Duloe Church of England Junior and Infant School - School of Creativity
Duloe Church of England Junior and Infant School became a School of Creativity in 2007, one of only 55 schools in the country selected for their commitment to creativity and to developing their own creative practice.
Duloe School was selected as a result of its vision to transform learning and teaching by empowering staff to expand the curriculum while ensuring full coverage of the national curriculum. Staff at the school work collaboratively in planning and delivering the curriculum and the school uses a wide range of creative activities in all continued professional development for staff including poetry, visual art, dance, music, theatre, drama, film making, science, textiles and writing.
As part of their 2009/10 Schools of Creativity programme, staff and children at Duloe wanted to promote the profile of creative learning skills; using information, reasoning, enquiry, evaluation and creative thinking in all areas of the curriculum.
Objectives
The school chose to place a particular focus on outdoor learning and the co-construction of learning with young people with the aim of improving standards and achievements in all areas of the curriculum. Staff and children at Duloe were keen to use their collaborative approach to planning, evaluating and celebrating their projects, working with families, colleagues and creative practitioners and also to use their close network of schools to develop their understanding of the importance of the key skills the children were developing and the relevance of their approaches to pupil’s ownership of their own learning.
The project
As part of the project children and staff at Duloe chose to follow up the Schools of Creativity programme from the previous year, in which they have started to investigate the broadening of children’s understanding of the opportunities of working with film. The creative practitioner was Hana Backland who worked with the children on the whole process of film making.
The Arwen production company was producing a pilot for a children’s television series created and written by Hana. Children observed and learned the many elements of what is involved in set building, filming, acting, directing, sound recording, editing and budgeting in the production of a film. The children shadowed all of the professional members of the production team, learning about each role. They also had explicit information about how that professional learned and developed their skills to pursue a career in the film industry. This is an integral part of our work to raise aspirations and expectations of children growing up in an isolated rural community.
The process included involving members of our local community who made available the village hall and assisted in the set building and deconstruction.
The children documented the process and learnt to improve their skills through the support and advice provided by the creative practitioners and professionals.
The grand premiere co-organised by the children was held in a nearby tourist attraction Carnglaze Slate Caverns. This provided a magnificent setting for celebrating the culmination of the project with all the school community, local media and other stakeholders.
Complementary to the project was a focus on shadow puppetry and the children produced a collaborative piece of work that would help them to understand how film could be used as a medium to share their performances. For this element, children and teachers spent a week writing scripts, learning the scientific principles behind shadow puppetry, making puppets, creating and performing the plays to an audience of parents, community and the creative practitioner Holly Griffin of Jacolly.
Impact
For the pupils, a positive impact on standards, behaviour and attitudes to learning was evident throughout the project. Staff also observed and recorded how children’s key skills improved over the course of the project. All projects are integrated fully with the schools delivery of the statutory curriculum.
Ofsted in July 2010, said: ‘Central to the improvement in learning that is taking place is the extremely stimulating curriculum that makes learning so interesting and ensures many highly motivating experiences for pupils. Extremely strong partnerships with a wide range of external organisations have contributed to this and the school has received national recognition for the quality of the creative curriculum.’
The staff team felt they had been strengthened as a cohort through their collaborative approach to the project and found the professional skills of teachers and other staff has also been improved, particularly skills around improving standards and the key skills of the children. There is also some evidence that most teachers and some support staff have been inspired to further accredited professional development.
