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From HEAD to TOE – Coming to the end of School Delivery

Posted: 28 September 2023

Summer Term 2023 Delivery

This term has been our final term of in-school delivery where we have been continuing to push boundaries and find new approaches to working physically and creatively in English and Math’s. We have been continuing to work in collaboration with Teachers to design and devise content, testing material whilst allowing space to shift and change in the moment.

Our focus has been on summer term topics including multiplication, division and fractions in Math’s and speech and dialogue, grammar and punctuation in English. As we’ve soared into our final term of delivery, there has been a real shift with Teachers taking on much more of a leading role in delivery, design and delving into the detail in tasks. With the artist-led and co-delivery coming to an end, we have been supporting Teachers to really embed this approach into their day-to-day teaching practice and noticed a real growth in the confidence to do so.

Teachers Day

We held our most recent Teachers Day for our partner Primary School Teachers in July. This day allowed time and space for ‘self-reflection on practice’ for both us as a company and our collaborating Teachers led by Evaluator and Critical Friend Fiona Bannon. We trialed and tested movement tasks for our autumn term Resource Cards and developed a starter framework for our autumn term INSETs to be delivered to all class Teachers across our 5 partner primary schools. These INSETs will be co-led by Teachers and Dance Artists and are a chance to share learning and project outcomes with the whole school with the aim to develop frameworks for this practice to be rolled out to other Teachers and year groups and become a part of ongoing curriculum design.

Filming

We’ve visited our entire cohort of partner Primary Schools in the final half term of the academic year, shooting footage that captures tried and tested, physical and creative curriculum content, interviewing the young people involved to hear how their journey with this practice has evolved and showcasing the environments that have made this project happen to help bring our documentary film together. This has been an extra special end to our delivery in schools and has allowed the pupils to become film stars for the day and share their experiences of this new way of learning and ensure their voice is at the heart of our reflection.

We are now busy compiling, editing and refining our film in partnership with King Sound Studio with the documentary film being available for viewing from October 2023.

Resource Cards

In collaboration with the Teachers in our partner schools, we have been busy devising a selection of English and Math’s Resource Cards, detailing movement tasks specific to autumn term learning. These cards provide task objectives, specific success criteria, a brief breakdown of the task as well as supporting QR code film and will be trialed and tested by a selection of Primary Schools outside of the main partner Primary Schools across Lancashire in the autumn term to provide further feedback on their effectiveness.

What’s Next?

After a brief breath over summer, we will be continuing to collaborate with King Sound Studio to shape our documentary film and select content to support our autumn term Resource Cards films.

As the autumn term commences, Teachers in partner schools will be trialing the autumn term Resource Cards and we will be continuing to support the Teachers in integrating these tasks into their everyday practice alongside gathering reflections on these as a useful teaching tool.

Our lead Head to Toe Dance Artists will meet with Teachers over the early autumn term to prepare for our co-led Head to Toe INSETs in school. These INSETs range from twilights to full days and will share learning and outcomes from the project and generate bespoke plans for how this approach can be taken forward across all key stages.

As we come to the close of this phase of the project, we will be bringing together our final evaluation and research findings to share across multiple platforms. We hope to generate findings that can be shared across all disciplines that have made this project happen; the arts and cultural sectors and education sectors, at regional and national level and right in the heart of the classroom.

Keep checking out our news page and our social media to continue to follow our journey or to get in touch for more information on how this project could support your school, please contact us.