London’s renowned Saatchi Gallery is known for championing the work of previously unheard-of artists, offering a springboard to fame. Living up to this reputation, in March this year the gallery will feature work by some of the UK’s youngest and least-publicised artists – displaying creations from a cross-disciplinary project completed by Year 4 learners at NACE member and Challenge Award-accredited Pencoed Primary School.
 
Titled “Creating our Welsh identity”, the project started with a focus on learners identified as at risk of underachieving, including the more able – but its success led to elements being rolled out across the entire year group, and the school.
 
Class teacher Chloe Maddocks, who coordinated the project, explains more…

The context:

Promoting creativity and creative thinking is part of our school vision, and we recognise these as key life skills. However, this was an area we felt we could develop further.
 
We developed the “Creating our Welsh identity” project with the aim of raising academic attainment, improving learners’ self-esteem and confidence, and developing their creative skills – combined with a focus on numeracy and links to the year group topic. We also wanted to explore learner and staff perceptions of what it means to be creative, and to develop this thinking and awareness of broader creativity.
 
Having scoped out the project, we successfully applied through the Arts Council of Wales for a grant of £10,000, to be split between Year 1 (2016-17) and Year 2 (2017-18).

The project:

Running for the duration of the spring term, the project was linked to the Year 4 theme, The Stuarts. Initially, we selected 18 learners, targeting those at risk of underachieving. Due to the project’s success, we subsequently adopted some of the broader approaches across the rest of the year group and throughout the school.
 
At the start, learners did some research around the history of the Union Jack. Exploring symmetry, measuring and shapes, they then created their own version of the flag using fabric and donated materials, incorporating aspects of their own identity. Members of the community volunteered to teach learners to use a sewing machine, so they could stitch on their initials. The group also created personal identity drawings, based on research into the history of their family, incorporating words and symbols that represented them inside an outline of their body.
 
Numeracy was embedded from the start, right through to the end. We incorporated this in planning so all 60 learners within the year group were also taking part in the numeracy tasks. We looked at which National Literacy and Numeracy Framework (LNF) strands we could include, as well as planning our maths, language and topic lessons around the project. Focusing on real-life problems and tasks that reinforced specific numeracy strands – pricing activities, comparing costs from different supermarkets, profits and budgeting – allowed learners to relate to the importance of numeracy in everyday life.
 
More able and talented (MAT) learners were selected to act as leaders of certain parts of the project and were given the task of planning and coordinating the celebration event. All activities were differentiated to provide appropriate levels of challenge, and weekly evaluations allowed staff to tailor sessions to meet learners’ needs.

Learner engagement:

During the project we worked alongside Haf Weighton, a textile artist from Penarth. Haf brought some lovely ideas and had a wonderful working relationship with both the adults and children involved. She was selected by the learners themselves through an interview process, inspiring them with her style of art and her passion and love for her work.
 
Throughout, the learners were a key influence in determining the project’s direction, and were particularly active in devising the final outcome – the afternoon tea party. I had weekly conversations with them, in which they were able to evaluate their own work and the work of Haf, as well as discussing ways for the project to develop.

Celebration and exhibition:

To celebrate their work, learners hosted an afternoon tea party for parents and carers, sharing the project outcomes and showing off what they had learned throughout the topic. Around this event, learners had the opportunity to:

• Work alongside a candle maker
• Work alongside members of the community to create cushions and print
• Research what types of foods would have been served at a Stuart tea party
• Research the history of afternoon tea
• Take a trip into Pencoed village to purchase food
• Work out pricing, budget and profit
• Be filmed and interviewed by Heno, S4C

On the day of the party, parents and carers had the opportunity to sit in on either a literacy or numeracy lesson, tailored to the theme of the Stuarts.
 
Through Haf’s connections, we’ve also been able to reach a much wider audience. The artwork created was displayed in our very own exhibition in the HeARTh Gallery at the Llandough Hospital. Haf also shared details of the project at the Knit and Stitch Show in London, and – after the success of the project was shared online through our school website and Twitter – the prestigious Saatchi Gallery was very interested to work alongside Haf and to share the learners’ work.

Impact:

The impact for learners was far greater than we initially anticipated. All made progress with their weekly Big Maths scores and overall numeracy skills. They were also able to see the benefits of numeracy in everyday tasks, benefitting from the cross-curricular approach.
 
As well as developing a multitude of literacy, numeracy and creative skills, there was also an improvement in learners’ general confidence, wellbeing and self-esteem. For MAT learners, independent thinking and problem solving improved, and all learners felt a strong sense of pride and achievement in their work. Opportunities to see their work displayed, and to share their learning with parents and carers, provided inspiration to broaden their horizons and aspirations for the future.
 
There’s also been a wider impact, as we’ve shared the excellent practice across the school. In addition, the project has raised awareness about the importance of creativity among learners, staff and parents, showcasing how much can be achieved.

Next steps:

We are now in our second year of this project, and intend to continue running projects in this way. We’ve also been involved in school-to-school collaboration and shared our experiences in networking events across the Central South Consortium to promote this project to other schools. And of course we’re also planning to take the learners to the Saatchi Gallery in March, so they can experience the exhibition first-hand!
 
