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Putting Arts-Based Practice at the Centre of the Primary Curriculum

24/09/2007

Self-Evaluation Report

Introduction

Initially the project was due to take place over a calendar year, however the majority of the schools who were involved preferred to complete the workshops by the end of the school year. In hindsight, fairly understandable and to be expected but this did mean 2 very full-on terms (6 months) for both practitioners – exhausting but very enjoyable and ultimately very rewarding. A flyer about the project was sent out via the Cornwall Association of Primary Headteachers’ newsletter on the 4th January. By the end of the next day 20 schools had ‘signed up’ and 15 were on a reserve list! As the criteria was literally the first 20 schools to get in touch, amazingly there were schools from all 6 L.A. districts (as flagged up in the bid) and a mixture of small schools (30 – 45 pupils), mid-size schools (120ish) and large schools (450+).

The Introductory Performance

The performances of ‘The Legend of Long Legged Leon’ began in January and were completed – as planned – by the February half-term. The show was received very positively everywhere it played and certainly inspired the children subsequently selected by the schools to participate in the workshops to create their own characters based on the sort of puppets they wanted to make.

. . . the live performance was well-performed and received. It stimulated meaningful literary discussion and has acted as a stimulus for future literacy.

It was an interesting way of stimulating discussion and I really appreciated the opportunity to develop alternative endings. They [the pupils; aged 5 – 11] enjoyed that and it would be a good starting point for their own narrative writing.

The puppets were very popular and I [the head and class-teacher] was pleased that even in these days of sophisticated entertainment the children enjoyed the live performance and the need to suspend disbelief.

I asked them where they would like to go from here and there was a lot of support for the idea (from a Y3) to write their own story to perform. Several would like to incorporate large puppets (including the fun of making them too!) As I have a dearth of girls (only 4 out of 23!) they agreed that this was a good way of circumventing that problem as many boys were happy to be the puppeteer for a female character.

The Workshops

Some schools preferred to fix up dates for all 5 of their workshops immediately following their performance of ‘Leon’ and the post-performance planning session. Other schools fixed up the first 2 or 3 and left the other 2 for the summer term and later sorting. As workshops were put in the diary it became a major operation of fixing and shifting to accommodate the 100 days needed – but somehow this was achieved! 2 schools subsequently decided to take their work into the autumn term and so 5 days for this have been booked into the first half of the Autumn Term 2006. Another school has decided to postpone their performance until September – to make a real event of it following a term with so much packed in and going on. On reflection, this past academic year has been incredibly busy for schools – seemingly more so than usual – and so has meant a real commitment and energy having to be given to this project along with everything else being demanded. Schools – on the whole – have risen to this and yet again the resilience of teachers and their dedication to their practice and more importantly their pupils has been displayed over and over again.

Some schools chose to have 2 classes involved in the project – most in fact – giving 5 half day sessions to each one. A few schools decided to have just the one class participating – giving that group 5 whole days. Evaluations received from all participating schools have shown one school feeling that maybe they should have involved only one class – they did do something very different to all the other schools at the start however. They created 2 mixed groups from across their 2 Key Stages. This worked with the KS1 group but was less successful with the KS2 one. The third session reverted back to 2 class groups – a year 3/4 one and a year 5/6 one. These 2 groups subsequently performed their original puppet stories for a whole school plus parents assembly.

We felt that the schools we worked most successfully with were the ones who had clearly taken on board the importance of the CPD aspect of the project – and that on the whole it was the teachers with lots of experience and who were still highly motivated by their profession that were the most rewarding for us to work with. Collaboration was greatest when the teacher was inspired, consequently inspiring the children, who then continued to amaze and inspire us and their teacher in return. Particularly mentioned was the visual story mapping that one school mentioned cascading across all staff in the school immediately following that session; drama-based exercises with the emphasis on PSHE issues, speaking and presentation role-plays, using cross-curricular material in practical story-telling and creative writing/stories and so on.

