The Continuing Adventures of... using a creative curriculum to develop and raise standards in writing.
The Continuing Adventures of... is an Enquiry Schools projected delivered at Overchurch Infant School by Creative Partnerships Merseyside.
Enquiry Question
The Enquiry Question for this project was: How can we use a creative curriculum to develop and raise standards in writing, particularly for boys?
Project Focus
The focus of the enquiry was to support the production of stories through comic strips. The basis for the stories were soft toys the children took home every night and a wrote a diary on. This gave them a strong sense of ownership as the character in the story became very important and relevant to them. Comic strips were a genre of writing that had not been explored at the school before and it was felt that the opportunities for creative adventures that would appeal to and engage the children’s imaginations, including the boys were immense.
This programme was well received by teachers as it offered to them a new and refreshed way of approaching engagement of pupils with writing. The staff enjoyed enormously working in partnership with the creatives and vice versa. The students’ comments on the programme were equally exceptional with many of them wishing for more time with creatives. Many of the children were able to produce not one but up to three or more stories each for this programme exhibiting a fascination in the process and increased engagement. During evaluation, the children were not only able to re-count their own stories but re-tell many other pupils stories too. All of the children stated that they were challenged by the work but in a safe and secure way. Their only complaint was that their arms ached with all the writing!
The staff felt that the work had allowed them to “generate ideas in a more free way and step away from the literacy strategy. Partnership working has had a huge impact. It had challenged assumptions about teaching boys differently to girls” and the staff now feel able to take it through to yr 1 next year. The teaching staff, who took part in the programme, will be sharing ideas with colleagues next year also. One teacher commented the programme and the creatives had offered “not only the tools but the spark”. She had seen that the children were able to express new ideas.