Sharing Ideas Saves Time and Increases Creativity

Hello everyone, welcome to my first blog! I really hope that this will evolve into a place for discussing and sharing practice and most importantly ideas. I believe that good ideas are a teacher’s most important resource as they help us to inspire children to learn.

Finding Time for Creative Teaching

I know just by walking through my own school that there are is so much creative thinking happening in schools but finding the time and opportunity to share is so difficult….welcome to this space!

Please share your ideas big and small so that other children can benefit from them.

Like Michael, my role is to share my experiences this year in creative approaches to literacy and literature in the classroom. In my case I’m primary 2/3 class in Andover Primary School, Brechin, Angus. I’m lucky to have the support of The Scottish Book Trust and their very many and varied contacts which has encouraged me to be a little more adventurous than I otherwise might have dared!

Term 1 – Poetry and Scots Language

This term’s focus is poetry, with a particular focus on Scots language. I think poetry is something a lot of teachers are a little less comfortable with and I know for me it has often been a few one-off lessons and a bit of an add-on.

We watched Michael Rosen’s live event on World Book Day last week and it really brought home the value of poetry – every child was so engaged and enthralled by the poetry he performed.

Multi-arts Project with  Lydia Robb

We have started a multi-arts project; the result of which (fingers crossed!) will be a class resource in the form of a concertina-style poetry book. It will have six Scots animal poems on one side (one from each group) and a scene for story telling on the back. I’m really hoping to end up with something the children can be proud of.

Thankfully I will not be tackling this alone. We have already had a poetry session with Lydia Robb, a very talented local poet, whose expertise in this field really helped to inspire the children and enable them to transform their ideas into poetry.

We so enjoyed her Scots poems and were delighted when she agreed to be part of the project (I’m sure Justin Timberlake would not have had a better reception!)

Local textile artist

So we are off to a good start. Once our poems are finished we are looking forward to even more help, this time in the form of a local textile artist, who is going to help the children transform their poems into the pages, merging the words into pictures to help illustrate their meaning.

I’m sure I will learn a great deal from this project and I promise to share details of all the sessions during the course of the term. I also hope to have a version of the book online so we can share what I very much hope will be a successful outcome.

Term 2 – Story Telling and Mini-beasts

The summer term is going to revolve round mini-beasts. We are going to use picture books and factual books to develop scientific knowledge as well as to inspire curiosity and creative thinking.

We hope to use outdoor space as much as possible and set up a reading tent for beastie books. I’m hoping the children will storyboard some of their ideas and film their work themselves.

A lot of the work is going to revolve around creating characters as the focus for story writing. My collection of beastie books has started…please feel free to offer any suggestions!

Term 3 – Royal Mail Awards Shared Reading

The third term is a little more difficult to plan as after the holidays I will have a different class and possibly a different stage.

I am hoping to do some work with the Royal Mail Awards shared Reading Structure to explore how it can be used to develop reading in the early primary stages. This will involve pairing young readers with readers from the upper school to share the picture book category of the Awards.

Michael and I are both keen to share our lesson plans, resources, successes and pitfalls, in the hope that it will kick start some useful discussion and encourage others to use the Glow space or the SBT site to do the same.

We look forward to hearing from you… I would also add that I am in this role as a lover of books rather than a lover of technology! I think there is so much scope in using technology to enhance our practise however…so if you are a technophobe who has made it this far, surprise yourself and get involved!