Southey Green School
Who?
Southey Green Community Primary School, Sheffield
What?
Our relationship with Southey Green has been built up over other a long time and has resulted in a number of different projects within the school. We have created different situations there to engage children in their work and spark their motivation to write creatively.
Why?
The school initially had a focus for enquiry: “Through the use of drama and provocation, how can we positively engage children, and motivate them to write?” The hope was that by creating exciting, interesting and engaging scenarios in the school the children would be given a context and a purpose to want to write enthusiastically and independently.
How?
We have now run four different projects in Southey School, each one designed to help the children’s creative writing abilities.
The Alien Cocoon: One morning, lurking in the playground, there it was - a mysterious giant cocoon. The local police arrived with sirens flashing. They cordoned off the area and spoke in hushed tones with the head teacher. Meanwhile a crowd of children and their parents had gathered asking questions. What was it? What was inside? Where did it come from? Why was it there? The children had all sorts of theories - it's could be a dinosaur egg, an alien, some sort of monster or a giant worm that had come out of the earth. One person even thought there might be a dead body inside. Someone else saw there were scratches on a nearby tree and thought that might be some sort of clue. The intrigue and buzz around the school was huge. Dead Earnest worked specifically with two year groups and helped them get into role as detectives, looking for further clues, interviewing people and writing reports. A range of creative activities followed including scientific experiments, code breaking, dramatic role plays and even some cookery (creating alien food, obviously). Even the caretaker and the cleaners got involved!
The Pirates are Coming!: When a strangely dressed new pupil entered the Y1 class, the children couldn’t wait to find out more about him. It was agreed fairly quickly, based on his dress sense, his stories and his voice that he must be was a PIRATE but why was he there? Two of these pirates, named Patrick and Polly, he pirates were cunningly placed in two classes by Dead Earnest . They needed some help reading and writing so that they could decipher ancient maps and discover treasure buried on the site hundreds of years ago! The pirates disappeared at lunch time and over the coming weeks, the children communicated with them through messages in a bottle, completing writing tasks and challenges that were sent to them. Not only did they need to complete the tasks, but they had to learn a pirate song, a chant and some jobs aboard the ship. The pirates came back to a special assembly where the children showed off their new pirate skills for their parents, earned certificates and went on to hunt for the treasure with the Pirates.
The Piano Man: In Y5, the children were working on film narrative in their literacy lessons. They were using THE PIANO MAN, an animated film by Aidan Gibbons which shows an old man playing the piano whilst remembering moments and people from his life. Dead Earnest brought drama techniques and props to the sessions, to help the children explore key moments in the man’s life, and the people who were important to him. It came as a surprise to the children when, as they walked to the hall for their usual drama session, they could hear the now familiar piano tune. As they entered the hall, there was the piano man sitting and playing in the corner. After introducing himself, the Dead Earnest actor played various other pieces of music which had relevance to his past, and talked about some of the objects they had seen in the film and in the classroom. The children were captivated and moved by the performance, and it was, according to one teacher, the ‘highlight’ of her year.
Dr What: What started out as an ordinary school assembly became a dramatic event when a strange looking man burst in unannounced on his scooter. He turned out to be, an intergalactic explorer called Doctor What. His ‘Van de Graff Sparkulator’ had led him to Southey on the hunt for Creative Sparks who could help him solve his problem. His master had given him a book entitled: ‘The Chronicles of Dr What and the Creative Sparks – a book that charted all of his adventures - , but inside the pages were blank. He couldn’t remember everything he had got up to and all he had to prompt his memory was an array of items in his bag. Could the children help? Could they write some stories to go in his book? Four weeks later Dr What returned to Southey (no doubt from yet another far-flung adventure) and to his delight his book was now full of stories the children had written. Every single child in the school produced their own piece of creative writing and, once they had all been stuck in the book, Dr What read them out in a special assembly.
So, has it worked?
The overall aim of the projects in Southey was to get the children to engage with their work and spark some creative learning. They undertook a number of different writing exercises, from letters to diaries to newspaper articles to scientific reports. Teachers commented on how much the projects had motivated the children and, in particular, the boys. The sessions had inspired them and evoked lots of imaginative ideas. Perhaps the biggest success, though, was the amount of this work that was undertaken independently. As one Y1 teacher commented:
“Tyler’s attitude to writing has since much improved. He is choosing to write more and when writing independently he is still very interested in writing about the cocoon and our visit from the pirates… I think Tyler’s attitude changed due to providing him with real experiences that particularly boys were interested in. The projects gave Tyler a purpose to write about an idea he was genuinely enthused about”
It was important to us to make sure the projects didn’t end when our actors left; we wanted to leave a lasting impression on the children so that their creative development could continue. We also wanted to see the children engage with their work; get enthusiastic and excited about it. That certainly seemed to work too; even the parents noticed a change in them:
“My son is loving this project, he doesn’t stop talking about it, he doesn’t want it to stop.”
Another massive positive to come out of the projects was the upturn in school attendances. Children did not want to miss the next instalment of the project; a sign that the aim of getting them engaged and excited about learning worked.
It wasn’t just the children that got something from these projects, though. Teachers became more comfortable with delivering creative lessons, while here at Dead Earnest we managed to hone our creative skills to all primary school levels, adding extra flexibility into the planning stages. This can only improve any future projects we undertake.