How do you plan an Arts Award delivery approach for your school?
Do you write Arts Award into a scheme of work and plan each session in advance, or do you wing it and make it up as you go? Share your stories and the lessons learnt.
Delivering your project
Effective planning
Effective planning
Re: Effective planning
Due to the nature of the arts award part of what students learn is planning and time management, the trick is to balance structure and freedom.
Obviously in every educational setting the demands of the students will be different - in the first year I assumed they would benefit from a lot of freedom, but this was such a new way of learning for some of them that this year I have taken to structuring some of the sections, while allowing them to complete the tasks is a slightly open ended fashion.
This means I may give a class a week to complete a plan - and issue a guide to how a plan might be structured. The students who are finished before the deadline can start to implement their plan, those who have not get some individual time from me to help them structure their work. I find giving deadlines for specific sections gives students more motivation to complete their work in order and in a timely fashion.
Re: Effective planning
Yes, completely agree that they need the freedom. During my first year of being an Arts Award Advisor, I completely stuck to my teacher roots and broke it down into medium term plans. However, 3 years on, it's all in my head. We work through the Units and sections at the pace of the pupils. It also depends a lot on the numbers of the groups and how long they want to take on it too. Silver is taking a term longer this year, as the group is a large one and they're really pushing their Unit 2 to the next level this year. If I'd planned Silver out for them week by week, I would be totally holding them back!
Re: Effective planning
i am planning on delivering the bronze to around 30 y9 and 10 students ( gcse starts in y9 here so am looking at music/drama students ), possibly in the 5 week block after easter 2012 .
it will be my fifth year of entries so am familar with the all the "planning" that can hold you back . give the kids some freedom ...they get enough of exams in other subjects at our school !! . it all about the journey and how much the school can afford !! lol.
alex ward notre dame high school .sheffield.
Re: Effective planning
John, this sounds like a really personalised approach that supports the students to become independent learners.
Does anyone have any tips on timeframes they work within to keep students' momentum up?
Re: Effective planning
We have done Arts Award in a week, which I think if you plan and structure it right can work really well. We also did some preperation before the week started and allowed some time to finish things off after it had finished.
Re: Effective planning
The Arts Award really does encourage independant learning, unfortunately there are always some students who do not have the self motivation and initative, this is the main frustration - I want them to be independant, they need to be spoon fed! But then this just highlights the importance of the adviser role, you need to be flexible and personalise the help you offer for each student so they can be successful in their own way.
Re: Effective planning
Just thought I'd add: Our school, like many others, has a learning platform with access to materials for each subject - depending on the teacher. I try to provide guidelines to what I'd expect with a description of each section, just to expand on what their guide books offer.
http://www.school-portal.co.uk/GroupHomepage.asp?GroupID=796865
Also when the students log on it unlocks a log of what we were scheduled to do each week with photos of what they were up to in the lessons. If the students themselves do photography I also like to include their work so that it goes public.