Having initially spoken with headteachers – sometimes with staff present, sometimes not – we found that a few staff (very much in the minority) had not really got any idea of the project before it started and didn’t seem to have been included in the head’s decision to sign up. Most of these did say they got a lot out of taking our practice with their pupils and using it themselves or that they would do so in the future, but their involvement seemed slightly on the periphery and they didn’t seem to see the workshops as possibly leading to them working with their own classes to put together a performance of their story.

In a number of schools the head dropped in to sessions and most made every effort to speak to us on each visit – highlighting for us the importance placed on our work by the schools and giving the project a high profile in most of the places we worked in. It was always lovely to be greeted by excited and enthusiastic children on every visit. We were made to feel part of the life of all the schools we worked in – not just an added on or ‘extra’.

The Performances

Most schools did end their work with us putting together a story of their own to perform either to the rest of the school, or to parents and governors. Joe Long and I managed to attend several of these – some by design and some by luck. At one school Year 3 were doing their end of year assembly to parents and the rest of the school and performed their story about a girl getting lost in a forest that would only let her go if she could answer their questions about the Victorians (the topic the class had chosen for their cross-curricular focus). Having escaped the forest she then found herself in a graveyard (this class had been insistent on a story including ghosts and zombies!) where she reassured the restless souls of dead Victorian children that much had changed since their day and laws had been passed that meant what had happened to them wouldn’t happen again. One parent commented on how the story was a much better and more interesting way of the children being able to show their parents what they’d been learning about.

Another school insisted on arranging their end of year performances around our availability as they said it would mean so much to the children if we were there and they wanted to introduce us to the parents. The Head explained about the project and how lucky they felt they were to have been included. She then asked me to say a few words and then year 2 performed their story set in the Amazon Rain Forest. The most impressive aspect of this performance was the amount of factual information the children had included in their story and that their performances clearly indicated their real assimilation and understanding of it. They had wanted a Colossus in their story and a dragon – not usual residents of the Rain Forest – so had decided that although they knew lots about the destruction of the Rain Forest the dragon didn’t and so was going on a journey to find out for himself. The Colossus became a representation of the destruction by having huge teeth and eating his way through the trees – he had to be stopped (which he was by the poison tongued tree frog giving him a stomach ache having put poison on the bark of the trees). The class teacher (also head of KS1) said the children had been so enthusiastic throughout the project and had said to her how proud they felt of their story. It was evident that they felt it was theirs and that they had the ownership of it. This was a theme across most groups – it was something they had created, something they had done themselves, not something that had been done on them or to them. This school is going to be applying for Artsmark Gold next term and had asked us to be one of their references. A genuine accolade for our partnership and relationship I feel.

Subsequently a wide-range of performances, taking many different approaches and using our input in many different ways, were created. At one school, where the head had decided to ‘buy us in’ to work with the whole school as well as the 2 classes funded by the project itself, each class performed their story on the penultimate day of term to the rest of the school and a large audience of parents. This school had recently received Artsmark Gold and had included us as one of their partners. Year 5 (where on a couple of visits the teacher had been away from school) had had a brilliant story in place after our first session – this seemed to have been mislaid but following their puppet-making session they had decided to concentrate on the characters of the puppets they had created. We used some of the original story – which worked well – and introduced new ideas created by hot-seating the characters of their puppets. Their performance clearly started with the puppets and used these brilliantly – as well as talking scenery; a forest, a tunnel, a house. Year 4 had started with the story of the ‘Lambton Worm’. They’d done their story as a flashback using the reporter interviewing technique explored in one of the sessions. The interviewer was interviewing Lord Lambton after his journey to the Crusades and defeating the Worm on his return. This technique enabled different children to play Lord Lambton in each section of the story and really made the performance feel like everyone in the class was always fully involved. Year 2 combined a story from their Literacy work – ‘The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch’, taking the character of the greedy seagull – with the opening of the new lifeboat station at neighbouring Padstow and their work on the sea and Henry Trengrouse.

