1. Close your eyes

2. Find your partner however you can only whisper

1. You want the government to invest in your design for all first home buyers 

2. Create a one page persuasive presentation and justify the features of your house.

3. Sketch an architecturally accurate model of your design and annotate, explaining (annotating) each aspect

• What will it do? How? Why? 

• Why have you made these decisions?

• How it will reach the targets? 

• How will it help with cost of living and the impact of large scale farming and food production?

• Why are you growing these at home rather than relying on farms? 

• How does this impact biomes? (eg: Bird netting to prevent birds eating crops but not killing the birds? 

Write on the board

1. What did you find the most difficult today?

2. What is something that you discovered?

Successes

• Questions - consideration about impact on biomes, gutters to catch water, energy input and output for solar panels
• Transferring of information - they are talking to each other across groups about their projects and choices
• Asking questions

Challenges

• They will definitely need an extra week to finish

• Limited knowledge of how their designs could benefit and/or protect biomes

• Still surface level knowledge but they are learning more from each other

‘The amount of classes that I go into where students have their phones out yet in here, not one of them has. That says how engaged they are’ … Relief Teacher

CREATIVE HABITS - using a timer for each 

1. Help each other to get into groups of x (equally divide based on number of students) - collaborative

2. In your group, use your bodies collaboratively to create a desert animal that is not a lizard - inquisitive, imaginative

3. Use your bodies to make another Australian animal but it can’t be the same as any other group - discipline, persistence, imaginative, inquisitive, collaborative

1. Today you will get time to finish your desert creature. (Demonstrate each process again) 

2. It needs to have 

• a wire skeleton

• Rounded alfoil body parts

• Material skin

1. What creative habit does your creature need to survive in the wild?

2. Using string and fabric or coloured card, create a cape (or similar) for your creature to wear that tells us what its creative habit is.   

FOR EARLY FINISHERS

1. How many different animals can you cut out and glue to coloured card?

2. How could you group these animals?

If you could choose an animal that was collaborative, which one would it be and why?

If you could choose an animal that was inquisitive, which one would it be and why?

If you could choose an animal that was imaginative, which one would it be and why?

If you could choose an animal that was persistent, which one would it be and why?

If you could choose an animal that was disciplined, which one would it be and why?

Successes

• Providing another session for students to continue their desert creatures gave students who hadn’t been here, time to create their own creature and also, those who had, the opportunity to reflect and improve on their previous effort. 

• Isaac, who is new to this class and doesn’t always participate, did take part today. He created his own desert dog using wire and also answered a number of different questions presented to the class

• Sharing ideas and techniques. Ava set up a ‘bow factory’ where she made assorted bows that students could then come to her shop to purchase. Some of the boys included leads for their lizards so they could take them for a walk while others could be heard explaining their ideas and giving positive feedback and comments on each other's creature.

Challenges

• Talking in groups and generally not being aware of what is going on around them, particularly when an adult is speaking or attempting to get their attention initially proved challenging. Rather than continue with all of the typical techniques, I opted to count down from 5, raise a hand and wait. I explained that it was their time to participate and it was up to them to decide how much creative time they wanted to have and how much talking and waiting time they wanted. It took a few times but definitely improved and when it came to the main activity and reflection, they were much more attentive and respectful to others and what they were saying.

‘I think the students have worked better on the program this term with their experiences last term. I also think that when my new student is in, it is a good way for him to be included in the classroom in a positive way. I do however think that my students love to know when you're coming in and the old roster of Wednesday mornings was great as I could see the impact your sessions had on things like attendance’… Teacher 

Based on this feedback, we have set up a calendar in the classroom so students know which days have Creative School sessions as there has been a lot of movement this term and will continue to be so. Where possible, we will keep the sessions on the same day but when it isn’t possible, they will be able to see it on the calendar. The sessions have had a positive impact on attendance and overall class participation and we want to maintain this. Each week they are curious about what we are going to be doing and are now making their own suggestions which Katy is sharing and we are taking on board and trying to implement. One of these was asking what they were going to do with their earth paint and whether it could have water added so they could continue to paint with it. The other was an idea for including maps based on Michael creating them in the sand outside of the classroom. 

Due to a surprise assembly we skipped the warm up today.

