Find Excitement and Play to Strengths
In my Children's Literature class, we do something like this that I believe could be used in an elementary classroom as well. We have groups called "Book Clubs," where basically small groups of students in the class read books. There are about four groups, depending on the number of students in the class, and each group reads a different book. In other words, the students have the freedom to choose what book they want to read for that time. After we read the books, we are required to write journal entries about our thoughts of the book. Along with those journal entries, we have to do what she calls a "Creative Journal" for one of them. This is where the creativity comes in. She doesn't give a lot of guideline as to how she wants these entries to be done. Her only criteria is that it has a "creative" aspect. Students can do anything from writing a poem about the book, writing a letter to a character in the book, or writing an extension chapter of the story to making something artistic about the book or writing a song about it and performing the song. I like this idea because it allows students to build up what they are excited about or really enjoy doing. For instance, I like to write poems, so I wrote a poem about how the character was feeling during the story. Maybe some students are really talented artists and want to draw a scene from the book; our teacher encourages us to do what we feel is appropriate for us and the story. This particular idea is exactly what I think the last point of creativity (find excitement and play to strengths) is about. It is saying that teachers should allow their students to grow at what interests them. I will definitely use this idea in my future classroom.
I think this is a great example of how to enhance creativity in the classroom. By providing students with a variety of options they're able to better use their creativity and complete the assignment in a way that best correlates with their own learning abilities. This concept also relates to encouraging creative motivation because students are better able to collaborate together and share their own creative thoughts and ideas.
ReplyDeleteI am in this class with Erica and I believe that the ability to choose which creative route we want to go is important. For example, Erica did a poem for her creative project on the book we read. However, I am not strong in the creativity poetry aspect, but I used my own creative skills to do my project of making a timeline of the story. This exemplifies the idea of modeling creativity to fit the students' need and increasing the self efficacy of the student to be able to choose the creative project he or she compete for the book club book.
ReplyDeleteI really like this example. I am in X460 and love that we get to choose what books we want to read. It immediately makes me more interested in the book, because I had control over what I wanted to read. I think this approach can also be done in an elementary or junior high setting, with students choosing from a group of four of five books that revolve around a common theme. I also really like this idea because at least for me, I feel more comfortable sharing my ideas and thoughts on a book when I am in a smaller group, rather than the entire classroom.
ReplyDeleteI also really like the idea of the creative journal. I believe it gets students much more involved in the book than having them simply write a summary of it. This idea makes the take a much more complex and in-depth look into the book, and also gives them a choice in how they want to organize and present the information. Some students, like Erica, may enjoy writing poems, while other students might love writing the next chapter of the book. Giving students many options and allowing many different types of work will encourage creativity and engage students in a way that a paper or summary cannot.