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Last night children from year 5 at St John’s Angell Town joined forces with singers from Black Thrive,Woodlawns Community Centre, the Pegasus Community choir and professional opera singers from Pegasus Opera to form the Pegasus Windrush Choir and celebrate 70 years since Windrush. The Brixton Learning Collaborative were delighted to be invited to be part of this event, highlighting the outstanding contribution of the Caribbean community to the UK. This was part of a programme of music performed at the highest level to a packed Lambeth Town Hall. The audience were also treated to a special performance by Nadine Benjamin, currently performing in Porgy and Bess at English National Opera. The children from St John’s sang with enthusiasm and style following 5 weeks of expert training from professional coach and choir director Allyson Devenish. A special thanks goes to Mr Obika, their class teacher, who looked after the children for this and Saturday’s performance at Tate Library, giving his time over half term. Congratulations St John’s for all their hard work and great singing.

We were delighted to attend the first of a number of ‘Cohort Days’ organised by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation as part of their Teacher Development Fund support. This was an opportunity to meet the staff leading on other PHF funded projects from throughout the country and to hear more about the formative evaluation process that will be taking place over the 2 years of the programme. We hope to make links with several projects taking part and share learning, including with Tees Valley Creative Learning Partnership who are focussing on visual arts and our more local colleagues Southwark Teaching Schools’ Alliance, working with Shakespeare’s Globe on storytelling.

In the last week before half term, we held another cross cluster meeting, this time for teachers in year 5 and 6. These meetings are proving valuable opportunities for teachers to look at books and discuss children’s progress in the first few weeks of the year and hopefully make our cross cluster moderation work at the end of Spring term even more valuable.

Here’s our round up of just some of the things families can do together over half term.

76 Low Cost No Cost half term October.docx

Last week the teachers and children at St Saviour’s had their first visit from Liz Atkin, visual artist, as part of our Paul Hamlyn Foundation funded project Confident Creators. During the visit Liz and the teachers had time to plan the lesson together, then the teacher led the activity with Liz giving support and finally, but crucially the teachers and Liz reflected on how the lesson had gone. These art lessons are all about giving children time and space to experiment with art, to learn new techniques, to work together and to take risks with their drawings. In the morning year 2 experimented with paper cutting – building pictures using just coloured paper and scissors (no pencils!). The children gradually built up a range of materials to use in their final pieces and the pictures they produced were all different, but with children able to talk about their work and sometimes build narratives from them. In the afternoon year 3 explored cave paintings through producing their own collaborative pieces. They experimented with mark making using charcoal and chalk, with texture through crumpling their paper canvases and experimenting with drawing outside on the tarmac playground, and with paint outlining animals and shapes having looked at some cave painting examples. In their groups the children started to build a narrative about their paintings. Teachers commented on how helpful it was to concentrate on process rather than worrying about a finished product that needed to adhere to a uniform piece. We are really looking forward to exploring more media, working together and developing their creativity.

On Thursday teachers from year 1 and year 2 across the cluster gathered at Christ Church Primary SW9 to share planning, look at books across a range of subjects for the first few weeks of term and also review together some of the year 1 and year 2 moderation done in writing for those classes earlier this year. There was plenty of discussion and sharing of teaching and we hope this will form a really good basis for professional development when we come to meet and moderate together as a cluster in the Spring term.

Year 5 children are working with choir director Allyson Devenish to prepare for 2 events later this month, celebrating Windrush.

On Friday drama practitioner Simon Bachelor from Pegasus Opera visited 2 teachers in St John’s Angell Town Primary to work with them on delivering drama in the classroom. The teachers had already tried out a few drama activities with their children, following the training they did last week, and were able to lead game and activities with their classes to deliver their topics – the life of Mary Seacole and Floella Benjamin’s book Coming to England. Year 4 children acted out the first chapter of Coming to England using a story square and year 3 children created TV interviews in the role of reporter and Mary Seacole. The sessions also included a number of drama warm up activities supporting children to collaborate with each other, take risks and increase their focus. The 2 St John’s teachers will now practice more drama with their classes between now and Simon’s next visit in early November. Thank you to everyone who took part and to the Paul Hamlyn Foundation for their funding to support this project.

Last week RE leads from across our cluster met to share ways they assess the subject in their primary schools. Some good practice in church schools has developed where Leads have devised statements for teachers to assess against. It was generally felt that RE was a subject where children’s knowledge and skills at demonstrating their understanding through class discussion and debate were valuable. We shall arrange another meeting after Christmas to look at children’s work together.