Today was the culmination of the food drive we ran last term. We had Jennifer Keen, State Manager of Oz Harvest come to collect the food and we told her about the exercises we did last term on food insecurity. Jennnifer threw some more interesting statistics our way and we did a quiz. Jennifer gave out some brightly coloured and patterned food tape to help reduce waste to the winners. Then the kids helped her carry the food down to the yellow van with black graphics all over it. 

This week we did the reflection passport from the resource document. The kids were asked to think about the creative habits and how they had individually used them to participate in the activities in the program. They thought about what passport “stamps” they would like to collect next.

We had a few unforeseen holdups with this session, originally planned at the end of term 2 and then again at the beginning of term 3. In retrospect it would be good to plan this kind of thing well in advance.

This was a really nice culmination of the work we did last term. It really cemented the importance of statistics for the students in a real world context. The work they did in designing the flyers for the food drive came to fruition with about 20 bags and boxes collected and donated! 

Next sessions are mostly planned but Jasmine sourced some pumpkin hand puppets that we can integrate into coming weeks.

Jasmine is sending out a worksheet for next week.

School facebook 

Compass (intranet) to raise awareness with families 

Andrea and Jasmine to share photos with each other via google drive 

Creating Imaginary Underwater Creatures. 

Each student was spread out around the room with their journal and three coloured textas. 

When the music began everyone needed to move around the room like their bookweek character, when I stopped they all had 10 seconds to draw a squiggle on the blank pages. 

Music/character dance break. 

Then when music stopped they had 10 seconds to go to someone else's journal and turn the squiggle into a body shape. 

Then dance. And then with a dance between; 

• Add eyes.

• Add limbs or fins.

• Add texture

• Add a special feature

• Then they got to go back to their journals and give the creature a name. 

Then for the last dance break they had to move like the creature that was just created. 

Finishing off our woven tennis creatures.

I used the warm up to help them open their imaginary lens to the potential of their tennis creatures. 

They spent most of today's lesson finishing them off, and adding a little diagram to their journals with further description of its special features and why they chose the fabrics they did. 

On the side Jennie, two of the more experienced student sewers and myself worked out a plan for our big doorstop creation lesson next week. 

Students were reflecting in their journals after they finished their tennis racket creature, thinking about fabrics chosen and their link to wanting those colours. 

Successes:

• The overalls were worn today for bookweek and Jennie looked amazing. And lots of the kids were so excited to show their creation to their parents. 

• The weaving, they all really gave it a go, and got creative with their additions. 

Excited to use sewing machines next week! 

Sewing the Doorstops; 

• Needing to have stations planned out. 

Sand, pillow fluff, precut jeans, precut face and hair additions, sewing machines. 

Excited to share it on market day. 

We dug out the ‘What am I’ game from a few sessions ago, but rather than use the official rules (one person holds a card to their head and asks questions about their card from thebother players, we came up with new rules. One person holds up the card, facing away from them, and the other people have to use non-verbal body language and acting (charades) to help the single player guess the card. There were opportunities for collaboration and persistence here, with 2-4 students doing the charades at once, but also trying to come up with unique ways to hint the graphic on the card.

With the end of the program looming, we let the students focus on designing their games. I chatted with them a bit before letting them take over, discussing board game prototyping processes and the checklist to help us ensure we have everything we need for our first playtest.

They claimed various cardboard items and paper we brought in, and got to work designing boards, cards, and figures.

We actually ran out of time for any kind of reflection activity, so we'll save it for next week when we invite the parents in for playtesting. 

Still some challenges for particular students/groups when collaborating and bringing their ideas together, but most of the class is underway with the production of their prototype. The true test will be next week, when the students must playtest the games with their parents.

The students are getting really into the construction of their board game prototypes. Working with the cardboard and designing/crafting the cards is keeping them engaged, but it will be interesting to see how it changes during and after a round of playtesting next week.

Kirsti will invite parents and school staff to our session next week, to help us with playtesting, and to see the work the students have been doing in class. Set to be an exciting lesson!

I may bring in extra cardboard and spare parts for students to use in their prototypes.

The playtesting next week will showcase the students’ progress on their board games to any parents or school staff who attend. We will also be doing our followup playtest and showcase of games and the creative election project at a Creative Schools Showcase at the school in a later week.

