A sober Scot looks at the Rose. Forsythe
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Presented at LILAC 2010
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A sober Scot looks at the Rose. Forsythe
- 1. LILAC 2010 Wednesday 31st March Fiona M Forsythe Fionn Consultancy Services A Sober Scot looks at the Rose
- 2. LILAC 2010 Wednesday 31st March Why on earth… + =
- 3. LILAC 2010 Wednesday 31st March Back home in England… Creative Partnerships “the flagship creative learning programme. The programme is designed to develop the skills of young people across England, raising their aspirations and achievements, and opening up more opportunities for their futures.”
- 4. LILAC 2010 Wednesday 31st March Comments about the National Curriculum • “I used to see an item on Blue Peter, know that the kids would be really grabbed by it and use it as a theme for a week” • “the literacy and numeracy strategies don’t work” • “I want to teach across the curriculum”
- 5. LILAC 2010 Wednesday 31st March Creative Partnerships • Questioning and challenging • Making connections, seeing relationships • Envisaging what might be • Exploring ideas, keeping options open • Reflecting critically on ideas, actions and outcomes
- 6. LILAC 2010 Wednesday 31st March The Rose Report 2009 • Independent Review of the Primary Curriculum. DCSF 2009 • “Children relish learning independently” • “[Children] must also learn how to study” • “effective learning occurs when connections are made between subjects”
- 7. LILAC 2010 Wednesday 31st March The Rose Report Skills are back on the agenda …but what does this have to do with…
- 8. LILAC 2010 Wednesday 31st March Me?
- 9. LILAC 2010 Wednesday 31st March Aliens…
- 10. LILAC 2010 Wednesday 31st March …we need a spaceship • A hard yard – no grass • Big enough to hide an actor (or two) • Real enough to capture the imagination of Year 6, imaginary enough not to have Reception children in tears • Cheap • Able to be constructed without being seen by the neighbours
- 11. LILAC 2010 Wednesday 31st March We had a lot of talking to do • Found an artist – who loves asking questions • Lots of excitement from Police, Fire, Ambulance, University Physics Department • And excitement from the public library service
- 12. LILAC 2010 Wednesday 31st March So where are we now? • Had been scheduled for January, then March…but it snowed! • Now looking at 24th May • Building in skill delivery from the public library • Building in questioning skills from a TV researcher
- 13. LILAC 2010 Wednesday 31st March What do we think we’ll gain? • From the kids – excitement - thirst for enquiry - removal of barriers between subjects • For the staff - excitement - exploring different skills - links with the Community
- 14. LILAC 2010 Wednesday 31st March So • Lots of questioning and challenging • Lots of making connections, seeing relationships • Lots of envisaging what might be • Lots of exploring ideas, keeping options open
- 15. LILAC 2010 Wednesday 31st March A space ship a day? • Enquiry based learning can take organising • Who gives the staff the confidence and skills to ‘find things out’ • Who gives the pupils the confidence and skills to ‘find things out’
- 16. LILAC 2010 Wednesday 31st March I started with and ended up with aliens
- 17. LILAC 2010 Wednesday 31st March Key sites • Creative Partnerships www.creative-partnerships.com http://www.creativitycultureeducation.org/ • Everybody Writes http://www.everybodywrites.org.uk/ • The Rose Report http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/primarycurriculumreview/
- 18. LILAC 2010 Wednesday 31st March Thanks fiona@forsythe.demon.co.uk
Notes de l'éditeur
- With apologies to Hugh McDiarmid and A drunk man looks at the thistle. A long epic poem of over 2,500 lines. Does anyone else find the actual act of sitting down and starting to write a paper - difficult to say the least? Then, when you discover you are presenting the ‘morning after the night before’ – you realise that whoever did the programming for LILAC must have known the opening line of McDiarmd’s epic stream of consciousness very well, for it starts I amna fou sae muckle as tired – deid dune It’s gey and hard wark coupin’ gless for gless Does anyone need a translation ? I am not so much drunk as tired – dead beat Its very hard work upending one glass after another.
- So why am I adding a thistle to a rose to reach the shamrock Isle? I have long wanted to really get under the skin of A drunk man looks at the thistle – but even my liberal Scottish education left me some what wanting in this area, for to gain the maximum from this piece I would need to have a thorough knowledge of the Bible, Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, James Hogg, The rise of Socialism in Scotland and Russia post 1917, a passing nod to Gaelic, Scottish border history of the 17th Century, Wordsworth, Milton, TS Elliot (and The Wasteland), the London Literary Establishment with the likes of G.K. Chesterton, and I would also need to understand Nietzsche, Dostoevsky (not just his work, but his analysis of Pushkin), Victor Hugo, Alexander Blok, Jung, and the Belgian poet George Ramaekers – and that’s only a selection of the cultural references I would need to get through the first 300 lines. A rather heavy breakfast. A bit much for a school curriculum? An opportunity to explore information literacy skills? It would certainly need a lot of blended learning – and I’m not sure I mean the uisge-beatha form of blended learning!
