I’m sat here doing a tiny bit of ‘planning’ for next half term, and I’m getting quite excited about our plans for the next half term (and indeed the half term after that too!) so I wanted to share them, and hopefully I’ll then be sharing our progress/journey on this blog over the next 12 weeks.
First of all though, a bit of background about my current school which will help put all of this in context– I teach year 5 in a 2 form entry full primary school on the Norfolk coast- but until 3 years ago the school used to be a 4 form entry middle (years 4-8) school and this is the first year we’ve had children in all of Nursery—>Y6. As such, particularly in KS2, there is still remnants of what some of us call the ‘middle school ethos’ and a significant proportion of the staff were originally secondary or middle trained.. Until this year year 5 were on a discrete subject based curriculum, and one of the reasons I was appointed was to help to move across the Year 5 curriculum to a fully cross curricular approach (but what we can do is rather limited due to me not teaching my RE, Music, MFL, PE and Games and the requirement set down by school still for discrete maths and English lessons.)
My current class were the first class our school had in year 3 and have been the focus for many initiatives, including 2 years of creative partnership input- this for me presented an interesting contrast between the ways in which the children have worked in the past (particularly through creative partnerships) and the way in which the year 5 curriculum used to be structured.
So far, I’ve had some good and some not so good experiences of trying to, quite drastically, change a curriculum. We’ve completed a great theme based on Greece (which perhaps, at a full term was a bit long) and have spent the past half term on a theme we called ‘thrills’ which included work on space and gasses (but in hind sight, perhaps should have been devoted to just a space theme given the children’s contagious enthusiasm for all things space!).
It was during our thrills work, when I took a ‘step back’ and looked at what was going on in the classroom, and whilst there was lots of excellent learning going on, I still felt it was constrained- and decided that things would potentially be much better if the children were fully (or as fully as possible) in control of what they were learning, and how they were learning it.
Since September I have been trying to incorporate lots of different strategies to involve children, and there is a big emphasis in our classroom on co-operative learning, but I felt things could still potentially be much ‘better’ if the children had more control and the freedom to be as creative as they wanted to be! [ It’s also worth noting that as an NQT, in a school that didn’t know me, I certainly didn’t feel comfortable trying some of the things I’m intending to try over the next term at the start of the year!]
So for the next 12 weeks (and then hopefully the rest of the year), I’m trying to give my class as much ‘control’ as I can.
The frustrating thing is, I’m still limited in ways I wish I wasn’t by things like the technology we have and school policy!
I’m planning to try and ‘build up’ this slightly different way of working- as ‘throwing’ the children straight into it obviously wouldn’t work.
So, for the next half term, I’m going to be building up and to some degree scaffolding our ‘different’ way or working. We are working on our ‘planned’ theme, rainforests (it was too late/potentially tricky in school to change it), but we are going to take an approach which the children have help select.
After some interesting discussion about ways of working and what they have enjoyed/liked in the past, the children decided they would like to try working by doing a ‘lot more’ art, music and drama. [I have to admit, I loved this idea, as during my PGCE I spent time working with he national gallery on their cultural placement programme, with a particular focus on their take one picture programme] They also said they particularly enjoyed our weekly ‘music and art of the week’ slots where we discuss a piece of music and a piece of ‘art’.
I decided, with the children of course, to try and run next half term in an extended ‘take one picture’ style- with the focus
for the term being one painting and all work stemming from that. Keen to ensure there were elements of child selection and true involvement from the start, I then asked anyone to find a piece of art which they liked which had a connection in some way to the rainforest (selecting the art for our music/art of the week is a coveted task- so I knew we’d get lots of suggestions) and the children didn’t disappoint and we had loads of suggestions for our focus painting. After some discussion and exploration, the whole class cam to the decision that they would like to use Henri Rousseau’s ‘Surprised’ as the focus for next half term.
So next half term, we will be working around this painting, and there are lots of things I’m trying to try and get the children involved and acting as ‘decision makers’ as much as possible.
First of all, we’ll be working on a series of enquiry questions based on the painting. These questions will be generated by the children and we’ll explore as many as we have time for. So apart from the first few introduction sessions to the painting, I’ve got very little to plan as yet- as I don’t know the direction we’ll be going! I’m going to try really hard not to influence our enquiry questions.
