WSQ Magpie Wall Collage

The Magpie Initiative

In our primary school, students are encouraged to broaden their vocabulary and English Language skills by the independent use of a Magpie page created in their writing books.  When the students read, see or hear a word that is new or interesting to them, they can write down details of spellings, definitions and context (use) for future reference.  The idea is that Magpies collect things - in this case it is the collection of words, which can be shared and then used to enhanced and develop greater depth of understanding in both writing and speaking. 

During our 2023-2024 Academic, as part of our continuing in-school Community Development programme, we organised a Key Stage 3 competition to enable our secondary students to ‘give something back’ to our primary department.  The brief was to design a Magpie Working Wall in the year 5 and 6 shared area and subsequently to bring this idea to life by painting the winning design directly onto the wall. The winners were two year 7 students and their excellent design was ‘brought to life’ by four year 9 students. The wall is now a communal space where any upper KS2 student can ‘post’ their word showing correct spelling, a brief definition and an example of its’ use.  It is currently being used for curriculum topic based writing and is monitored by Student Council members overseen by the Primary Head Boy and Head Girl.

Following this success, in September 2024 the competition for Magpie Working Wall Mark 2 was launched.  This time participants had to be in year 6. Having to fulfil the same criteria as in the KS3 project, they were looking to create a masterpiece to grace the year 4 corridor.  There was huge excitement generated across the whole year group, which resulted in a large number of entries and so the competition was fierce!  Mr. Wilson and Ms. Anderson had a really difficult task to choose just one design winner.  After great deliberation the winning entry was chosen for its’ innovative design idea showing how creatively the students had manipulated the brief.  Two BTech Level 3 Art students in year 12 and three year 7 students worked as a team to complete the wall, which will be used by year 4 students.

All students who participated in both competitions gave their own time to the project, creating their own schedules to meet the set deadlines and completing the work outside of school lessons. The final results of their efforts show that their combined desire to ‘give back to our community’ is not only a positive thing to do but is well received by the recipients and significantly enhances our communal working environment.  Thanks to the success of the Magpie Walls, there will definitely be other such initiatives in the future… watch this space!
 

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