My Global Community Expands....

It actually worked! During my summer semester when I started to think about creativity in the classroom, I put some feelers out there for strangers to read and respond to. And this week I got a response! And it is a good one. He didn't say particularly much, but pointed me towards 2 articles he had read in newsweek.com. I found both articles stimulating and relevant towards my current inquiry of study. Woo Hoo!

How has it changed me? Well, I followed a few further links on these articles and kept expanding my definition of creativity. The one that really stood out to me this time was the capacity to work "outside the box." Do something unexpected, but relevant and useful.

The articles both supported the present movement towards "project based learning" or PBL as those of us in the know say. :) (Oh gag!) Those of you who know me personally know that I am struggling with the concept of PBL as I am a very linear person who needs things black and white. PBL often blurs those lines! And yet, in our present day and age, we need people who will be able to solve problems. There is no way we as teachers can fully teach and prepare students for specific jobs in the future simply because we don't know what those jobs will be. But we do know that whatever jobs they take, they will need to be creative, adaptive, global thinkers.

The articles portend that creativity is best when mixed with fact-finding, research and basic skill sets. Creativity emerges when "they alternate maximum divergent thinking with bouts of intense convergent thinking, through several stages." As I understand it, divergent thinking would be the creative part...brainstorming, experimenting, etc., and the convergent thinking would be finding out facts that affect the project.

Encouraging creativity in the classroom means no longer hoping kids get the right answer as soon as possible, but rather letting them wrestle for a while with the issue...trying to see it from all angles, coming up with all kinds of solutions and figuring out for themselves what works and what doesn't. Unfortunately for me, I've always looked for the easy right way and I'll need to be very deliberate about letting my students struggle...

till next time

creativity and planning

So tomorrow is the first pro-d of the year and I get to spend the majority of my day planning for the coming year. One of my focuses will need to be on incorporating ways for children to express themselves in creative ways. I know very little about "art" officially, but am beginning to realize that art has very little to do with encouraging creativity with children. It is definitely a worthy component of it, but it is not the only, or maybe not even necessarily, the best way.
For example, the other day in math class, the topic was patterns. We talked about what a pattern was (something that repeats), saw some examples of patterns and then I let them create patterns. I took out blocks, lego, cars, chain links, etc and let them build a pattern. It was fun to watch them be creative. The teacher's guide said I should limit them to a repeating pattern of 2, but I have some fairly bright children in my class and didn't want to limit them. Some children
did indeed build repeating patterns with two colours and I was thrilled that they "fully met expectations." However, some children became much more elaborate. One particular boy built a pattern in 2 ways. He found 3D shapes of different colours and did a pattern of first 4 shapes (cone, cylinder, pyramid and cube [he actually knew these terms!]) in all the same colour and then repeated that pattern in the next colour and on and on. I was amazed. Would he have been able to express his creativity if I had kept him to two colours? I don't think so, and I was able to assess his learning as "beyond expectation." How exciting!

Creativity emerges, despite myself!

My research continues to challenge and broaden my definition of "creativity." According to an article in Newsweek in July, "creativity is production of something original and useful..." I'm trying to be more open and accepting of my students' work, even if it isn't immediately apparently "correct." Take, for example, one of my student's depiction of "living and non-living" things as we had discussed in science. Most students chose to draw pictures of people, animals or plants for the living and fruit off the vine for non-living (as we had discussed earlier). But then I went to see Karl's work and rather than reprimanding him for just drawing something off topic, as I was tempted to do, I asked him to describe his picture. He went into great detail to tell me what was living in his picture (a human [living] digging a tunnel in the dirt under some living grass. The details were amazing. His non-living picture was of a 'camel-car', which, as he said "some people might think it's living, but it's not. It's pretend!"

So...I think I was successful yesterday. Rather than do my gut-reaction of stopping him in the midst of his work, I took the time to listen...thus encouraging his creativity.
Hopefully this will continue to be a new way of teaching for me!

Forgot about ART??

