Welcome to our December Arts blog. Since the summer SSMJ has been busy and buzzing with creativity. Here are just some of our recent creative activities.
We set out our aims and goals for our latest Arts Council Artsmark journey in our ‘Statement of Commitment’. We plan to build on the achievements recognised in our Gold Award by enriching and improving creative writing at SSMJ. We want to create lots of new opportunities for poetry, drama and story writing and will be working with Caper books and the Oxford Museums to make opportunities for creative writing and for our children to meet and learn from authors and illustrators. We also plan to work with our local independent bookshop on some exciting new writing and illustration challenges and competitions.
We are a ‘Spellbound School’ and have a special relationship with the amazing Story Museum. Our year 5 and 6 pupils visited the museum and met children’s author Jo Cotterill. They heard about Jo’s journey as a writer, explored the inspiration for her book, ‘Jelly’ and they even got to collaborate with her on creating their own story.
In art last term year six investigated identity and made self portraits, with their aims and dreams incorporated into dramatic backgrounds. This term they learned about the history of the Benin Bronzes at the Pitt Rivers Museum and practised 3D sculpture skills, making low relief sculptures out of corrugated card.
This term marked our first Culture and Identity Day. Our children, and many of the adults, dressed up and shared aspects of their culture, heritage or identity with each other. Mrs Baez and Mr Da Costa explored why our culture and identity matter and then there were art, craft and dance workshops across the school. The children also learned to sign Jingle Bells in BSL (British Sign Language). We have a rich and diverse cohort of children and staff at SSMJ and it is wonderful for everyone to learn from each other and share diverse arts and cultures.
Since our last blog year four has been busy story telling through art and have made illustrated concertina books, using pastels and watercolour to create illustrations that express a narrative. They studied the poem ‘Carib Nightfall’ and looked at animals and landscapes and then experimented with ideas before creating their books.
This term year 4 also shared their work with parents and carers in their year-group Learning Exhibition and taught the adults some art techniques. In art they designed and made their magnificent shields for Roman day.
Our reception classes are always learning through making, especially in their ‘explorer time’. Amongst many other arts activities, they have created fruit and vegetable observational drawings and made potato and vegetable heads, building characters from their imaginations. We love the wonderful individuality of our youngest children and try to encourage all our children to feel confident to express themselves and take creative risks in their art classes.
Our fabulous SSMJ calendar was created by all our children, with the help of parents and carers, who coordinate and deliver this lovely annual project. The children always enjoy making the calendar images together, seeing the finished calendar at Christmas and then revisiting each picture when the original artwork is displayed in school during its month.
We painted a new backdrop for our nativity performances this year. When there is a performance coming up the children love seeing the stage appearing and the huge back drops being hung – the excitement immediately starts to build and the addition of fairy lights and our wonderful new stage lights puts everyone in a performance mood. Our year 1’s smashed their Christmas performance of ‘Baarmy Bethlehem’ in school and then wowed again in their wonderful church performance.
There’s always singing at SSMJ. Dr Nicholas Prozillo, choir director at St Giles Choir joined one of our weekly singing celebrations and shared his choir expertise with our children. Mrs Farnsworth, our own music specialist, leads our amazing choir and prepared them for the Big Christmas Sing this term, always a joyful event, Magdalen School pupils continued to share their musical instrument skills with year 5 and, of course, there’s been lots of music and dancing in our Christmas performances. The Christmas arts season also includes the whole school big theatre trip, the magical Christingle celebration in Christ Church Cathedral, the irock concert and finally everyone is invited to join in carol singing in the playground at the end of term.
SSMJ has been so full of creative energy since the summer and we look forward to lots of new projects and ideas next term.
Ali Moreton
Sarah Blackwell
and the arts team