Making an Impact: dancing for writing in Tower Hamlets

As part of our new professional development programme, Artis Impact, I mentored Yr 3, 4, 4/5 and 5 teachers at Harbinger Primary School in Tower Hamlets. Our focus was to develop writing through dance.

The programme kicked off with a dance INSET workshop involving all of the teachers at the school.  Not only was this a great way to introduce the Impact programme and Artis, but it provided a wonderful professional development opportunity for all staff, especially as dance had been identified as an area they wanted to develop. There was a lovely atmosphere and great energy during the session.

Delivery for the selected classes took place over 5 weeks, and I planned each session in partnership with each individual teacher, which we then co-led. Although I took the lead at the start, the teachers became increasingly confident and happy to lead practical activities. They also used material we explored together back in the classroom during their own lessons, and then brought new ideas to our work together, be it vocabulary or contextual knowledge or children’s written work, which we then used to inspire our dance ideas. A lovely reciprocal relationship was established between Artis Impact sessions and classroom learning.

At first there was a level of uncertainty and unfamiliarity, but their enthusiasm and confidence really grew and the quality of the children’s movement improved immensely; their understanding of choreographic ideas and dynamic range developed and they produced some lovely group dances. What really stood out was how much the children were able to develop their movement vocabulary in such a short space of time.  They became completely comfortable working in a non-narrative context, extending their creative movement skills and using imagery from their dances to feed into writing.The children’s attitude shifted significantly during the course of the sessions.

It was wonderful to see the teachers benefiting from extensive, dance-based professional development. Through dance they were given a different working model, which they can now adapt and refine for use in other contexts.  By the end of the 5 sessions, they all said that they had acquired practical skills that they would feed into their work in the future; I am delighted that they will all continue to include dance as part of their day to day teaching delivery. And the next phase of their Impact programme was to welcome another Artis Mentor to explore writing through drama…