Our cross-curricular learning days for 2011 have been given the title 'Tallis Perspectives' because we are attempting to both reflect on the wealth of experiences we have had in our current building prior to our move to a new site in November and exploring the many ways in which we can look at learning and the links that exist between different curriculum areas. Each curriculum area in school has developed a series of elective workshops lasting from 2 hours to a whole day in length. These range from magic in maths to drawing with light and provide students and teachers with an opportunity to experiment, expolore, challenge and create in a more inter-disciplinary manner.

The other focus for these days is the way we communicate our learning with partners in other countries using a range of tools including blogs, Twitter and other social networks. Check out the project blog and website fot find out more.

Here is another great example of inter-disciplinary creativity from the maths faculty. This film describes several paper folding techniques that explore mathematical concepts. The experiments conclude with an amazing demonstration combining geometry, design, sculpture, astronomy and dance. Inspiring stuff!

This short film demonstrates how the use of a technique from one subject (art and design) can support learning in another (mathematics). Quite apart from the wonderful surprise of discovering paint and brushes on the table in your maths lesson, students benefit from connecting learning in different domains. One of the things they learn is that ratio and proportion are just as important in the visual arts as they are in mathematics. Most significantly, however, they develop the ability to transfer their learning across domains, to think metaphorically and visualise abstract concepts.

Teacher Exchange was a project designed to enable inter-disciplinary learning and teaching with a particular focus on science and visual art.

As part of our work with Creative Partnerships London South and the Helen Storey Foundation, three teachers from Tallis (2 from Science and 1 from Art and Design) undertook Teacher Exchange during the 2005 summer term. They chose the topic of light and colour and prepared suitable resources together. Working with Year 8 classes, they delivered the lessons in each other's specialism. Both students and teachers gained much from the experience, reflecting on the importance of recognising and providing for a range of learning styles, the value of creative stimuli, the powerful connections that exist between subjects and the fun to be had from taking risks.

A short film was made which documents their experiences and the teachers involved have presented the work at a staff meeting and at various Creative Partnerships conferences.

Read an article about Teacher Exchange on the Helen Storey Foundation website.

Click here to read an article featuring the work of Helen Storey entitled "Creation is a state of mind" published in the TES (Sept 2004).

In April 2009 we organised an experiment for Year 7 students to enable them to make connections in their learning and think about Healthy Lifestyles. The students were off timetable for a day and elected to take part in a wide variety of activities from blogging to break dancing. Loaded Productions made a video documentary of the day (see opposite) capturing the thoughts of participants and creating an opportunity for us to reflect on what was achieved in order to improve provision in the future.

We believe that making connections between diverse bodies of knowledge and transferring skills across the curriculum are vital 21st century skills. We hope that further days like this will encourage our learners to try new things, take a few risks and understand the need for flexibility and resilience in their learning.

We are fully committed to carrying out a detailed evaluation of these days in order to learn from them and help us plan even more successful learning opportunities in the future.

Part of the school's strategy for promoting creative learning has been to run termly whole school learning events related to a cross-curriculum dimension and theme. During the summer term of 2009 we organised a whole school event focused on the Olympics exploring the theme of Perspectives. The Spring Term theme is Connections and the focus has been on several dimensions: Enterprise, Global Awareness and Sustainability and Technology and Media. We decided to run two days of activities for teams of vertically grouped students across the whole school. Fifty two fair Trade country groups were established and tasked with generating a campaign to increase the amount of fair Trade in their country through a variety of analogue and digital creative products. Throughout the two days, the students experienced a variety of activities including a Wii Challenge and Fair Trade United Nations Assembly. The purpose of this meeting was to create a Fair Trade Manifesto for Thomas Tallis School. Students also created websites and blogs, digital animations and slideshows, Powerpoint presentations and a host of wonderfully inventive craft based products including whole costumes constructed from tissue paper and clay coffee beans.

The project blog has collected these campaigns together and demonstrates the variety and diversity of the learning experienced by the students.

Inspired by the work of neuro-scientists in America, Professor Helen Storey devised an installation entitled "Eye & I" which was housed in a Year Base at Tallis during the first two weeks of July 2006. Drama and Business Studies students collaborated on running the project which involved them in working with professional actors, a theatre director, Helen Storey and their teachers, learning a variety of skills related to manipulating the muscles around the eyes and how they can be trained to convey authentic emotion. Visitors to the installation from in and outside school had an exciting and thought-provoking experience which we have captured on video and accompanying photographs. In addition, an evaluation report by Kat Joyce captures the reflections of the staff members, students and 300 visitors.

How has our use of language has changed over time? A group of students in English and Italian investigated this question with the help of their teachers, publishing their investigations in the form of an online book.
 
They started off by thinking about English, in particular about Elizabethan English, and all of those expressions that are no longer used but that have changed into more modern versions. We watched a clip from Romeo and Juliet and looked at old handwriting too before thinking about what content we could have used to write our own message to somebody, in both ancient and modern style, in English and Italian.
 
The students came up with lots of different ideas, from love messages to hatred ones, from picking fights and duels to arranging to meet someone and they then started to write their own letters, with the aid of a list of words and expressions that were common in Elizabethan times. They had all the freedom they wanted and could write about absolutely anything, as well as pretend to be anybody they wanted, so some decided to be kings or queens, others to be lovers, suicidal people or even assassins! After drafting their work the students had a go at using quills and ink to write on parchments and produced beautiful pieces of work with fantastic calligraphy, adding a wax seal to make them even more realistic. After that it was time to come back to year 2009 and they all had a go at transferring their original long and elaborate messages into very short sms, using their mobile phones.
 
All of the students were very positive in their comments about this experience and they seemed to have enjoyed the creativity involved in both taking on a new identity and thinking about a message, conveying it in two such different ways; they also enjoyed the creative side of the project in which they had to use old material to produce some aesthetically appealing pieces of writing.