Bolton School's Junior Boys and Junior Girls in Year 6 were proud to share their creative learning with their peers, teachers from across the Bolton School Foundation and visiting educators from Ladybridge High School. Pupils have carried out inquiry projects in Science, English Literature and Language, History and Art. The gallery review is part of their assessment process.
Pupils have related their learning to Infants and Year 3 pupils and enjoyed being quizzed by subject experts, headteachers, deputy heads and visiting teachers who asked pupils and staff about their learning processes, overcoming barriers to this form of work and what they have enjoyed most about the process. This is real world learning at it's best - mastery of learning through teaching own learning to others, stretch and challenge from experts and applying learning to teacher professional development forums! You can read some of our visitors' feedback here (article continues below):
The gallery review is the culmination of an action research project in creative thinking with the University of Winchester, the Australian Council for Educational Research and Rethinking Assessment, led by Professor Bill Lucas. Read an introduction to this form of work
This is the second phase of Foundation staff's creative thinking action research work, involving both Junior School and Senior School colleagues who have collaborated to explore ways of facilitating intellectual curiosity from Key Stage 2 to Key Stage 3. A key part of this project has been exploring forms of assessment and moderation for learning competencies.
Through this research, we aimed to deepen our understanding of how creativity and critical thinking can be nurtured in the classroom, and to enhance our pedagogical practices to better meet the needs of our students as they progress from primary to secondary school in the larger context of 21 century skills for future work.
In the year ahead, we are excited to play a part in Rethinking Assessment's development of a community of practice for the schools that have taken part in the national creative thinking programme. We look forward to being one of the leading members in sharing practice via regular webinar events.
