Student leadership and agency are key passions of mine. It is amazing to see students driving their learning, willing to take risks and showing the ability to self-reflect to reach their true potential. These attributes come from the ethos and values that we as teachers instil into our students and classrooms with the belief that every child can succeed. The best challenge for us, as professionals, is to unlock the barriers to learning and embrace even the smallest of successes to inspire students to succeed. I have been teaching for 16 years and my specialism is Art. I have taught in UK schools and now within an international setting at GEMs Wellington International School.
As we look at adaptive teaching within an inclusive classroom, could we use the HPL competencies as varied focuses for differentiation? Not differentiation by activity but by the competencies / skills to be focused on.
How have you used HPL to support an adaptive, inclusive classroom?
Resilience and self control -AS & A level Art class at Cambridge International School, Dubai
Great opportunity to attend an online interactive workshop with Melanie Stewart. Using evidence-based research we reflected critically on the difference between resilience and self-control; whether the level of resilience is a cause or an effect as you go higher in education and importance of the level of a mother’s education in the upbringing of a child. The discussion and workshop made me think about how Art lessons at especially AS & A level contribute to building this quality in students as life-long learners. A lot of emphasis is given to this through continuous encouragement and feedback, going back and forth as they go forward to, they create beautiful portfolios over the course of the year they continue to work, day in and day out producing one work after the other and sometimes losing sight and clarity of one over the other. While students understand over a period of time that mistakes will happen. Staying focused, risk taking, and reflection are an essential part of this making process.
How can we use HPL to build our behaviour policy and practises?
During my time leading my school through World Class School Accreditation, the first full school action we developed was to change our behaviour policy. The school was an inner-city UK state primary school. The catchment was very diverse, and many pupils came to school with challenging backgrounds. Traditional behaviour strategies were not working for a small percentage of pupils but these pupils’ behaviour impacted on whole year groups or phases. We looked at changing our behaviour policy with the HPL VAAs at its heart. Instead of being dictatorial with looked at behaviour as being aspirational. For pupils to develop the behaviours that they needed to be high performers and confident learners. Coupled with this was the essential understanding of our pupils both at a school level and individual level for classes.
Have you used HPL to shape behaviour in your school? How did you do it? What worked well that you can share?”
In today’s world of social media and technical communications with have unprecedented opportunities like never before, to contact, communicate with and inform our various stakeholders. Lockdowns have developed in us a new skill set of electronic teaching and communications. Everywhere we see Podcasts from all sectors. The question this week is how is our HPL community using this technology in Art? Are you making Podcasts for parents to share Art resources or 'how to' clips? Are you posting video content online to support home learning? How is it best used? Share with us your experiences in our subject communities and possibly gets some great ideas shared by others.
Currently, we are exploring culture and self-identity in Year 9, I have been overwhelmed by our students' critical thinking skills, they have delved deep into exploring who they are and linking their work to not only themselves but matters happening in the world that they feel passionate about. As a final element, they have explored where they would like to be in the future and how they see life to be. These incredible insights and very thought-provoking conversations have inspired me as their teacher!
Whilst the creation of art is important and the skills learned along the way to enhance the quality of outcome is also vital, it is also wonderful to see such deeper level thinking into the topic as this shows students working like artists and providing a much deeper and meaningful response.
Please share your thoughts and ideas!
In Art, we have recognised that breaking down each ACP skill and linking it to each taught art skill is really beneficial as students are not only enhancing their artistic skills but also understanding how they are developing their cognitive skills when learning and exploring.
We have built an assessment framework that combines art assessment with ACP development so that we can recognise student development and progress over time, for example, a student who might not be the most skilled drawer could still be recognised as making significant progress within their Creating, Analysing and Linking skills because they are able to: 'create new ideas, identify solutions drawing on prior knowledge, adopt new ideas to enhance their work..'
The world of art provides opportunities for students to demonstrate all ACP skills and we feel building this into our assessment and curriculum is hugely important.
