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Discovering Poetic Licence and the ability to fly.A journey towards E –Maturity.

Using Blogs as a way to allow children autonomy over their learner journey and a tool to find andcommunicate their voice with in a supportive learning community.

The Narration of a Learning Journey.The Abstract:

This piece of work you are about to read serves as a narration through one project conducted with a year twoclass. The projects focus looked at how we as teachers can move more towards the role of facilitators,allowing the children to have autonomy over their learner journey. Through out the study narration clips,images and views have been used to both exemplify ideas and thoughts that I might not clearly articulate andto serve as a accompanying visual narration of what actually happened, illustrating the ideas and pedagogieswith real pieces of learning.If as adults we believe that sustained thinking, possibility thinking, questioning and interacting with the worldare key skills that ultimately allow children to become great learners, shouldn’t we allow for some part thechildren the opportunity of have complete autonomy over what they study? How they apply and display their understanding? How they use the skills that we model, directly teach? How they develop, rehearse and revisesuch learning with our facilitation rather than direction? Leading ultimately to a point in their journey wherethey are both confident in developing the skills they have learn and confident in using them to innovate, createand publish their learning to a supportive audience.This discussion will initially revolve around the Project: The Gearies Poetry Researchers. Hopefully offeringexamples of the Learner Journey, observations on how child exploiting the potentials provided by technologycan move from directed learner to independent enquirer.This project was designed to positively challenge school policy makers and curriculum leaders. The projectallowed children to investigate an area of learning that they viewed as valuable.The project aimed to discover if two things are possible:1. Can children in Key stage One effectively research and understand their own learning journeys.2. Will those adults making the most important decisions in schools listen to and act on the implications drawout from child initiated and conducted research.Fortunately for The Gearies Poetry Researchers, Gearies Infants School holds these such creative risks inhigh esteem, with the child central to its ethos.

In a nutshell, can we as adults scaffold a research process that allows children tounveil possible answers to the questions we and to solve on there behalf?

At this point I feel it would be helpful to set the project into the context of our school. So here is a quick portraitof Gearies Infants

The Context.About us:

Gearies is a larger than average sized school. The overwhelming majority of the pupils are of minority ethnicbackground and three quarters of learners are new to English or bilingual. There is a steady increase of eastern European families and refugees. The take up of free school meals is lower than the national average,as is the number of pupils who have identified special needs. The school has achieved the Artsmark gold,Healthy Schools award (they gained a special teaching award for the quality of this), Investors in People andthe Eco-School green flag award.Gearies Infant school serves a multi-cultural community. This is reflected in the school's curriculum,resources and displays. It is important that every child is treated with equality and respect. Learning is funand exciting. Everyone is encouraged to share this outlook. It is important that the school is a happy placefor everyone to work in. Success in learning is taken just as seriously. All of the children are helped andencouraged to achieve their full potential in every aspect of the school curriculum. Through early successand praise, it is hoped that children will become enthusiastic life long learners. The whole of the school'scommunity strives to achieve our aims and work together to raise standards.

The beginning of the journey.

My father in law is an architect, and he shared with me a confession that the most stressful, most terrifyingpart of his work is the beginning, looking at a blank sheet of bright paper and thinking, now I need to create,become inventive. This recollection is one that I discovered at the beginning of this journey. Here is my idea,but how does it evolve into a reality. So, for you the reader I have tried to identify the key factors that helpedme establish the beginning of the journey, what needed to be done so that the journey could begin. I havefurther supported the quite literal points list with a personal reflection. I hope this helps.

Action undertaken to initiate the project.

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Researching into children’s research-looking at the work of Mary Kellet and the Children’s ResearchCentre/Institute.

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Devising a scaffold or framework to adapt ideas of children conducting their own research into a KS1reality.

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Having a control group to explore if the framework/scaffold will work and be sustainable: GeariesPoetry Researchers.

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Sharing this with year group team and school. Inset, teachers as experts.

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Sharing this with other schools.

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Using blogs as a way of sharing the work further, advisory teams, other AST colleagues, parents.

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Building into my practice a sustainable approach to this work.

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Allowing time for reflection.

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Reviewing successes, failures.

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Approaching other schools to share practice.

A reflective commentary on this action

My first steps were to familiarise myself with the concept of research, its conduction and ethics. Using thework of Mary Kellet as a blue print to my plans, I took time to adapt this mainly KS2 initiative into a flexibleKS1 scaffold. Creating my own adapted research pathway/guiding structure that was intended to ensure thatonce I had completed the project other practitioners would be ale to pick up the model and conduct similar projects themselves, sustaining the project and its anticipated benefits. This work I feel was very successfuland I now believe that I have constructed a draft model that with further reflection and revision would serve asa resource tool that other practitioners could use as a script to support their own initiation of such a project.The next stage in this project was the establishment of the Gearies Poetry Researchers, researching into theeffects of increased exposure to poetry and its impact on children’s writing attainment.This project developed at a very quick pace and this almost immediate enthusiastic drive had two outcomes.1. The projects paced developed quicker than I could find time to really support each step of the journey,placing stress on time in terms of ensuring as a group our times for reflection and discussion were protectedand upheld. 2. However, in the first term of this project, the research received over 179 onlookers andcommentators, impacted dramatically on my own practice and that of the year group; with the introduction of aterm long focus on poetry, and ensured that the project definitely became a reality, sustained and embeddedinto practice.Although the initial enthusiasms towards the project could be considered at times to be overwhelming, itserved to illustrate to our school leadership team the importance of this project and its potential. Furthermoreit also confirmed my thoughts that this wasn’t something relating to G.T.D.S.B.S syndrome, going to dosomething a bit stupid, Freud, Dreams and the Unconscious, 1896. But a valued innovation. So, in managingthis demand, I reflected back on my provision and mapping of time dedicated to subject areas. With a verysupportive team around me as a year group we decided to implement this project within class time and not asa club, to do this we looked over the skills relating o the national curriculum and primary framework guidanceand mapped out where they would fit into this project. Focuses on ICT, Literacy, PSHE were soon combinedwithin the project allowing for a more flexible approach to time management and curriculum delivery. AT thispoint in the project it would be fair to say that the children were interacting with us as teachers directlyteaching skills. Modelling with the children how to generate purposeful questions, how to share and recorddiscussions and ideas. But this direction of learning was very short lived, for as soon as the children haddeveloped both the skills and confidence to record their thoughts as blog posts, the learning journey left thisdirected stage and moved towards a more guided context.Before the project continued much further, we wanted to see if the children really understood the journey theywould be undertaking. At this point I posted up a question on our shred blog: Why is this important to you?What do you think we will find out? Will poetry really help our writing? Again, I didn’t want to have redefinedmy provision, opened up the timetable, reorganised my provision mapping of subjects over the week, if thechildren did not see this as valuable, merely something GTDSBS syndrome.These were the some of the responses I read over the following evenings: