‘Flying High in Literacy’ took place in 2009/10 at Windhill Primary School as part of the Creative Partnerships Enquiry programme.
Enquiry Question
How can a cross-curricular approach involving visual art and literacy impact on Year 4 pupils’ achievement in writing?
Programme Theme
The school wanted to engage children in independently improving their literacy skills through the development of a more creative and inspiring cross-curricular approach to teaching and learning. Artist and educationalist Ryan Morley (Bird & Bee) was chosen to work with the school on the project.
A mysterious balloon (attached to an airmail envelope and a red tag) was seen by the pupils from the classroom window. They discovered it was from a young girl from the Svalbard Islands in Norway. Iza Jayer desperately wanted to enter a competition of a lifetime to win a hot air balloon flight to England. To win she needed to improve her writing skills and complete 5 tasks. The red tag told of the hopes and fears she had about her literacy.
Iza asked if whoever finds her balloon could RSVP to her to help with her literacy skills. The children responded wonderfully, writing to Iza about their own lives, interests and their own issues with literacy. They also released their own balloons tied to tags containing their literacy hopes and fears.
Correspondence with Iza continued as she asked them for help with the different competition tasks. The pupils designed and made model hot air balloons and wrote about where they would visit. They went on their own role-play imaginary journey in a hot air balloon, made storyboard maps, wrote about their journeys and wrote an exciting poem about ‘flight’. The children researched carrier pigeons and sent their own ‘pigeon post’ with the help of ‘the pigeon people’ from the local pigeon society. Throughout the project the pupils used learning logs to assess and reflect on their own learning. The project culminated in a celebration assembly and balloon party attended by lots of parents and Iza Jayer herself!
The lead teacher will be delivering staff training sessions to ensure that creative learning continues to flourish within the school.
Useful Sources:
Click here to open ‘Flying High in Literacy’ Publication PDF, Ryan Morley & Windhill Primary School
Focus Group
Year 4
Key Outcomes
• Raised achievement in literacy
• Increased pupil motivation
• Growth in pupil confidence and enthusiasm
• Improved teacher confidence to plan and deliver a creative curriculum
Comments
• The attainment scores speak for themselves; most children went up 2 points in their attainment levels in writing, with only 2 children going up 1 point, and 1 child going up 3 points! – Quite an achievement (practitioner)
• We’ve done so many new things…. I feel like I’m good at literacy (pupil)
• Children took ownership of the project and were able to come up with ideas themselves (teacher)
• There has been a noticeable improvement in the children’s confidence to face a task, now they are willing to have a go without fear of failure (teacher)
• They [pupils] are now much more willing to take part in a piece of sustained writing, as they are now actually enjoying it (teacher)
• It improved their self esteem, especially evident with the lower ability children (teacher)
• The children had to step back and assess their work, which made them more critical but also helped them achieve fantastic results (practitioner)
• It really made me want to write stories (pupil)
• I am now doing this [planning] completely differently as I am trying to use the children’s learning experiences as well as their learning outcomes to change my daily planning (teacher)
