Barbara Priestman, a 'Thinking School'
Barbara Priestman School in Sunderland is embarking on a development programme to become an accredited ‘thinking school’ endorsed by Exeter University. The school hopes to help its pupils think more independently.
Barbara Priestman is a special needs school and has 100 pupils with a wide range of special needs, the most common of which is Autism. The school caters for pupils from 11-18 with some pupils staying on after 18.
To support thinking skills in the classroom the school employed Cap a Pie Associates to develop a bespoke Dramatic Enquiry to be delivered in school. The Dramatic Enquiry created uses the theme of memory and is entitled ‘The Memory Box’.
The Memory Box involved facilitators Ruth Johnson and Dan Forth - who documented the piece. A member of the school staff also took a very active role in the performance of the drama. The premise: two sisters visit a doctor who specialises in memories. One of the sisters has lost her memory and the other presents a box of photos to jog her sister’s memory.
Pupils took part as observers in the role-play and then as facilitators to offer suggestions and ideas – creating their own questions thoughts and ‘provocations’.
Many students bought into the idea of the drama and were able to give deeper level, reasoned responses and suggestions - which staff described as unusual.
‘The Museum of Perfect Futures’ was the second phase of the dramatic enquiry. Sixth form students helped shape the focus of the drama. Using a previously disused wild space in the school as a stimulus for the enquiry, the sixth formers came up with the name ‘Explorer Scholars’, created artefacts and shaped the dramatic ideas. The theme of Utopia or a perfect world was used as a stimulus for the drama.
To make the enquiry credible the students had to commit to the idea that they were explorers looking for a lost city or a perfect place. Each group was given instructions from a ‘leader’ via a video link and told they had to decipher a special message. The message came in the form of an ancient relic. The message turned out to be a map which led them to the wild space. On reaching the wild space they encountered Gwynnie a woman living in the woods happily by herself. The dilemma for the students was to decide if the dwelling she has made should be torn apart in order for them to excavate the site as it was of historical interest or should she be left in peace.
To analyse their ideas and catagorize their discovery the pupils came up with the idea of using thinking maps, which had previously been introduced in lessons. This surprised some staff that pupils were able to recall what they had done in lessons and apply it in a different context.
The third phase of the work was the development and delivery of project to support the school’s new Building Schools for the Future programme. Once again this project was planned with staff and pupils and delivered by staff and Cap a Pie Associates. This project entailed the introduction of a group of ‘Alien’ children with specific learning needs, who had supposedly crash landed at the school. It was the pupils’ role to ascertain the needs of the Aliens and to suggest the types of environments they would need to learn and thrive in. Their findings would be visually recorded and fed back to the Local Authority BSF teams for interpretation.
Pupils have learnt how to think for themselves more, and take control of their own learning. They are more pro-active to the tasks and show more confidence. The staff have learnt more about creative learning
