Curious Minds

This year Whitefield outlined a real need in their self-assessment to provide pupils with more firsthand experiences. They identified that most of the children have a very limited experience of life beyond the school. This, coupled with the fact that 100% of the children are EAL learners, “is having a negative impact on their writing, leading to disappointing SATs results” (SIP)

To approach this, the school wanted to make better use of the outside environment and looked at combining this need into one stem of enquiry for the year: “This project relates to identified needs in our School Improvement Plan. It allows us to plan for a more cross-curricular approach to teaching and learning which will enrich each child’s learning”. (School CP Coordinator)

The staff were consulted during discussions about school development planning in deciding the focus for the project. The impact of a recent study visit to Reggio Emilia in northern Italy resulted in a whole school focus on the natural world.

Practitioners were chosen who would be comfortable working outdoors, had a track record of high quality work in their own right as artists and a track record of working well with young children. 

Teaching and support staff worked alongside practitioners to explore the possibilities of using the outdoor environment as a tool for effective teaching and learning. This included creating musical compositions and stories and songs, to perform and record. Working alongside creative practitioners, staff developed the use of role-play, both indoors and outside, as a tool to initiate and extend language and vocabulary. An emphasis was placed on story structure and bringing stories to life, and the activities were designed to ensure that all different learning styles of the children would be met.

Activities included:

• Developing story telling and writing using the outdoors as a stimulus.
• Developing outdoor musical trails.
• Creating and re-telling narratives in the correct sequence, drawing on language patterns of stories through role-play and drama.
• Using illustration to widen and develop children’s language.
• Linking music to stories and composition leading to nonfiction writing.

• A Year 1 girl, who had been an elective mute throughout her time at Whitefield, gradually built more confidence through the project and at the end was successful in reciting her poem to the rest of the school.
• Science knowledge was visibly increased; e.g. six year olds were able to explain to visiting adults how starfish ‘absorbed’ their prey and give an account of the behaviour of puffer fish when threatened.
• Staff successfully experimented with practitioners on new ways of working with children outdoors; e.g. showing children how to record tales on a story stick, sticky bookmark or story string – now part of the Year 2 teachers planning for the coming year.
• Each class has produced a ‘Golden Book’ with key examples of children’s work that will be used to support professional development of teachers. Work has been levelled to show progression beyond expectation .
• The school reporting system to parents now has a paragraph focused on each child’s work with Creative Partnerships.
• Lots of visitors have been into the school during the year to observe the creative approaches to teaching now taking place in all classrooms.

• The school are developing the ’pod’ idea seen at a visit to Jubilee Primary in East London, to link speaking and listening ideas with children’s writing.

• The school will continue to open up the school to enable others to model their way of working as well as visit other schools to move their own learning on further.