- Back home in Blighty, I work freelance. One of my clients is Creative Partnerships, they deliver the Government’s the flagship creative learning programme. The programme is designed to develop the skills of young people across England, raising their aspirations and achievements, and opening up more opportunities for their futures. We also have had two decades of The National Curriculum as proposed in the 1998 Education Reform Act. When I go round schools (primary and secondary) I pick up a lot of comments about the manner in which they have been asked to work in recent years.
- Comments like: “I used to see an item on Blue Peter, know that the kids would be really grabbed by it and use it as a theme for a week” “the literacy and numeracy strategies don’t work” “I want to teach across the curriculum” It is in this climate that Creative Partnerships work. CP works by developing learners (staff, Governors..) by…
- Questioning and challenging Making connections, seeing relationships Envisaging what might be Exploring ideas, keeping options open Reflecting critically on ideas, actions and outcomes It is also in this climate that Sir Jim Rose delivered ….
- Independent Review of the Primary Curriculum Within the first view pages are comments… “Children relish learning independently” “[Children] must also learn how to study” “effective learning occurs when connections are made between subjects” The report also recommends that the primary curriculum is organised into 6 areas of learning – but that is outwith what I want to focus on this morning.
- Skills are back on the agenda
- At the beginning of this academic year I began working with a large primary School in County Durham in NE England. They had eagerly awaited the publication of the Rose Report – and felt that they now had the ‘green light’ to try a more creative approach to delivering the curriculum. One which excited the children, one which did not say ‘stop doing Geography, it’s time for French’, one which was truly ‘enquiry based’ One new staff member had experience of teaching like this – could this member of staff and Creative Partnerships help ‘oil the wheels’ of change? They wanted to look at teaching creatively, looking at skills, using a cross-curriculum approach as Rose suggested, they didn’t want to matrix curriculums across the school, or look for an ‘artificial’ topic, but they wanted it (whatever the ‘it’ was) to be equally rich for Reception pupils as for Yr 6, they didn’t want to add to staff’s stress loads, they knew if there was too much detailed planning staff would not want to work in a different way….they knew they wanted to get a week’s learning for the whole school out of ‘it’, it had to be rich in terms of curriculum content, bring in the outside and let the school go outside …and they wanted ‘it’ to be FUN – FUN for both staff and pupils and they wanted it to truly enquiry based learning…they wanted ‘it’ to inspire the pupils to ‘FIND THINGS OUT’ We talked of doing lots of little things around school – a builder would fall off a ladder, a child off a bike… Then I made a mistake. I showed them a website – or rather a case study from the Everbody Writes web site, I showed them…
- …a crashed alien space ship crashed onto the playing fields of a school in the south of England. Just to test out whether they really were up for the big approach…. They loved it. Before I knew where I was the teachers were off….’if the craft came from Mars, how long was its journey – the kids will need to find out how far away Mars is’ ‘what about Pluto’ ‘What about different atmospheres – they could research the effects of weightlessness’ ‘how do you communicate with people who don’t speak your language?’ When one teacher said ‘can you find us little green men – or at least little blobs of green gunge controlled by robotics…’ I was seriously worried. I pointed out they would need to involve the local public library – NO Not for green men – for information literacy skills – to help with all the skills the pupils would need ‘to find things out’ ‘Ah, they said you mean Skippy’ ‘Skippy?’ ‘Yes, Skippy the librarian – wonderful – the kids thought he was great. Haven’t seen him for a long time – rumour has it he has skipped off to pastures new…’ I retreated to my car. There are probably not many public services you could phone and have a conversation ‘Could I speak to Skippy please’ ‘I’m sorry Skippy doesn’t work here any more – can someone else help? What did you want to talk to him about? ‘Hmmm Aliens – crash landing – near here?’ At this point – a drunk man looks at the thistle seems perfectly sane!
- We found an artist – who loves asking questions Lots of excitement from Police, Fire, Ambulance, University Physics Department And excitement from the public library service Our artist came up with the idea that the space men might bring gifts, plants which some of the pupils will be asked to identify and to research how to grow it, or perhaps a picture of Neil Armstrong landing on the moon in 1969 – can they find a copy of the newspaper pages? The staff setting a list of ‘gifts’ which will prompt the enquiries which they want to be the catalysts to ‘finding things out’
- Was our space ship what Sir Jim Rose had in mind when he recommended Children] must also learn how to study” “effective learning occurs when connections are made between subjects …and the space ship idea is certainly at the extreme. But if schools are to move to more enquiry based, if learning how to learn is important – if Creative Partnerships continue to work to question, to connect, then who gives the staff the confidence and skills to ‘find things out’, who gives the pupils the confidence and skills to ‘find things out’ If there is this move to deliver the curriculum differently, why as a society in England are we even debating the need for statutory school libraries, we does the public librarian say ‘Fiona I’d love to help, I need to be in there. But you are going to have to find me a budget to buy in some staff.’ How as Information Professionals do we ‘get out and knock on doors’ – even if sometimes those doors might seem like alien space craft – how do we grasp some, pretty, but tough thistles?
- I started with a thistle, suggesting the complexity of ‘enquiries’ which I will need to grapple with to fully understand A Drunk Man looks at the Thistle, and moved onto the Rose report – a call to develop the skills of children to be life long learners. How as librarians do we work to embed those skills of learning how to learn, or do we stay slightly ‘alien’ to the process?