Creative Sparks at KGS

A Kirkwall Grammar School class project was recently shortlisted for the Standard Life Best Practice Awards at the Creative Sparks conference in Glasgow on the 27th February.

English teacher, Mrs Sandra Ballantine, presented an outline of the project which received the accolade of ‘Highly Commended’.

The conference, whose key note speakers were Poet Laureate Michael Rosen and Nina Calegari – co-founder of the inspirational 826 National – explored creative approaches to literacy and literature across the curriculum. In addition to seminars on creative practice the conference showcased innovative practice from schools and libraries across Scotland through presentations from the 5 shortlisted projects.

Mrs Ballantine – with the help of the (now) S4 class involved – created a presentation using six slides in six minutes which she presented to the voting audience.

Their project employed ICT to help motivate reluctant readers. Whilst the pupils lacked enthusiasm for reading and writing Mrs Ballantine noticed that they were ‘very adept at using mobile phones, computers and other technology’. Sandra described how she got the idea when exploring the icons on a new computer in her class room ‘I was investigating the mysterious icons at the bottom of the screen when I happened upon something called Comic Life. As soon as I opened it, I realised it had real possibilities for the kind of pupils who find it difficult to produce much in the way of writing. Why didn’t we turn the short story we were reading into a comic book? ‘

The pupils used digital cameras or mobile phones to turn the short story ‘The New Boy’ by Geddes Thomson into a photo story comic strip. Despite their previous reluctance, Sandra described how, the pupils soon ‘realised that they would have to go back to the text and think about how to tell this story in pictures. They also had to select appropriate snippets of dialogue for speech balloons and decide what words to put into captions, narrative boxes and so on. ‘

Sandra feels that the pupils also learned much about teamwork, co-operation and responsibility as they had to approach other pupils and members of staff to ask if they would become involved and pose as characters. Sandra explained that this ‘required effective communication and diplomacy skills’.

The comic was published – in colour – with the help of the Orcadian newspaper. In addition to improving attitudes to learning and relationships in the class the pupils then went on to read a variety of challenging texts and covered what Sandra reflects is ‘more than I (she) normally would’. In fact one pupil in particular asked to read when he had packed up early one day – and immediately followed with the afterthought ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this!’