Thomas Tallis School is a Specialist Arts College, a Leading Edge School and a national School of Creativity. We are in the process of developing new curriculum models at all key stages, embracing the new National Curriculum framework and alternative programmes such as Futurelab's Enquiring Minds and the RSA's Opening Minds.
We have taken the decision not to teach ICT as a discrete subject at KS3. Our aim is to use this time to develop a Creative Learning Curriculum, one that utilises new technologies and develops a range of Personal Learning and Thinking Skills. We are aware that in order to live successful lives in the 21st century, our students will need to be equipped with a range of skills above and beyond the knowledge they gain in particular disciplines and the ability to pass examinations. We aim to work with them to create a curriculum that supports the explicit development of these skills and, hopefully, is successful in engaging their interests and specific talents.
We have taken the decision not to teach ICT as a discrete subject at KS3. Our aim is to use this time to develop a Creative Learning Curriculum, one that utilises new technologies and develops a range of Personal Learning and Thinking Skills. We are aware that in order to live successful lives in the 21st century, our students will need to be equipped with a range of skills above and beyond the knowledge they gain in particular disciplines and the ability to pass examinations. We aim to work with them to create a curriculum that supports the explicit development of these skills and, hopefully, is successful in engaging their interests and specific talents.
This website is one way in which we intend to support both colleagues and students in sharing thoughts, discussing issues, publishing resources, highlighting useful links and showcasing examples of creative learning in action.
Enquiring Minds
Enquiring Minds
The Tallis Lab curriculum is based on the Enquiring Minds model created by Futurelab. In essence, this approach takes students’ ideas, interests and experiences as its starting point, and provides them with more responsibility for the direction and content of their learning. This approach provides a conscious move away from a transmission model of learning to one which is more more active and analytical. Students are encouraged to think about their own thinking.
- teachers and students develop ways to talk together
- teachers use their knowledge and understanding to elicit and bring on students' knowledge
- students take on more responsibility for how the classroom should be and how learning takes place
- the classroom is a place where teachers and students think together.
TASC
TASC stands for Thinking Actively in a Social Context. Like the Enquiring Minds process, learners are encouraged to develop a cyclical approach to their explorations. This begins with gathering and organising information, proceeds through idea generation and implementation and culminates in sharing and self-assessment.
The process was developed by Belle Wallace who is known for her work with Gifted and Talented children. Central to the ethos of TASC is the belief in the full range of abilities that young people possess and that each learner is entitled to a feeling of self-worth promoted through a personalised approach to progress and assessment.
PLTS
The personal, learning and thinking skills (PLTS) in the new National Curriculum provide a framework for describing the qualities and skills needed for success in learning and life.
The framework comprises six groups of skills:
The personal, learning and thinking skills (PLTS) in the new National Curriculum provide a framework for describing the qualities and skills needed for success in learning and life.
The framework comprises six groups of skills:
- independent enquirers
- creative thinkers
- reflective learners
- team workers
- self-managers
- effective participants.
Click the image above to visit the national Curriculum website and watch a short film about the PLTS-focused curriculum at Top Valley School and Engineering College in Nottingham.
Explorers
In the book "How to be an explorer of the world", the author Keri Smith provides the following advice:
1. Always be looking (notice the ground beneath your feet)
2. Consider everything alive and animate
3. Everything is interesting. Look closer
4. Alter your course often
5. Observe for long durations (and short ones)
6. Notice the stories going on around you
7. Notice patterns. Make connections
8. Document your findings (field notes) in a variety of ways
9. Incorporate indeterminancy
10. Observe movement
11. Create a personal dialogue with your environment. Talk to it
12. Trace things back to their origins
13. Use all of the senses in your investigations
In the book "How to be an explorer of the world", the author Keri Smith provides the following advice:
1. Always be looking (notice the ground beneath your feet)
2. Consider everything alive and animate
3. Everything is interesting. Look closer
4. Alter your course often
5. Observe for long durations (and short ones)
6. Notice the stories going on around you
7. Notice patterns. Make connections
8. Document your findings (field notes) in a variety of ways
9. Incorporate indeterminancy
10. Observe movement
11. Create a personal dialogue with your environment. Talk to it
12. Trace things back to their origins
13. Use all of the senses in your investigations
Knowledge, Creativity & Communication
One of the key skills in the future will be the ability to manage, organise and select useful information. Much of this information is likely to be digital in nature and not restricted to the written word. In a recent report (Knowledge, Creativity & Communication, April 2009), Dr. Carey Jewitt of the London Knowledge Lab suggests a number of trends that may define our experiences of the world in the next 20 years:
1) Dealing with increasing ease of access to increasing amounts of information.
2) Increased collaboration across time and space and its effects on communication and creativity.
3) The ever broadening extent of connection and networking that will characterise the future.
4) The trend towards increasing personalisation and creative customisation of experiences, artefacts, learning.
5) Changes in the availability, and configuration of representational and communicational resources in the future.
6) The ways in which literacy and information practices are changing will impact on the role of writing and the emergence of new forms of literacy.
7) Diversifying location, space and site will have consequences for who we communicate with, and how.
All of the aforementioned trends impact in key ways on changes in knowledge production, the role of the author and the relationship of production and consumption.
One of the aims of this course is to support young people in becoming effective managers of information, thoughtful and imaginative communicators and creators of reliable knowledge.