🌊 Hand Shadow Ocean Creatures (10 mins)

Materials: Light source + cardboard/picture frame.

Instructions:

1. In groups of 2–3, hold the frame up to the light to make shadows on the wall.
   
   

2. Use your hands to create ocean animals (fish, crab, octopus, dolphin, waves).
   
   

3. Take turns showing your creature in the frame while others guess what it is.

They found this quite hard, but they stuck with it; it took way longer than I had intended. But it did mean everyone had something to practice with. Nathan found a box of torches, which really helped to move things along.

Working on their stories and shadow box theatre.

Legends of the Deep: Dragon Myths of the Indian Ocean. 

I will bring in another box so they have 2 in the room.

Print more storyboards… show some examples, get them to think about narrating, making additional sounds for each dragon to tell them apart.. Reading slowly but accurately, using different coloured lighting gels. One group used their iPads for background music. 

Add colour to the great wave poster - that reflects the creative habits used in today's session.

We set this up but ran out of time!

Next week, they will showcase their 1-minute shadow theatre legends of the deep. We will record it. Bring popcorn..  Give them 20 mins to get their stuff together and practice.

 They have to be very persistent, getting to work with people the don't normally work with. It will be difficult if people have been away.  So in their 20mins they will have to adapt and change to suit everyone in the group. 

do you want to invite leadership? 

Boxes, lights popcorn… 

Do you want to invite leadership?  How would you like to showcase the work?

1. You have 60 seconds to find a partner you have not worked with before

2. You each have a post it note/piece of paper

3. Give a 30 second pitch each about your urban design and why it should be adopted as a template for an urban garden design

Extension from session 12

1. Back in the classroom, based on what you were told by your new partner write one piece of feedback about what could be included to improve the presentation - be specific 

2. Find your mock up designs and the beginnings of your presentation poster

3. Match your post it note feedback to the correct urban garden design presentation

4. Reflect on the feedback. 

5. Add one suggestion each for how it can be more persuasive

6. Continue working on your presentation.

   1. What will it do? How? Why? 

   2. Why have you made these decisions?

   3. How it will reach the targets? 

   4. How will it help with cost of living and the impact of large scale farming and food production?

   5. Why are you growing these at home rather than relying on farms? 

   6. How does this impact biomes? (eg: Bird netting to prevent birds eating crops but not killing the birds? 

1. Arrange the houses into a village considering the location of double story properties

2. Include a road

3. How might the layout impact those on either side with regards to light.

4. Do you need to rearrange anything?

Successes

• ‘Can I take mine home? I want to finish the artwork with my art pens’ …student

• The quality of their presentations

• How much they achieved today and how well they worked to bring their presentations to completion

• The partnerships and collaboration of unlikely pairings has absolutely worked.

• Ability to implement the feedback provided from the warm up activity

• Sharing of information between groups

Challenges

• Didn’t get to do the house arrangement but Fiona will do this on Friday

• The group of boys who are working as three and have manipulated the group to enable themselves to work together but can’t decide what each person could be doing

Groups who would never speak to each other have put together an amazing presentation. They have completely different values and belief systems however have utilised the creative habits effectively. This is in such contrast to where we were at the beginning of the program.

Give students Friday to finish any last minute components of their posters and building, arrange them into a community with consideration for how their designs may impact houses around them. Ensure the village layout is the best it can be so that it can be on display for Parent/Teacher interviews.

DESIGNING YOUR OWN GROUP

1. Standing in your own space, using only your body - show me a collaborative bilby, a disciplined spiny devil lizard, an imaginative tiger snake, a persistent emu, an inquisitive wallaby

2. Your challenge is to create your own group - There will be a prize for the winning group today. 

3. Each group must have

   1. one person who is good at details (cutting around pictures)

   2. one person is good at research 

   3. one person who is good at reading maps

4. In your group decide on a name (write this on the board - columns)

5. In your group discuss what you might need to do to help each other win the prize - 1 minute

We will look at various Australian children’s picture books to link into the 80th Anniversary celebrations of the CBCA Book Week and to encourage positivity around reading.

1. There are different parts of your challenge with points awarded at the end of each challenge. The group with the most points at the end wins. The challenge will determine how well your group can use all five of the creative habits.