This did raise the question about curriculum coverage, especially to my fellow year 5 teacher. We’ve managed to escape from the mentality that ‘this certain topic has to be covered in year 5 because it always has been’ and instead looked at the national curriculum, which after all is the only statutory requirement, and are trying to ensure that we focus on the skills rather than ‘topic’ that the ‘old’ year 5 topics covered (which in reality at the moment, we still need to cover these skills to ensure we have the right coverage through KS2). I’m confident we can ensure that the coverage we need is achieved through the enquiry questions.
There is also going to be a lot more choice over the way in which the children can work and record their learning. I’m going to turn the back of our classroom into a ‘resource station’, full of the usual things like paper, glue etc, but also with some technology (more on that later), lots of art resources etc- the idea being that for some of our work to start of with and an increasing proportion as we go through the half term, the children will be given pretty much free reign over how they choose to record their learning. I’m hoping we’ll get some really great work from this, but I know it’s probably a change that will take some guidance and getting used to- hence the gradual introduction.
This choice will extend into our art based work too- as the children decided, we are hopefully going to be doing lots of ‘art’. Rather than always ‘dictating’ what the medium the children use, I’m going to give the options of a wide range of mediums which they can choose to work in. Some of these mediums, like artists inks, the children might not have used before, so I’m planning to hold some mini-workshops in the first week back to introduce them to them.
Towards the end of the half term, I’ll hopefully have children taking full control of their own, and their peers, learning. My current plan is to allow each of our ‘learning teams’ to decide on an enquiry question to explore over a week and then have the responsibility to present their ‘findings’ to the rest of the class. I’m really hoping I can get this to work, as I know the children will love it, but it’ll be potentially tricky resource wise- especially when it comes to ICT, and adult support in the afternoons- but I’m going to try and come up with a way to make it work!
I’m also going to try and blur the subject boundaries that still currently exist- our English is hopefully going to be fully part of our theme (which has been an aspiration since the start, but not all that successful) and I hope the children won’t be able to necessarily ‘tell’ all the time when they are in an English or theme lesson. Despite me not being ‘meant’ to teach the children their music, I’m not going to be ‘afraid’ to do music work (if it’s selected by the children of course) and am really looking forward to the prospect of getting to ‘teach’ music again- as it’s one of the things I miss teaching! Maths is going to have to be kept separate, but I’ll link it into our theme where possible.
Our creative partners are also going to be involved- we are currently in a ‘build up’ to our main creative partnership project after Easter, which means we have a few days of our creative partners time- hopefully the children will be helping to decide how we use this time and the incredible expertise our partners have- some of the children’s ideas before half term was to use our partners skills to do a massive mural in our cloakroom area that relates to the painting!
I’ve mentioned technology a few times- and one of my main frustrations at the moment is how much ‘easier’ and potentially more ‘powerful’ this could all be made with more technology. I’d love the children to have 1-1 netbooks, a set of Ipads,- or even a laptop past mine to use in the classroom- but all we have currently is my laptop and the KS2 ICT suite when we can get in it- so I’m going to have to be creative about how we deploy our limited tech (and I’m going to try and see if we have any spare or ‘broken’ laptops around school which may potentially be able to run internet explorer at the least!). I’m planning to ensure the other tech we do have is on offer to the children- particularly our cameras and easispeak microphones.
So that’s how I’m planning to build up our child centred and selected learning. But the really potentially exciting bit comes after Easter, when we reach the time put aside for our main Creative Partnership project, which this year is (conveniently for me!) ‘Finding my Voice’. So, towards the end of last half term, we started working, alongside our creative partners, on getting the children to truly select their own theme (a process which is worthy of it’s own blog post) and then hopefully we’ll be able to build on our work this half term when it comes to the delivery, ensuring it’s as child centred, led and selected as possible!
So that’s our plan- now I know lots of this, and much more, is being done all over the country but for me and particularly our school context, this represents a major change.
As this is all new, I’d love to hear your thoughts, comments and experiences- and any guidance you can give will certainly be appreciated!
I’m hoping I’ll be able to resurrect this blog a bit more over the coming half term and blog about our progress and my reflections and thoughts- but you’ll be able to track what’s going on over on our class website- www.mrhandley.co.uk too!
Who knows how it’ll go, but I think it’s got to be worth a try!
TH
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