Arts Across the Curriculum - Dumfries & Galloway

The Arts Across the Curriculum project is now in its second year of classroom delivery. Artists and teachers continue to work together devising new and exciting methods of delivering the curriculum in the classroom and the positive results have been evident in a number of interesting projects in schools throughout Scotland, such as Langholm Primary in Dumfriesshire.

Between January and March 2006, writer Linda Cracknell and P7 teacher Nancy McLure have worked together to deliver English language lessons. By using the topic 'India' they were looking to cover curricular areas such as reading for enjoyment, reading to reflect on writer’s ideas and craft, reading aloud, imaginative writing, talking in groups, talking about texts and artistic objectives, and to enhance understanding, appreciation and enjoyment of the creative writing process.

The objective was to instil appreciation of Hindu myths and beliefs, characters, storylines, and genre using ‘Seasons of Splendour’ by Madhur Jaffrey. 

Through stories about Krishna and Ram from Hindu legend, Linda and the class had their own adventures as they entered a world of gods, demons, many headed monsters, good and bad kings, and deep forests. Below is a sample of the writing from ‘Tiger’s Eye’ the anthology they produced. The class was asked what ideas they thought of when they looked around the classroom and asked, ‘what if’?

Classroom Chaos at Langholm Primary

Monday morning at nine o'clock. We rubbed our eyes and yawned. The globe rolled towards us, and with the map it pointed out rivers and countries. Pencils did their own thing and drew us pictures, and rubbers came to us when we shouted for them and rubbed out the things we pointed at.

Dictionaries whispered meanings to us, book read their stories out loud, pencils turned into dragon flies and buzzed around above our heads.

The classroom filled with noise.

Then the sharpeners growled awake and sharpened our hair straight.

The bucket shot rubbish at us, pencil cases chucked their contents on us, and dictionaries sprayed words around the room so that hundreds of words and meanings were splattered on the walls.

The rubbers became mice and ate our lunch, the trays ate our things so we had only half our jumpers left at play time.

Rulers walked about until there were twice as many people in the classroom.

Pens drew on the walls and what they drew came to life, pencils grew legs and ran wild, dancing to the rhythm of the music while they drew beaches at sunset.

Light bulbs turned on and off.

The blackboard became a time transporter and the teachers started to float about the classroom.

The tables rose up so we could not do our work, and chairs went ballroom dancing swaying us from side to side.

Then the windows flapped and the whole school building lifted up.

It creaked its wings like heron, soared high over Whita Hill and flew away towards Hawick.

For a copy of 'Tiger's Eye' or other writing from the Arts Across the Curriculum project in Dumfries and Galloway, visit the Creative Education Arts Team website.