Curious Minds

Hillside Community Primary

Hillside Community Primary School in Skelmersdale are catching their breath after an exciting year as a Change School. 

They were well placed to make the most of the opportunity, having been an Enquiry School the previous year and through sharing Executive Headteacher Angela Aspinall-Livesey with Creative Partnerships neighbours St John’s Catholic Primary School.  They certainly hit the ground running with a thorough consultation, asking the entire school what they would like to happen.

As a result of the consultation, they have flooded the school with visual arts, with the intention of learning how to involve teachers, pupils and artists in discovering new ways to enrich their curriculum. 

Every year group chose an area of the curriculum to work with, including Vile Victorians, The Woeful 2nd World War, People and Places, The Terrible Tudors, The Revolting Romans, The Colourful Cavemen, Castes and Knights, Swinging Sixties, Roaring Twenties, Liverpool Landscape and worked with practitioners to approach this in exciting, animated ways.  For example, during their creative project on People and Places, year 3 plotted their bedrooms, classroom and school.  They used maps to create artwork and photographed local people and places.  They also created a ‘drawing booth’ on Skelmersdale Shopping Concourse and over 60 local people stopped to answer a survey and have their portraits draw by the children.  The portraits went into an exhibition in Southport, where one of the children sold her work for £90.  The exhibition and results of the survey are now in the local library.  Other year groups contributed to a ‘Horrible Histories’ trail along the corridors, which has not only enhanced the learning of the children who created it, but made other years excited at the prospect of doing the topics in future.  The trail is simultaneously vibrant and engagingly gruesome, with models of Romans and Tudors beheading people and emptying slop buckets out of windows understandably capturing the interest of the entire school.

The impact on the students has been remarkable.  School Co-ordinator Chris Upton reported that attendance was way above the school targets and that levels of engagement have been outstanding.  One teacher noted "When we went to Manchester Museum on a visit museum staff said they couldn't believe what independent learners the pupils were, they were seeking staff out to ask them questions.  As staff we felt really proud of them and their active learning.”  The project evaluation form stated ‘the children literally skipped into school on project days’.  Chris noted that on a ‘Living History’ visit, pupils were invited to dress up in costumes if they wanted and all the children did, which has never happened before.  Staff have learned lots of new techniques and are feeling confident and positive about working with artists and arts in the future, sincerely recognising the richness this has brought to the children’s experiences.

Next year Hillside fully intends to put what they have learned into action and will continue to work with Creative Practitioners as well as sharing their learning with each other.

 

Written by Kelly Allen