Creative Curriculum Design: Where are we now?

My last post talked about our inspiration from High Tech High


What have we done with this?
In this post I mentioned issues in our Create curriculum with:

• Naivety in expectations of students; ability to be self-determinate
• Authenticity of enquiries and a lack of clear idea over intentions and content
• Shoe horning disciplines (music, media, drama) together
• The constant herding of students from one place to another, with limitations on opportunities for students to get to know their teacher limited as a result

The running joke in the Create department for a while now has been: "Can we do the same thing next year?" and the curriculum has been in a constant state of flux as we have tried to work out what works.

We are now in a position where the curriculum is fairly settled and we have made the move from enquiry to project based learning. There is still an element of discovery learning in every module, but these exist within the confines of a clearly defined product and so we can prepare more easily for any unintended but fortuitous (or perhaps advantageous is a better word)  outcomes that may arise. The document below outlines the curriculum, with a focus on music and progression across the two year course, and how this feeds into Year 9.

I have looked at it from both a landmarks point of view, in terms of the key concepts that we intend to deliver in each year, and also from the perspective of how each unit develops  depth, complexity and range of students' musical responses through a variety of styles, genres and traditions.

Curriculum Overview from Martin

Structurally we have made some changes to the way students move through each year, and I think that we retain an element of student choice, especially in Year 8, whilst allowing us as a team of 6 teachers to see less kids and more often.

Students have 150 minutes of Create each week. In Year 7 they begin in the first term with a more recognisable carousel around the three disciplines, learning key concepts that will be needed for the course i.e. stop motion animation, video/image editing, ensemble & instrumental skills, musical devices, stagecraft, working with scripts etc.

The first project which takes place in term 2 is "CLV Hits". This involves the production of a music video, where students rehearse and record the audio for their track, animate in sync with the audio and choreograph dance routines. These three elements are then edited back together to make the final product. At this stage we are quite tight about the parameters of the product as this is the students' first experience of a project. The tracks are predetermined, so that it does not matter in which order the students visit each discipline. Typically students will spend a block of around 10 hours with teacher working on each element for the video.

In term 3 in Year 7 student have their first opportunity to chose their project from:

• Frozen Moments - Making soundscapes and a slow motion (a la Matrix) "moving painting" that captures the most climactic moment from the students' favourite books.

(The project plan can be downloaded here, the full plan is also shared at the bottom of this page)

• Radio Play - This project is still being designed but students will study seminal works and create their own radio play.
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Students will put together a stripped back production of the play and compose leitmotif to form the musical backing.

Then in Year 8, students can choose their route through the year. Their are two projects that last a whole year (making a film, and making a fitness DVD). This is necessary to give the students time to create work of the quality that meets our expectations. With projects the rule of thumb is do it yourself, then multiply the length of time it took you to do it by ten! There are also two routes whereby students complete a project in each term.

Year 8 create projects from Martin

As a result students see only one teacher each term or in some cases half term in Year 8. We still use the products to give students an insight into works of art outside of their cultural frame of reference, for example Japanese art music plays an important role in the Frozen Moments project. The products that they are making are authentic and clearly defined, though with increasing scope to be creative and present a range of outcomes as they progress through the two years. I am though a firm believer that there is much creativity that is born of constraint so we are not nearly as naive as we were at the outset of the course, where we imagined students might roam free, becoming a film director as the whim took them, then suddenly swap to scoring their film when the wind changed,

The disciplines tend to exist in pairs, so that one does not become the poor cousin in the project, and where synthesis of all three is sensible, these are year long projects.

The one area that still needs most work is in public exhibition. Some projects have involved links to professional composers via Skype or artists coming into school to critique work in progress but this is not yet embedded.

The model is not perfect but it is so much more manageable and effective then our first rambling efforts. In music, Ofsted highlight the importance of regular and sustained music making, and in a year long project, students have an intense burst of music for a term, then less practical music making for the rest of the year. Clearly this is not ideal, and as  head of music, I feel uneasy about this to an extent. That said, from the a whole school perspective and head of Create, if I were to ask myself do our kids get a good deal, I would say "Yes they do."

Fozen moments project plan from Martin