higginson; Julie Boden; Danya Miller
School: Stivichall Primary School, Coventry