The Curious Minds Learning Network held their first school council conference on 3rd June at Columbia School.
The KS2 school council representatives from all six Curious Minds schools came together to think about what things support their learning.
Guest speaker Ben Smith (AKA rapper and comedian Doc Brown) opened the conference and spoke passionately to the students about following their interests and talents.


The students then joined in with a series of different activities designed to get them thinking about how they learn best. Students learnt to juggle and build newspaper bridges!
Each student brought a piece of work to illustrate some work they had done at their own school that they particularly enjoyed and understood. These were made into a huge wall and students shared their work with each other.

At the end of the day, students thought about all the different ways they had been learning. They thought about how they like to learn best at school and with their school council colleagues they ordered their ideas.

The exciting and successful day was brought to a close by the Deputy Young Mayor for Tower Hamlets.

Inside Mary's Office...

Ebony and Bronze Classes went to Mary's Office with Didi.

She took them on her flying carpet.

Inside Mary's office, you can transform into anything you want!

You could be a fairy...

You could be a bat...

You could be a cat...

The Magic Carpet

Ebony and Bronze Classes travelled on a magic carpet with Didi.
They travelled all over the school.

She took them to fantasy worlds.

"We went to the Art Room and there was a forest and birds"

"We went to Olly's room and we were giants and his class were tiny. And the furniture was made of doughnuts and biscuits."

"We went to Mary's Office and it was all sparkly and shiny. Mary was wearing sparkles too."

Nocturnal Animals

Didi came to work with Sapphire and Silver Classes.

We learned about some nocturnal animals.

Nocturnal animals are animals that mostly come out at night.

First we listened to some sounds. We listened to a mouse rustling, creeping and scuttling through some leaves in a box.

Then we heard about Artemides the Owl. Artemides lived in a tree.
One day he swooped down and caught a mouse.

We also heard all about a bat and his special hearing.
Bats smell, hear, taste, feel and see just like people do. The term "blind as a bat" isn't really accurate. Bats have perfectly good eyes for seeing in the daylight, the problem is, they do most of their hunting at night! Instead of relying on their sight at night, bats make rapid high-pitched squeaks called "ultrasounds". These sounds are too high for most people to hear. If these sounds hit something, they bounce back; it's like when you hear your voice echo back from a mountain or a bathroom when you shout. The bat hears the echo and can tell where the object is. This is called "echolocation". Not every species of bat is able to echolocate, but most can.

After hearing all these interesting and fun stories we went into the hall and we moved around like the nocturnal animals we had just heard about.

We stretched and spread our wings like a bat.

We used our talons to perch on and tree and catch our pray just like an owl. Then we scampered around like a mouse searching for some food.

Finally when our bellies were full we curled up into a cosy, snug ball like a little mouse sleeping.

Lastly we went back into class and drew some pictures of the stories we had heard. We only used pencil to draw our pictures because our pictures were set in night time, and we know at night time we cannot see bright colours because it is dark with very little light.

By Sapphire and Silver Classes

A Mysterious Suitcase

Amethyst and Ruby classes became archeologists investigating Ancient Greek artefacts.

A mysterious suitcase arrived in the school for the Amethyst and Ruby historians and they examined objects and organised them into a museum with labels.

Later Didi helped both classes discover their storytelling skills and they found they could share their own stories with their class groups.

Daemons!

Coral and Turquoise classes had been studying "Northern Lights" by Philip Pullman. They were considering the transition to secondary school and thinking about the strength they might gain from having a daemon just like the characters in the book. A daemon could guide and support, even be a conscience. The classes worked with their teachers and Didi to discover just what their daemon might be like. What would it do? What form would it take? How would it support them?

The pupils finally made their daemons real by creating them out of card and paint.

Planning the Workshops

Before a project, teachers are used to meeting and planning with creative partners.
This year, it all happened a bit differently!
Representatives from each class accompanied their teachers to planning meetings. Outgoing and incoming School Council representatives told Didi about themselves and how they enjoyed learning. Afterwards they reported back to their classes. The representatives said they'd enjoyed going to the meetings and later told Lisa, our Creative Agent, that they'd felt empowered by being asked what they wanted to learn. Teachers also enjoyed the experience and thought it would be valuable to ask pupils more often about what they'd like to learn in other areas.