Another school took its audience on a journey around the world – ‘Around the World in 8 Minute Plays’. This is a small rural school with 18 pupils in the KS2 class. The audience had to book into one of four departure slots and have a passport stamped before being led around the grounds of the school to 5 different parts of the world and a puppet-based story from each, drawing on cultural aspects and storytelling traditions from each respective country. Watching the faces of the parents watching their children present work they had created from ideas and techniques amassed through our workshops and from their own experimentation showed how well it was received. It was also noted that the children were left to their own devices and expected to use their own initiative – working without adult supervision, emphasising the level of enthusiasm and commitment the children had amassed. Fantastic.

Some schools also took on and developed the musical elements from their initial workshops, working on songs from around the world – which in one case proved particularly appropriate. The class was doing a project on the Massai Mara and tribes from Kenya. The pupils learnt two African songs – one in Swahili and the other a Massai hunting song – and even after several weeks between workshops, the children were still remembering and singing the songs. These songs became a staple inspiring agent to the creative process; with story writing, characters, and puppet making developing out of them.

A Selection of Quotes and Comments Direct from the Schools’ Evaluations

Why did you decide, as a school, to ‘sign up’ for this StoryWorks project? Who was involved in the decision?

  • School Vision statement is “Creative Learning, Caring Living” Artsmark Gold award last year identified drama as school’s weakest area.
  • Looked exciting: whole school staff decision
  • Creative curriculum co-ordinator ‘signed’ us up. We are looking at a more creative approach for 2006 – 7 and thought this would be a good opportunity.
  • Participation in DramaWorks the previous year was very successful and resulted in a profitable cross-curricular topic based on History.
  • Literacy, in particular writing, is a major focus of our SIP and we are always open to new ways of encouraging creative work.
  • The project was intended to stretch over the year which would allow time to develop ideas and incorporate them into the curriculum.

What arts-based practice did you do, as a school, either as a ‘separate’ subject or within Literacy and/or other areas of the curriculum, before getting involved with StoryWorks?

  • Very little storyboarding. Not enough speaking and listening and therefore weaker writing especially by boys.
  • Creative curriculum trials in Y2 and Y5. Drama used as a tool in Literacy.
  • DramaWorks 2004-2005
  • Visiting drama/puppet performances eg Dan Bishop.

Regarding your answer to question 2, has this changed or developed/moved on since being involved with

StoryWorks, and if so, how?

  • One boy on SEN register has made significant improvement. Raised self esteem and good at all performance.Even actual fine motor skills of handwriting improved.
  • Has involved us more with drama and puppetry
  • Will be used more in next academic year. More topic linking + drama in different subjects
  • We are currently in the midst of revamping our curriculum to ensure that it is delivered as creatively as possible (Excellence and Enjoyment).
  • We have to embed multi-cultural issues (post OFSTED 2005) and we believe that an arts-based delivery is one effective way of doing this.

CPD was an important part of this project. How has your own personal arts-based practice developed? What specific skills do you feel you have acquired and how do you feel these will enable you to use more arts-based practice in your day-to-day teaching?

  • Use of storyboarding and taking longer to work up to a piece of writing.
  • Loads more ideas for drama and how to plan different subjects into it. Using some of the games and exercises in circle time with other year groups – eg Y4
  • We have long been proponents of an arts-based curriculum which is probably why we feel comfortable with what happens with StoryWorks.
  • It has been good to see new ways of approaching story work and revisit old ones.
  • It has allowed us time to reflect on what we do and examine future practice with this in mind.
  • The necessary element of involving the pupils in evaluating their work has reinforced our participation in a Primary Strategy Network on Assessment with a focus on the more able pupil.

What do you feel have been the most useful experiences for you being involved in this project?

  • Able to observe learning and individuals (assessment)
  • Extended our puppet-making skills
  • CPD opportunities
  • An opportunity to watch the pupils respond to a fresh face but also a person that they have gradually formed a relationship with and look forward to seeing again.
  • Working with a different range of materials and exploring new ways of tackling curriculum delivery in an interesting way.
  • After many years in the classroom it is easy to become jaded and this project has helped us to keep a freshness in our work by challenging us to experiment.