How do you build in ACP development and assessment within Art in your school?
During HPL Pathway Programmes we look to embed the
HPL VAA and ACP vocabulary into our classrooms giving our students, teachers, and parents a shared language to talk to and about learning. After
accreditation, we look to address progression and assessment for the VAAs and
ACPs. How do we do this in our schools and most importantly in Art? How do you assess student progress in Art relating to ACPs and VAAs? Do you follow a whole school approach or have you adopted different ways within art to assess student skills?
I've also seen the artist M.C Esher be used for reflection in Mathematics - so interesting and a clever way to excite and enhance students' meta-thinking in that subject!
How often do you add art to other subjects? Can you give any examples?
Have you used AI to enhance outcomes? Have you accepted AI as a final outcome? Do you think AI stops students imaginative thinking?
Questioning and reflecting are both integral parts of the ACP and VAA skills and throughout this article, there will be many questions which provokes thought and discussion about how we approach art whether this be within primary, secondary or higher education classrooms.
Art is one of those subjects where students are immersed in activity, drawing, painting, modelling just to name a few. Students are buzzing with excitement and eager. They use various different mediums available, they are creating art work by process but are they really utilizing their creating HPL skill sets or is a common misconception that the CREATING ACP is purely for art outcomes?
Are students revolutionary thinking? Independently creating multiple solutions? Using evidence to decide on different solutions to a problem? OR are they able to build alternative solutions? Use their critical thinking skills to explore a variety of options to develop their work? Utilizing their imaginative skills to develop their own personal outcomes? If you answered yes, to any of the later questions then you have identified where students also hit other ACP skills within the HPL framework.
The ACP HPL progression framework is based around cognitive performance skills and supports us to identify approaches and progress made by students when fully utilized. All too often we hear that when Art is being ‘created’ the ACP skill of CREATING is used but what about the ACP skills? Is creating the only ACP in full use when students are developing or making a piece of art work?
‘Art is only the CREATING ACP, because students are ‘creating’ their art work’. How often have you heard this? How often do you only refer to the Creating ACP within lessons? Looking at the ACP progression map, it made me reflect on the other ACPs that also link to Art and when students are exploring final outcomes, experimental or observational work. What do we see when students are developing their work? Do see imaginative ideas where students are experimenting with different media and 3D elements? Are students questioning their work and reflecting on the progress of it?
The HPL progression framework links nicely to this as part of the LINKING ACP where it references students ‘linking together prior knowledge’ which is an example of what students would have to do in order for them to confidently create their work in the first place. Another section of the framework that can be easily referenced is the REALISING ACP. This ACP focusses on speed, accuracy and automaticity skills, surely students if confidently developing their work would be showcasing skills with ‘increasing accuracy’ and ‘effortlessly use ideas and draw upon a range of skills’ to competently showcase their knowledge and understanding of the skills being shown? These are just two examples of where Art can fall across other elements of the HPL framework but what other skills are we enabling within classrooms that support students to enhance their advanced cognitive performance skills?
It very much depends on the activity as to which skills are being explored but from looking at the framework it has provoked the question about how much does ‘art’ and the skills that students will be exploring are relevant across the ACP framework. The next time you come to plan for an art lesson or an activity in a subject that links to art, have a look again at the skills within the framework, how are students being challenged and developed to enhance a range of skills rather than just one, ‘creating’. Alternatively, have a think how the CREATING ACP can also be used in a much wider context than based at the creation of outcomes, how else do you assess fluent thinking in lesson time? Identify collaborative activities that showcase student originality or revolutionary thinking?
One thing that stands out as a reflection from this article is the wide approach the CREATING ACP can have in all subjects and activities. Have a think, how does it relate to your subject / activity? How are we building students with abilities to think flexibly, develop innovative solutions and ideas or demonstrate originality in what they do? Creating isn’t just creating an art final piece or piece of art work within a lesson, the creating skill is so much more!