Well, today I was quite proud of myself as I had a draft of my weekly teaching schedule ready to hand in to the principal. I brought it to the staff room to share with the LA teacher and the other grade one teacher took a peek. "You're not going to do any art??" she asked incredulously. Oh my! In my inquiry towards encouraging creativity, I totally forgot about an art block with my kids. Oh, that sinking feeling again. I hate art! I hate creativity! I never know what to do in that block. That's the hardest block in the week to plan for...

So...what does that say about me? Well, it was a complete oversight. I had so many other things I wanted to do with my time with the kids...but art is such a logical time to encourage creativity. I can't believe I did that. Well, it's now duly part of my Friday afternoons.... Anyone have some good ideas for me to use tomorrow?

Two Ah-Hah moments this weekend...

Creativity...what is it? According to Sir Ken Robinson, in his TED address "Do schools kill creativity?" defines creativity as being willing to be wrong.

I like that definition, partially because it identifies for me one of the reasons why creativity is such a mental block for me. I HATE being wrong, and will go to some great lengths to prove my "rightness" in an argument. I feel like I'm incompetent or stupid if I admit to being wrong. Hmmm... something to think about more.

And...as I was discussing this with a very creative friend of mine, she elaborated on this and said that part of encouraging creativity amongst youngsters was allowing them to be wrong. Wow...that hit me. I often want to correct students as they are in the midst of trying to solve a problem if I can already see that they are headed in a "wrong" direction. I want to point them towards the correct solution...something that will work. I think maybe this is one area in which I will be able to test my own encouragement of creativity in my students is if I let them make mistakes...How do I still make them want to try things even if they get things wrong repeatedly? Is it the process that's important??

Some heavy thoughts as I try to enjoy my weekend... :)

Creativity?? How about survival?

The last few days have been a blur as I teach a class that was together last year for 2 1/2 days while we wait for the new configuration to set in for this year...These kids were good. I had fun with them, although they needed more planned for them then I was willing to give them. But we did some creative stuff. But today the new kids moved in...took about an hour to move them all in, so in the meantime the first kids are getting bored, I'm losing my prep, I have recess duty and suddenly, they're all there. All 20 beautiful children...I think they're smart. A number of them are reading a lot, but boy, they're ALL busy! I can't turn my attention away from a few of the idividuals for more than 10 seconds, or they're in trouble....running in the classroom, poking someone, playing with something off the shelf, or just plain yelling! Yep, I said yelling! There are a few kids that just for the pure joy of being at school need to yell and scream. I don't know how many times I reminded them to use their inside voice.

So anyways...creativity?? Didn't even cross my mind today, I'm afraid.

First Day

So today was it...the start of a new school year and my focus on creativity was forefront in my mind...well, after welcoming 22 new students into my class that won't be part of my class as we wait to see what the numbers will do (but that's another story). So I have these 22 grade 3 and 4's to supervise and teach over the next few days. How can I be creative with that?

Well, I started them off with a writing assignment on what they remembered from their summer. I told them it didn't have to have perfect spelling or grammar; I just wanted them to be able to write as many things down as they remember. We then got into a group to share one thing from our list. After that, I had them choose one of the things they had written down and asked them to illustrate it in some way. I had play dough in 4 colours, different coloured construction paper and plain white paper for them to use. The majority of the class chose the play dough and we had a ferris wheel, boats, bunk beds in a cabin, a family swimming together, a birthday party in the wave pool, a flower girl, etc. They seemed to really enjoy the hands on work, and were able to make some pretty detailed diagrams of something that had been important to them. The pictures that were drawn on the plain paper were also well done. I'm sorry I forgot my camera today to take pictures of some of their creations.

So...was that creativity on my part? Did I encourage creativity with the students? Should I have offered more options? Why didn't anyone take construction paper? (I think it's because I didn't have a model to show them and they already knew how to use play dough and paper with markers.)

I hope to write regularly about creativity in the classroom. What does it mean? How can I encourage it? Do I have to be artistic to be creative?? Do you have any thoughts about it? Let me know.