Curious Minds

Little Heads, Big Ideas Pt. 2

Following on from part one we now continue and re-cap on St Gabriels 'Mantle of the Expert' project and their use of creative documentation within their current project:

Mantle of the Expert at St Gabriel's Church of England Primary School, Knowsley

Over the past three years St Gabriel’s young people, staff and school community have been on an exciting journey with Curious Minds.

All 232 children in the school from Nursery to Year 6 and every single member of staff have been directly involved in a whole host of creative activities, ranging from podcasting to photography, sensory explorations to imaginative story-building, textile design and environmental investigations.

A fabulous multi-media celebration of school history and heritage performed by pupils at St Gabriel's Church brought parents and church members together to share in the journey; photographs taken by Year 2 and  Year 3 pupils were displayed in pride of place at Huyton Library and in local shops and pupils spoke eloquently on the local history show on Radio Merseyside.

Part of this resulted in the development of a comic book project diary that you can view here...

Year 5 teachers and pupils selected drama practitioner Emma Bramley because they had worked with her on last year's project celebrating the past and looking to the future in a new school building.   This year, Emma used Mantle of the Expert to fire up creative entrepreneurs.

Mantle of the Expert is a dramatic enquiry pedagogy that involves the children imagining and acting "as if" they are a responsible team. They imagine they are a company who are set commissions by clients. They then 'work' to fulfil the commission which involves both problem seeking and problem solving. Through the imaginary world the children are able to explore a wide range of fictional contexts and different points of view. It creates a safe yet active space that allows them to explore ethics, moral dilemmas and as well as the curriculum.

The aim of the project was (a) to equip the teacher with understanding of how to plan and structure enquiry based learning, (b) how to use drama as a form of inquiry and (c) how the Mantle of the Expert system can create a framework for deep learning to occur. The teacher really enjoyed being moved gently out of her comfort zone, in order to use techniques such as teacher in role, as well as learning how to plan learning that allows children to be meaningfully involved.
 
Emma Bramley reports:
 

St Gabriel's was interested in exploring how Mantle of the Expert could be used in class to create learning opportunities, and how drama could be used for enquiry.  I worked with the teacher and pupils on exploring different communities and strategic planning.  The children imagined they were a company who conducted feasibility studies for large developments.  The "client"'s brief was to go to a small island in Narnia to see if it would be suitable for a five star hotel. However we what we didn't know was that there was a small, isolated community who lived here in secret!  During the six days the children developed self management skills, particularly negotiation! The comic visually documents our journey, experiences and learning. Children spoke about the realisation that they were capable of creativity and that they were 'good' at drama as the emphasis is on "if this was you..." Rather than "pretend to be..."

Deputy Head Kate Sawyer reported:

Emma skilfully led the children through a deliberately structured drama process which took form initially giggling and focusing on each other to really concentrating and focusing on their own part and ‘performance’.  Children who thought they were no good at ‘drama’ commented in their evaluations that they were able to join in, enjoy and were actually good at drama and thought hey might try it again in the future. The mantle work really empowered a lot of the class as it gave them the opportunity to work at their own level, some work was given to less confident children to boost their self- esteem and others were given the opportunity to work on a specific aspect eg technology and run with their ideas within the framework of the enquiry.

 

 

For more information on Mantle of the Expert please go to www.mantleoftheexpert.com Evaluation structure was provided by Paul Mayers