Chloe Maddocks has been a full-time teacher at Pencoed Primary School for four years, teaching Years 3 and 4. As coordinator of the “Creating our Welsh identity” project, she’s enjoyed opportunities to develop her leadership and project management skills, learner engagement, and share expertise with peers at other schools. She’s passionate about showing how creative skills can be incorporated into cross-curricular learning.
 
Pencoed Primary School has been a NACE member since 2014 and achieved the NACE Challenge Award in July 2015. With approximately 600 learners enrolled, the school is dedicated to developing networks of good practice and continually reviewing and improving its provision for all learners within an ethos of challenge for all.
 
Do you have an inspiring project to share with the NACE community? Contact us to share a case study.

Getting to grips with mastery doesn’t have to be hard work – far from it. In this blog post (originally published on schoolsimprovement.net), NACE associate Sarah Carpenter outlines a simple but effective use of mastery to improve primary English provision for all learners, including the more able…

While teachers and schools are at different points in the maths mastery journey, it’s now fairly clear what that looks like and what’s expected. When it comes to English, however, there’s relatively little guidance on how to use mastery effectively.

Inspired by Michael Tidd’s advocacy of longer literacy units, covering fewer texts and focusing on writing for a social purpose, over the past three years I’ve worked with schools to develop a mastery approach for primary English. This is certainly not the only approach to mastery in English, but it is an approach that I and the schools involved have found effective.

The concept is simple: each half term the teacher selects a central “driver text”. This is paired with a range of supplementary texts, including fiction, poetry, non-fiction, multimodal texts, and cross-curricular links. The unit is planned around the driver text, building in curriculum requirements and a broad range of writing opportunities.

This approach gives all learners the opportunity to develop a secure understanding of the driver text, subject matter and key skills – as well as the scope to work in greater depth and to explore and showcase their creativity and writing abilities.

Here are six reasons to try this mastery approach in your primary English provision:

1. It works for learners of all abilities

First and foremost, mastery is about providing support and opportunities for learners of all abilities to develop at their own pace. This approach allows time for all learners to become familiar with the central text and subject matter, and to practise specific skills such as predicting, comparing, making connections and synthesising.

For learners working below age-related expectations, you’re not moving on too quickly, and there are opportunities to consolidate skills through repetition. At the other end of the spectrum, more able learners have opportunities to broaden their knowledge and understanding of the writing purpose, bring together multiple texts, and deepen their subject knowledge.

The inclusion of poetry in each unit helps to expand learners’ vocabulary and get them thinking creatively about the choices they’re making. The use of non-fiction and cross-curricular texts provides opportunities for the more able to make clever use of sources, and to play with their writing styles, taking the audience and purpose into account. They have a bigger toolbox to draw on, allowing them to really show off their finesse as writers.

2. It engages even reluctant writers

When choosing a driver text, I try to choose one that will capture the interest of everyone in the class, particularly keeping boys in mind. Then I plan the unit to incorporate a wide variety of writing opportunities – short, medium and long – so even reluctant writers face something manageable and interesting, that breaks the mould in terms of what they’re usually asked to write.

3. It develops deep subject knowledge

Bringing in supporting texts with a shared theme allows learners to develop a deep sense of subject knowledge, so they can write as experts in the field. Just as a published author wouldn’t start writing without doing their background research first, we’re setting the same expectation for our pupils. This approach resonates very much with highly able learners in English.

4. It makes more effective use of time

This approach takes up no more or less time than would already be used for literacy sessions, but makes more effective use of that time. Covering fewer texts in a more focused way means more time to get deeply into the full range of curriculum requirements – in terms of reading, writing, drama and spoken language. You can even use the driver text or an accompanying text for guided reading sessions, so everything is working together.

In terms of planning, you do need to allocate more time at the beginning, because you’re essentially planning out the full half term in skeletal form. You can adapt as you go along, but you need to plan ahead to ensure you extract everything you can from the driver text and stop at the right points, building up that sense of mystery and anticipation, and allowing for reading and writing opportunities along the way.

Once you’ve chosen the driver text, you’re looking for those opportunities to bring in non-fiction, and searching for appropriate poetry connections. Once you’ve done this groundwork, you should find you spend less time on weekly planning, because you’ve got the framework in place.

5. It works for all types of text…

…even (or especially) picture books! I often choose picture-based story books or graphic novels, such as David Wiesner’s Flotsam or Shaun Tan’s The Arrival – which can be interesting when you tell people the unit is going to improve children’s vocabulary and grammar! Other driver texts I’ve used include Robert Swindells’ The Ice Palace, Rob Biddulph’s Blown Away, Helen Cooper’s Pumpkin Soup and Alexis Deacon’s I am Henry Finch.

Essentially, you’re looking for a text where you see lots of potential to go off at all sorts of different angles, and bring in cross-curricular links. For example, with I am Henry Finch, there are lots of links to be made with PSHE.

6. It’s fun!

Last but certainly not least, this mastery approach is fun. I’ve developed units for KS1, lower KS2 and upper KS2, with positive feedback from all. Not only have schools got some fantastic writing and reading responses from learners, but the children have really enjoyed it. They appreciate the opportunity to get deeply into one particular text – but not to the extent where they get bored, because they’ve got the addition of other texts of different types, and the scope to show off just what they can do.