Antonio Park Primary School
The Antonio Park Primary School project used play-based therapy to support students to become more culturally inclusive and accepting.
Tell us about Antonio Park Primary School
Antonio Park Primary School is located in the outer eastern suburb of Mitcham. The school population is drawn from the City of Whitehorse and the school caters for students from Prep to Year 6.
Antonio Park Primary School has almost 500 students, with a wide range of children from ESL backgrounds and some students with varying learning difficulties.
Students learn in multi-age classes, according to VELS levels.
What is the ‘STEP UP’ project?
Through the STEP UP project we want the students to be able to articulate the positive behaviors towards others that we encourage at Antonio Park Primary School. Our digital stories will be used throughout the school, leading to each grade making their own stories. The students involved in this project will become ‘experts’ in film making so that they can teach other students.
What are the aims of ‘STEP UP’?
? To give students a voice through digital stories.
? To create digital stories to be used as a learning tool in all classrooms that will raise awareness of positive relationships with others.
? To guide students through the development process of a digital story from storyboard to the creation of a short film that can be accessed by members of our school community and our local network schools.
? To share our digital stories with our parent community to ensure that we are all on the ‘same page’ when giving positive messages about acceptable behavior both at school and at home.
How was ‘STEP UP’ implemented?
Teachers brainstormed with whole class: What is a digital story?
What they would like their story to be about…
Teachers selected 5 students from each class to be involved in the filming and editing of the projects.
Storyboards
Students worked with two teachers and story boarded their ideas.
Students broke up into mini teams
Students experimented with cameras
Filming
Students allocated themselves different roles.
Students took turns to film the scenes.
Using Movie Maker
Students used Windows Live Movie Maker for editing, experimenting with different transitions and animations.
Editing
Students edited their films.
Has the project been a success?
The students learnt a lot about working in a team and taking on different roles as well as how to use the technology. It was fantastic to see the pride they took in their films and the things we do at Antonio Park Primary School to assist prevent bullying situations from happening. The students were very pleased with their films and were very excited to share it with the whole school community at assembly.
Staff will now use these films at the beginning of next year to assist with teaching our values and the support we give each other at school. It will be fantastic to have another multimedia resource to educate new staff, as well as new and current students and families about the good things we are doing at school to prevent bullying.
Having completed these projects, the students involved in the filming have been more aware of the practices we have in place at school. It has been fantastic to hear their discussions when coming into edit about what they have seen happening in our yard and how there are many students at our school that are constantly showing our school values, following our code of conduct and being supportive to their friends.
The Peace Makers film in particular can be used to promote our Peace Makers and assist to recruit our grade 3 and 4 students to becoming Peace Makers. They are a part of our school that we take pride in and it is good for students to gain more insight into what they are there for and how they can support each other in the yard.
Our school has always had a low level of bullying incidents at school because of the fantastic things we already have in place. It will be good to see the impact of these films next year and to gain opinions from students on how they now feel about our school and their safety when dealing with bullies.
What is the future of project?
The future of this program will now be to utilise the filming equipment, the skills of the students, the positive messages about school behaviour and the things we do to stop bullying and support our friends.
We hope by doing this that the profile of the Peace Makers is lifted in the school and that they are viewed as positive role models with their peers. The films will be used at the beginning of the year to promote our school values, code of conduct and cyber safety in an engaging way for students and to be used as a reference point for teachers.
We aim to continue to have short messages about school behaviour to be filmed and shown throughout the school through class film projects as there are more things our students do to support each other and increase our student’s wellbeing.
Other Information
The project assisted us to establish a culture of what it is we do here at Antonio Park and it really supported the Restorative Practices program. We aimed to increase the awareness of the importance of a bystander in a bullying situation along with showing how ICT can engage students and be utilised in the school context. We loved that the project was student driven and that they had a lot of control over the direction of the project. It allowed student with extensive ICT skills to put their knowledge into practice.
Contact
Jan Macdonald – Assistant Principal
Christine Ewan – ICT Coordinator
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Case Study | ? 2014 | Department of Education and Early Childhood Development