Starting the day with arts activities

What did the school want to achieve?

School improvement

The school was keen to improve pupils' attitudes to learning. Many of its pupils come from social backgrounds where school is seen as an unnecessary inconvenience and are given limited parental support. As a result, they have a negative or complacent attitude and underachieve.

In particular, the school wanted to see pupils showing greater concentration and commitment to their work. It hoped that, in the long term, this would raise attainment across the curriculum.

Pupils' arts education

To develop pupils' concentration, the school decided to focus on the more disciplined aspects of arts skills. Through the project, the school wanted pupils to learn how to:

Art and design

• record from first-hand observation and learn about pattern and texture, line and tone, shape, form, space and proportion;
• use clay and explore visual and tactile elements, working in three dimensions;

Dance

• create and perform dances using given and invented movement patterns;

Music

• analyse and compare sounds, listening with attention to detail;
• recall and improvise rhythmic patterns.

Each activity taught the pupils specific disciplined skills and then developed these skills by, for example, asking them to draw a still life, create their own dance to given music, or create their own music using rhythmic patterns.