Imagination Station
Imagination Station took place in 2009/10 at Pipworth Primary School through the Creative Partnerships Sheffield Change School programme.
The school wanted to learn how to teach more creatively so that lessons have more impact and the children’s literacy skills are developed further.
Creative Practitioners ‘Open Minds Theatre Company’ worked with teachers to transform the new performing arts studio into an imaginary world as a stimulus for creative work; the goal being to develop new ideas to be taken back into teachers' classroom practice.
Using the imaginary world, year 3 children explored adventure texts, such as descriptive paragraphs, dialogue, plot, structure, pace etc... they also looked at letters and postcards to and from the imaginary world.
As an extra stimulus, year 3 children experienced the hatching of a baby dinosaur in the imaginary world. This followed a four week incubation period in which the children carefully looked after the eggs, making a large nest for them. On the day of the event, the practitioners dressed as paleontologists visiting to investigate the eggs.
Project objectives
'How can imaginative dramatic experiences impact on creative writing?'
Who was involved?
Years 3 and 4
Impact
"Before the big day many of the children were so excited; they were sure the eggs had been moving and cracking" (practitioner)
“The event has sparked off all sorts of work in art and literacy and it has been a fun project for the school” (class teacher)
The use of podcasts and 'creative crew' (to spread the word about the project in school) allowed the children to direct their own learning and to take responsibility for it.
In year 4, the imaginary world fed directly into their curriculum - they explored suspense, tension and narrative and looked at time connectives. They created a robot and learnt how to make it move to support their instructive writing. A World War 2 physical space was also created to explore empathy so children wrote as if they were evacuees. This fed into the history curriculum as well as improving literacy.
Results
Key Outcomes
- A more creative approach to lesson planning and delivery;
- Increased pupil confidence, motivation and imagination;
- Progress in literacy levels.
Teacher Comments
"The children are enjoying school more, they're enjoying literacy more, they're achieving more"
"The creative spaces are being used by all classes thoughout the school"
"The teachers valued highly the new skills they had learnt from Simon and Sarah and were impressed by the impact the project had upon them"
"CPD sessions with the creative practitioners will embed this new learning for the teachers"
