I moved to a lovely new school in September, in a mixed Y1/2 class. It's been a big change for me, having been at my previous school for ten years and only teaching year 2 once in that time. I've been learning a lot.
One thing I've found is that my creativity has dwindled quite a lot - I think I've been focussing on trying to learn how to teach mixed 1/2 and making sure I have evidence in books that I'm teaching stuff. In my previous mixed R/1 class, a whole class scrap book was sufficient evidence of non-core learning. This is no longer the case. Also, no one else in the school uses Mantle (though there is a possibility of doing so in the future) and so I have no one to bounce ideas off. Also, I think I should possibly be using the school science scheme of work more than I am.
However, the other day I did a session that reminded me why I need to be creative on a more regular basis, and the difference it makes when I am.
The class had undertaken a Great Fire of London mantle, becoming volunteer Fire Marshals and learning all sorts of things (planning is here, on the Mantle of the Expert website. You can sign up for £1).
The mantle had sort of come to an end. I like to end each mantle with something quite significant so that children feel it has ended. At the same time, I realised I really had not finished the science unit I had been teaching on materials.
This is what we did:
The children co-created a 'new' Pudding Lane. I rolled out a long stretch of paper on the tables and invited children to contribute. Together we remembered elements of The Rebuilding Act of 1667 and children made sure they implemented its requirements when creating Pudding Lane. Apart from one incident of a rooftop security camera, their Pudding Lane was impressive and fairly historically accurate.
As with just about every creation I invite children to partake in, they became very involved and it was hard to move them on. I need to get better at moving them on without using my teacher boss voice.
We talked about how the children felt about their new Pudding Lane, and everything they had learnt about the rebuilding of London.
I wondered aloud whether it might be good to remember The Great Fire somehow, and we talked about different ways to remember events. One child had been to see the Great Fire of London monument in London, so we went with that (which I had been intending to do anyway, at just such an opportune moment).
I said something like "If we were to create a monument to remember the fire, what might it look like?"
I showed children a range of materials I had gathered - blu tac, doweling, lolly sticks, pipe cleaners, wool and some other things.
We talked about how children could shape the materials by bending, twisting, stretching or squashing them. We had previously done a few lessons on materials, and the children's prior learning came into this conversation.
The children worked in pairs to create monuments with me supporting them to use scientific vocabulary as we went.
The children were so involved in this session. They had freedom to create their monuments in whichever way they liked and I always enjoy stepping back and watching children work with a parter and solve problems together. The children revisited previous learning and did a bit of new learning, so that's good too.
The result (with apologies for the poor quality of filming):
This was not a ground-breaking session, but I liked it and it brought our mantle to a satisfying close. It also reminded me of the importance of creativity and that preplanned schemes of work are not really necessary the majority of the time.
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