Creative Partnerships Focus: Walkergate Primary School
Walkergate Primary School have been exploring the Enquiry Question, 'Can engaging pupils in activities to develop creativity support their global awareness and give them a better understanding of global citizenship?'
The lead artist, Mark Labrow will work primarily with Year 3 children and staff throughout the Spring term, providing imaginative and exciting interventions, which will be developed as child led enquiries. Mark has been selected for his expertise in developing creative approaches to teaching and his ability to stimulate children's imagination and enthusiasm. Mark will work closely with the two Year 3 teaching staff to support their development and confidence to work creatively and responsively to the children's interests and to incorporate the curriculum into a topic based Spring Term. Year 3 teachers have selected 'Transport' as their topic for the term and are now planning a global approach to broaden the scope of the theme. Both teachers will have opportunities to incorporate their individual interests into the project and will work across Year 3 to maximize their specific skills and share their learning and experiences. Mark will use his skills to support this development by providing additional creative experiences in response to the children's and teachers needs.
The school has already funded Mark to facilitate a CPD session with the whole teaching staff, aiming to enthuse everyone to incorporate creative teaching across the curriculum and extend topic based work into the main timetable. Some work with Year 4 will be undertaken as their topic is Spain. This will enable Year 4 teaching staff to have some input from Mark Labrow.
The project will use stories from across the World, based on conflict resolutions that will be explored with the children. Several storytellers will be invited into school to link with the project. These will be selected for their ability to relate with children and quality of delivery rather than their ethnicity.
The school has already established international links with Mexico and Croatia which can be further developed and there are opportunities to share different cultures with the children as two members of staff have recently travelled to Australia. The Creative Agent will establish contact with Year 3 children prior to the start of the project to talk through her role within C.P and encourage children to become actively involved in the development of the project. She is visiting India during January 2010 and will keep in touch with the school via postcards, followed by a school talk with photographs to provide another way of engaging children.
We anticipate that the Year 3 children will act as ambassadors during assemblies, sharing their learning with the whole school. The children will record events in the project by being photographers and journalists, compiling interviews, news reports and blogs. At the end of the project our pupils will create a short film about their experiences to share with families, friends and the wider community.