Curious Minds

The Diversity of Curious Minds

 

As Curious Minds draws to the end of its Creative Partnerships phase and looks forward to becoming the new 'Bridge Organisation' for the North West, it is interesting to see how wide-ranging our projects have been. The examples below show how creative collaboration can help schools improve academic attainment, increase interest in specific subject areas and develop understanding about diversity and culture.

A love of learning improves standards

At Our Lady of Lourdes Primary School, Sefton, children made at least two sub levels of progress in writing between September 2010 and July 2011. Pupils worked with children's author Hilary Keating, collaborating with their teachers, parents, and the caretaker to design activities such as den making and camp fire building.

This stimulated their ideas for writing and gave staff and Hilary the opportunity to ask children what help they needed with their writing. 'It used to be just basic punctuation' said one Year4 pupil, 'now I use stuff like brackets and punctuation marks. And adverbial and adjectival clauses.' Another reeled off the new approaches to writing Hilary had helped them develop: 'What you can see, what you can smell, what you can hear, what you can taste, what you can feel, wonder whispering, word bank, word dash...'

Children designed colour coding to help with grammar, back packs full of 'wow' words, 'storyhands' to help with structure and blogs to share ideas and feedback. 'It might not look the same in classrooms,' said one Year 6 pupil showing a parent round the school on open day. 'Everyone will be working in pairs or groups solving things and using their own ideas. The teachers don't talk as much anymore.'

A Governor said, 'I'd love to be a child in Our Lady now. It looks so interesting and exciting. You've achieved so much in such a short space of time.'

Creativity builds enthusiasm for language learning

Pupils at St Francis Xavier Collage in Liverpool partnered with FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technologies), using new technologies to connect with pupils in Chile. The project, called 'Everyday Lives', developed pupils' intercultural understanding, interest in Spanish and geographical knowledge. School Coordinator Leslie Rippon says 'pupils studying a modern foreign language in KS4 next year have doubled.'

Curiosity about culture develops understanding

Year 7 pupils from Oldershaw Secondary School in The Wirral designed activities with dance and festival practitioners Freddy and Francisco from 'All Things Latin', to help them explore other world cultures. Staff wanted the project to 'develop a "tolerance" for people from other cultures' after they had identified that lots of pupils rarely leave the insularity of their own neighbourhoods.

The impact has superseded expectations, with teachers reporting that the unique perspective of 'All Things Latin' has led to pupils having 'an increased interest in other countries, particularly those in Latin America.' 'I want to visit Peru or Brazil', said one pupil; 'I want to travel and write a journal about all the places I visit.' Activities included cultural identity exploration, the making and sharing of regional food, mask-making, music, dance, carnival and song.

During one dance session, Freddy described how 'some children didn't want to hold each others' hands'. He talked to them about how physical contact between peers is normal in his own country. 'After about ten minutes they started to realise it was ok...to focus and enjoy it.'

Alice Demba
Curious Minds