What do you feel was the most useful experience for your class during a) their StoryWorks sessions and b) as a result of you using more arts-based practice of your own?

  • Confidence gain for less able students. Achieving.
  • Working with other adults / extending drama skills / useful story-mapping.
  • Using drama to think more creatively
  • Enjoy Literacy more
  • Very positive reaction to the initial puppet performance which led to discussion of the story and the method of presenting it.
  • High level of interest inspired for creative story writing because of new ways of planning how to do it.
  • Increased level of perseverance on related topics such as geography and history because these were directly related to the literacy.
  • Working collaboratively produced positive groupings of mixed age and ability
  • Creating puppets provided many problem solving opportunities.

What did you enjoy most about the project, and would you, as a school or as an individual, be interested in future projects and workshops delivered by StoryWorks Theatre Company?

  • Making large puppets . . . more ambitious than usual.
  • How many ideas it has given me. Most definitely would be interested in future work with StoryWorks.
  • Opportunity to develop a theme throughout the year building on the cross curricular topics and working towards a common goal i.e. a performance.
  • Working with people who were adaptable and responsive to our needs.
  • Watching how the children were engrossed and learning through a variety of ways that they were not aware of at first.
  • Having the flexibility to include events that were unplanned and put them to good use in supporting our end goals.

What could be improved or developed or changed about this project? What would you like to have seen done differently (bearing in mind the aims of the project etc)? What other sorts of arts-based work and/or projects would you like to be involved in, maybe have StoryWorks develop directly with your school?

  • Like to do more with music in the future.
  • Film and Video. We have gone on to make a film. This has really inspired the children and promoted learning.
  • Nothing necessarily – it was very flexible and responsive to our particular needs and situation.
  • I liked the time-scale but I think it might be interesting to try it out on a shorter and more intensive scale i.e. a term and based on a specific theme or used to deliver a subject like science or ICT.
  • It would be fun to add music composition. This might need the co-operation of a music specialist unless the class teacher was confident or competent in this area.
  • The project could be used within networks where individual schools could take a common starting point and then develop it, either independently or in collaboration, with the intention of combining at some point and sharing their experiences. I am thinking of small schools where we often need to give our very small year groups the chances to work together with neighbouring schools.

Comment made regarding the last 3 bullet points above:
All the above would need a lot of forward planning and discussion to make the projects relevant and manageable. The danger would be that the spontaneity, which we so appreciate, might be lost. We are a very small school and we can easily adapt our practice to suit individual needs and change direction if necessary. However bigger schools, where timetabling and staffing issues need more rigidity, might prefer to know what to expect. Maybe not! It really does depend on the personality of the people involved.

Any other comments or ideas or thoughts?

  • A great experience, children enjoyed it and I felt I learnt lots from it.
  • We received support at each stage of the process from Kathy and Joe who came prepared to stimulate and/or respond to our needs simultaneously. They were popular with both staff and children.
  • It is good to work with practitioners who can inspire creativity and imagination and let the recipient feel that it was their own idea all along! I really believe that in the current climate of national curriculum overload where teachers (often the newly qualified) are staggering under the burden of trying to cram in all the content but still make room for skills, there is a need for people who can gently guide us through the jungle of QCA files and folders to discover (or in some cases rediscover) a new and exciting way of delivering what is expected.
  • I would not hesitate to recommend StoryWorks to other schools. I hope that they continue to develop and extend their operation and I am sure that will work together again.

And Finally . . .

Thank you for helping us all to make the best puppets we have done. They have turned out better than I thought they would be. We are performing our play on Wednesday 19th. We was hoping that you could come and see how the puppets have been used and how wonderfull they have turned out. The play is turning really good and we hope to see you on Wednesday 19th so you can see our play. (from Megan and all the puppets. Y3/4)

Thank you very much for coming in and doing drama with us, we all really enjoyed it very much. I am doing drama now all over my house. I now go to Stagecoach witch you might have heard of and we do drama and my teacher said I am very good but I said it was a lady who came into our school called Kathy. She said Wow. I just want to say a big big Thank you. (from Olivia Y4)



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