2. Cut out as many animals and their names as you can and glue them onto individual pieces of coloured card - each group has a different colour - 5-10 minutes

3. Tally the number for each group and add to the board 

4. Looking inside the picture books, how many states can you find where this animal lives in the wild? Sort them into piles - 5-10 minutes

5. Tally one point for each correct location

6. There is something sneaky happening…there are 7 non native animals - 6 are on the first page and 1 is on the second. Can you spot them - 5 minutes

7. One point for each correct answer

8. If you listened carefully and heard any clues for your remaining animals, you have 5 minutes to place them in the places where they can be found

9. Tally one point 

Crunch and Sip - Read ‘A is for Australian Animals’ by Frane Lessac and listen for clues

Optional extra for early finishers

• Group animals - how many of each do we have?

• Add animals to the map by finding their location and pinning them in the correct state

• How many extra animals do we need to complete our sets?

1. Reflecting back on your choices of creative animals, pick the animal that you think represents the creative habit the whole class used most today.

2. How would you choose to colour your animal to represent this habit? You can include a logo, a cape, accessories (cane, glasses, suitcase etc)

Successes

• Doing the warm up outside was so much better than being in the classroom

• Participation continued to improve throughout the session, as did their group collaboration

• Extending their time after tallying their first set of points to complete tasks and build on their scores. 

• Their interest in the animal sculptures brought in and guessing what was inside each of them

• Ongoing attention to the tasks, particularly collaboration, discipline and persistence.

• The number of cards that each group completed today, their cutting out and identifying non native animals

Challenges

• Some of the groupings were challenging for them to begin with however as the session progressed along with the competition, each group developed tasks and implemented creative habits in working together effectively

• Katy is really challenged for time at the moment so trying to get everything pinned up onto the board so that the students can see it and relate to the different areas throughout the country is taking longer than we anticipated

• We didn’t get through the entire main activity however we will continue the rest in our next session. We like that we are able to shuffle things along depending on student engagement.

Bringing them back to attention is happening much quicker as is their ability to work with different people. We shuffled the groups today and although they were able to choose their own group based on the criteria, we did ask them to mix them up so that they weren’t all boy or girl groups. Giving them time to organise this themselves took longer but proved effective in the long run with every group working together. They are interested in the different animals which we hope will eventually also help them to understand Australian states, their features and landmarks. 

Time: 10-15  minutes
Materials: Ball of wool/yarn, scissors

Steps:

1. Circle Gathering (1 min)
   
   

   • Students sit in a circle with the teacher holding a ball of wool.
     
     

   • Teacher explains: “We are going to make a web of learning to show how our discoveries about the Swan/Canning River connect us.”
     
     

2. Sharing Discoveries (5–6 min)
   
   

   • The teacher starts by holding the end of the wool around their wrist and sharing something important they’ve discovered about the river (e.g., “I learned that black swans are the Noongar totem and very special to this place”).
     
     

   • After sharing, they throw the ball of wool across the circle to another student.
     
     

   • That student loops the wool around their wrist, shares their discovery, and throws it on to another student.
     
     

   • Continue until everyone has shared and the circle has formed a woven web of connections.
     
     

3. Reflection on the Web (1–2 min)
   
   

   • Pause to look at the web created.
     
     

   • Ask: “What does this web show us about our learning and how we are connected?”
     
     

   • Emphasise that their knowledge, like the river, is interconnected.
     
     

4. Cutting & Bracelet Making (2 min)
   
   

   • Carefully cut the wool between students.
     
     

   • Each student ties their piece into a simple bracelet or knot around their wrist.
     
     

   • Teacher says: “This bracelet is a reminder of your connection to the river and to each other.”

Researching for a brochure on threatened or endangered animals from last week continued.

Wrap wool and tie knots around their totem animal. These are looking fabulous! 

The warm up took longer than expected, but it was lovely to hear all the things they have learnt about the swan/canning River and share their learning with the group. 

They are curious about eating the animals in the river now.. Jellyfish  is a special dish! 

Finish off the report leaflet - call to action signs and collage an animal to go on our river..

I will bring brown tape, pop sticks and stones

Showcase is booked for the 9th Sept, Claire is away so Niki take lots of photos for me!