Thursday, September 16, 2010

Is Creativity in Your Box?

After the staff meeting, how did you follow through on Kelley's challenge to add some creativity to a lesson?

What strategies have you implemented from your "new box"?

Any thoughts on Kelley's Newsweek article, "Creativity Crisis"?

43 comments:

  1. I visited several classrooms after our last staff meeting with Kelley. In the music room. the students were writing their own lyrics for a rap. They were exploring the rhythm and words needed for a successful rap.

    I am anxious to hear how teachers are implementing strategies from their new box.

    The article is interesting. I liked the statement that "creativity requires constant shifting, blender pulses of both divergent thinking and convergent thinking, to combine new information with old and forgotten ideas." I also liked the page - Forget Brainstorming. Some food for thought.

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  2. Adding creativity to a lesson - Third Grade has implemented the "Daily 5" literacy strategies allowing students' choices to let their creative juices flow.

    Can you teach creativity???

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  3. I am working the on the strategy "Daily 5" with my students this year. Every week they are able to choose from reading to self, reading with someone, listening to reading, writing and word work. Each week our daily 5 choices relate to our Story Town lesson from that week.

    We are giving students choices in their writing. I had my students brainstorm different prompts that interest them. Children were to choose their top 20 to have in their writing folder for "free write" time.

    Reading the article, I was a little upset with the fact that I feel we as an Explorer team promote creativity in our students much more than what this article gives teachers credit for.

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  4. In another book I am reading it talks about how many of the skills we are currently teaching students can be carried out automatically by machines, or far more cheaply in other parts of the world and they will cease to be a premium. Therefore, the right-brain capacities (creativity) will become increasingly important. Our students, of course need to know the information, but it is becoming increasingly important that they can creativly use the knowledge they have!!

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  5. New Box - Allow the students to generate their own topics for paragraph writing.

    "Creativity Crisis" - DUH! This is not a new concept.

    The Principal is not allowing my creativity because she is not letting me brainstorm.

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  6. According to the Creativity article, we are supposed to "Forget Brainstorming." I do like the comment about "Get Moving". So, get physical and that will boost your level of creativity! All of you who are exercising before or after school, we should see increased levels of creativity. Get Moving!

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  7. I am implementing the "Daily 5" with my class this year. My goal is for my students to choose one of the Daily 5 skills to do each day. In trying to this and allow my students some choice and creativity with choosing this each day.

    Also, allowing them to have some writing choices for journal writing in the morning and letting them make their own choices.

    As far as the article I agree that it isn't just happening in art and music, but creativity isn't declining or disappearing. It is being nutured still in the classroom. We do encourage students to go further than just coming up with an answer or solution. I agree that students alternate between both divergent and convergent thinking constantly within a school day.

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  8. As far as a response to Kelley's challenge, I put a piece of paper in the center of each table and wrote a number on the paper. Each table talked about the number and every child drew a set to match their number. This was also a quick way for me to see who understood the number set concept.

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  9. To include more creativity in lessons I had students create a elephant of their own after reading the anthology Elmer which described a elephant using text instead of pictures. We also have been reading about Jonny Appleseed and students have been exploring many different types of apples and different things you can make with apples.

    To respond to our box goal of challenging boys to be more involved. I’ve been including more phonics games working on beginning sounds. Seeing the competitive side of boys!

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  10. We are so creative in kindergarten all the time. I let the kids make patterns with flannelboard shapes the other day. More to come...

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  11. I have added some fun hands on activities. This week we are reading about Johnny Appleseed. To extend that we tried drying apples using an electric dryer.

    I think we do lots of creative things here at Explorer.

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  12. Teaching the struggling math students has been a real challenge this year, but it has allowed me to be more creative by adding new and various strategies. For example, we went over some multiplication strategies and I showed them some patterns and ways to help remember how to multiply. Then they worked in groups to come up with their own mnemonics for some facts and we shared them in class.

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  13. Before introducing Multiplication Baseball- I had "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" as they worked on soem independent work. Once they recognized it they immeiately thought it was for the Rockies! When I said we would be playing soem baseball they were HOOKED! They loved the game and used great math/baseball vocabulary!!

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  14. We are working on having the children respond to quotes by various naturalists weekly as part of our reflections theme. We are reading many stories that require the students to think critically and problem solve.

