What it is

Experimenting is the process of applying knowledge and skills creatively and critically in order to develop deep understanding. Students manipulate language, form, mode and medium to express ideas, values and opinions in innovative and meaningful ways. Experimenting is as much a demonstration of critical as imaginative faculties and, through the interdependence of these, students engage in thoughtful recreation and innovation.

Students need to experiment imaginatively with language in playful ways. Through the exploration of language and ideas they develop an appreciation for aesthetic qualities of texts and understand the power of language to transform and re-interpret experiences. Experimenting enables students to stimulate and express their imagination and natural curiosity to make connections in their world.

Why it is important

Imagination is used to predict, speculate and hypothesise to create new understandings about the wider world that is complex and changing. A sense of personal style and the confidence to create new texts will develop through the processes of experimenting. Students become the creators of meaning, not just the recipients of information. 

Stage 6

Students, through experimenting, come to value their own agency and to understand the interdependence of both response and composition, and the critical and creative.

Stage 5

Students compose critical and imaginative responses to texts. They adopt, combine and adapt conventions of genre and style to experiment with textual concepts and with ideas drawn from texts to come to deeper understandings.

Stage 4

Students use, adapt or subvert particular textual conventions across modes and media to experiment with a range of meanings and textual concepts.

Stage 3

Students experiment with text structures, language features and textual concepts to adapt texts and ideas for different purposes and in a range of modes and media.

Stage 2

Through working with textual concepts students identify aspects of texts that engage an audience and use them to experiment in their own compositions in different modes and media.

Stage 1

Students create and recreate texts imaginatively in a range of modes and media using their understanding of textual concepts.

ES1

Students use their imagination and understanding of textual concepts to represent aspects of their experience, experimenting with different modes and media.