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  15. I'm trying to be more creative in my reading lessons, but I don't want to re-write what I had tried to post earlier because it was so deep and articulate I don't think I could re-create that thought.

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  16. I added a new website for the students to use, as well as hopefully the teachers. It is a mecca for creativity in drawing and writing and storyboarding. Kerpoof, now used by second - fifth graders, allows them to do their own artwork, share with others online, and has other areas like spell-a-picture, storybooks, movies. The more creative and complicated their drawing is, the more "koins" they are rewarded with, and koins can be used at the "store". They can buy more brushes, textures, sounds, movie props, etc. Also they can buy things for their avatar they created to represent themselves in their virtual world. Pixar sponsors the website. www.kerpoof.com

    I have not yet read the article, will do so and respond later to the question.

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  17. By the time we are done with exercising we are SO done with creativity! All creativity is sucked out of us ... so, my "brainstorm" is to ditch the exercise and "Get Creative!"

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  18. Got creative today and created a 21st century skills poster as a visual reminder of the skills that I am using and the ones that I need to work on. Its very interesting how many skills we are using that we are not aware of.

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  19. Trying to make handwriting fun is a challenge, but after our last meeting, I tried by using group work to solve a creative problem. I separated the class into groups of three and their job was to have one person find all of the letters that hang down below the line, one to find all of the tall letters and one to include all of the rest. It used creative problem solving as the kids tried to figure out which letters they had missed. It was a fun way to reinforce what we had been practicing in handwriting.

    In our box, I have not been doing the best job with our problem solving strategy of asking questions when the kids come up to tattle. I need to continue working on this.

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  20. Our field trip is very original. We truly experienced a rural area: goats, turkeys, geese, ducks, antelope, miniature horses, etc. We saw a tree that was dug and balled for transport. We saw greenhouses full of plants. We observed the neighborhood. When we returned, we wrote about what we loved, what was different and what was something we would like to share with our parents.

    Collaborating happens in math as kids discuss numbers and correct their work together.

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  21. Immediately after Kelley's lesson, I tried adding some fun to the drudgery of our handwriting/ letter review by using smelly markers. The kids were so excited, nevermind their colored noses.. We have been trying to make math more hands-on and interactive to bring the fun back to first grade. Today, my kids got to explore "red boxes" full of fun manipulatives while I taught small group math,

    We haven't added any strategies to our problem solving focus, but we have been doing a LOT of responding to the children's problems with a question. They are beginning to be better problem solvers, bit by bit.

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  22. I added a game to our rural,urban, suburban unit that the kids enjoyed which included a variety of clue cards for the various neighborhoods. There was lots of movement with the game and in their cooperative groups.

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  23. My kids did some creative thinking today when we were reading our thrilling StoryTown story entitled "The Van". It was about a group of animals who put too much stuff in the van and the van wouldn't go. The animals solved it by making a make shift trailer. I asked my kids how they would solve the problem differently and once we got past the picking up and carrying the van, they had some good ideas. Some surprising kids came up with good ideas like taking 2 vans instead of one.

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  24. After Kelly's meeting we acted out our robust words! The students had a lot of fun and were able to learn the definition of the words. Talk about collaboration -- we switch for reading and had to collaborate as a team. Also, today we went on our first field trip. WE were able to collaborate again!

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  25. 1. After being challenged to add creativity to my lesson, I decded to add a component of group collaboration with novels. The kids were really engaged and spent 45 minutes on the activity and didn't want to stop.

    2. As a grade level we have added MI with our Social Studies curriculum and our interviews and job applications for AmeriTowne

    3. Still need to read it!

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  27. My students are working on being creative with their flip cams. They are coming up with responses to questions about their experiences with Ameritown, weekend activities, etc.....filming each other's responses and evaluating their own. They write words and comments about how they need to practice to improve intelligibility and then compare their accuracy with my scores for them. They are coming up with creative, more compex responses and are motivated by the opportunity to evalute themselves. We're having lots of fun.

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  28. I am also implementing "Daily 5" and the CAFE strategies with my students as much as possible. We only have 3 choices and it can't be daily, but it gives them choice in what they read, how they read and what and how they write. Instead of just using Storytown as I have in the past this is allowing my students to be more in charge of their reading.

    I am using data to help me group and work with my students (especially in 1st grade).

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  29. Jane did this already...the system is dumb!

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  30. New teacher made games will be implemented in Spanish to reinforce semester vocabulary.

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  31. artyanne said:

    I am thinking of new art projects--thinking in a new box. Check out the 5th grade wire sculptures made from recycled materials. I am encouraging students to take this creativity back to the classroom and implementing it their work.

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  32. I am having my K - 5 Deployment Support Group students create posters listing and illustrating their coping skills. These posters will be displayed in the hallways for students, teachers, and parents to see. This will give students an opportunity to show others in a creative way what they do to stay strong while their parent is serving in the military overseas.

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  33. I just want to be Bill Nye's girl and it keeps erasing my post!

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  34. When reading Mouse and the Motorcycle, we designed motorcycles and learned vocab (i.e. throttle) by labeling parts. We also made mouse crash helmets.

    When doing our Law Unit, we did a mock trial to create an "authentic" experience that involve question writing and evaluation.

    One thing in this article that caught my attention was the following, "When faculty of a major Chinese faculty asked Plucker to identify trends in American education, he described our focus on standardized curriculum, rote memorization, and nationalized testing. "After my answer was translated, they just started laughing out loud," Plucker says. 'They said, "You're racing towards our old model. But we're racing toward your model, as fast as we can.'" Does this not stop you in your tracks?

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  35. Way to go Hawks!!
    I've been following your Blog and it is evident that you have certainly been focused on planning and facilitating lessons that foster creativity! Thinking like an elementary student, I would love to be a part of the learning in the classrooms mentioned here on the Blog.

    To add to your "box" of instructional strategies, I've listed a website below that will take you to an aricle callled, Teaching For Creativity: Two Dozen Tips. I hope you will take some time to explore the ideas and weave them into your instructional repertoire! See you soon! :)

    http://www.cdl.org/resource-library/articles/teaching_creativity.php

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  36. I finished reading the articles from Kelley.

    Both of the articles are thought provoking. It is good to know that creativity can be taught. I was left wondering how I can incorporate some of ideas into my small groups. I find it especially hard when I teach such a specific topic - letter names, vocabulary. It gives me something to think about - ways I can incorporate more problem solving, creativity - divergent and convergent thinking.

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  37. In ECE its all about creativity. Openended art projects, comments on stories, hands on activities, and lots of free choice time.

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  38. We always add creativity to our kindergarten lessons. It is essential to add hands-on activities to our lessons.

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  39. After reading a book about a village in Africa and how mangoes are a fruit that is eaten there the kids were able to taste a mango. We talked about their favorit kinds of fruit and if they could created their own fruit, what would it be?

    They thought about it and and came up a several different ideas of what a new fruit would be.
    Some of their ideas were aporge for a cross between an apple and orange. It would have juice like an apple, but have orange pieces. Another idea was a strawberry banana. It looked like a strawberry, but the inside was like a banana and the outside was like a strawberry. Two students really had a hard time visualizing what a fruit that had two or three different kinds of fruit would look like. My other two students helped out. Interesting!

    I began a new reading program after conferences which has individualized skills for each student in the group. Oral drills address individual skills that they may be week on (what are the two different kinds of letters, what does short u
    say?) Phonemic awareness skills are individualized for what the particular student's weaknesses are. Each student works on word attack skills that are in their deficit areas.
    Fluency drills at their level and then the student graphs their own progress. It has been interesting at the kids responses to their classmates success when they pass one level and acheive the next level. They have been very excited for their fellow peers and have cheered them on.

    The one thing that jumped out at me was that our creativity scores are declining. Even though it is not conclusive as to why, it can be observed that the young kids of today are not being exposed to creative play. The video games, the long hours in front of the TV and the lack of interactive play with peers are contributing factors. Years ago you had to be creative and create pretend places and pretend things. Now with the video games with virtual reality, everything is created for them. The kids are not using the creativity skills that were used in the past.

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  40. I look forward to working with all of you on Tues., Jan. 4th to continue our work around Critical and Creative Thinking. I will be referring to the following website and have posted it here so that you will have it available to you.

    www.fno.org (Filling your Toolbox with Questioning Strategies)
    www.fno.or/bio/biomak2.htm (Writing Biographies)

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