Creatitivity in Schools

 

When you think of creativity in school, most people refer to the arts. Budget cuts across education have forced many schools to reconsider the necessity of these areas. In a world of continually growing demands of standardized testing, creativity has been forced to take a back seat in our schools. I have heard multiple teachers share the idea, "If it's not on the test, there's no time for it in our classroom." As a first grade teacher I do not have quite as many demands on me as teachers in the upper elementary and beyond do when it comes to standardized testing, but even without that demand, I feel a pinch for time with district expectations for core subjects. So what is the school's role in the creative process, especially when the arts are slowly being eliminated from our schools?

Do schools kill creativity?

In his Ted Talks, Ken Robinson states that students "don't grow into creativity, they grow out of it" (Robinson, K, 2007). According to this belief, it is  our job as educators to not develop, but to foster creativity in our students. It is much more difficult to encourage creativity than it is to encourage the already creative mind. So how do we do this? Ken Robinson believes that, "If your not prepared to be wrong, you can't be creative" (Robinson, K, 2007). As a first grade teacher, its easy to witness the fearlessness of failure, and along with that the phenomenon of natural creativity. Students at 5,6, and 7 year old salivate over the opportunity to express themselves through art and creativity, but as the demands of our rigourous curriculum get their hands on them, they slowly experience that wrong answers and mistakes are common in education. I believe that it is important for students to experience failure and mistakes, but how we help our students deal with that and overcome those mistakes will have everything to do with their comfort levels in creativity. So how do we help students incorporate their desire to express themselves artistically while meeting the demands of a content heavy curriculum? I believe that technology holds the answer.

Digital media and creativity in the classroom....

With a plethora of online software and applications available through computers and other media devices, opportnities for students to be creative with technology is everywhere. Writing in first grade is a detrimental part of our curriculum, and because of this it is very time consuming. Every year I have a decent percentage of my class that will write, but demands a high level of motivation from me to fight through the difficult process. This year was the first of my three years that I decided to incorporate digital storytelling in my classroom. Students were informed that their writing would be turned into a digital story, but this would take some creativity and a lot of hard work on their part. There wasn't a student in the class not willing to take on the task. There was one particular day when students were doing some final touches on their illustrations for their story and it was time to stop to move to recess. The students literally asked me if they could "do recess later so they could work on their projects." I don't know if this is common, but this was completely a new feeling to me. In an area where my motivation to students was required to help them through, ALL students were not engaged in order to finish their illustrations so we could scan them into the computer. Creativity was present and the students were in love. They knew that right around the corner they would be on the computer narrating their stories and adding their illustrations to their words on the screen. This was their story, and their creation, and even though it was writing it didn't matter.

I know this is just a single example of how creativity motivated my students, but I have other since this project, and I am sure many more to follow. There are so many ways to incorporate creativity and the arts into our core subject areas, so they no longer need to be viewed as seperate entinties but as collaborative tools that our students can use. Digital media and technology has made it easier than ever to allow students to express their creativity while demonstrating their understanding of the necessary areas, so why not let the two go hand in hand so we can continue to aid students creativity and not kill it.

  

Robinson, Ken. (2007). Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity? – January 2007. Retrieved May 27, 2013 from YouTube Website: http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Media Infused Project

As part of my EDIM 508 class, we were asked to create a Media Infused Presentation. The purpose of the project was to help us to learn to foster the development of the disciplined and synthesizing mind. Because this was my first time using Prezi, and I teach at the lower elementary level, it was difficult to create a project that focused on these skills while creating something that could be used independently in the classroom.

My favorite part of using Prezi was that fact that it allowed me to create a presentation that a student could use independently at a learning center. The content of my Prezi was based on the Life Cycle of a Butterfly. Before and after each section of the presentation, students were asked to think about what might happen, and follow up with what happened throughout the life cycle. Although this did not necessarily foster the development of the synthesizing mind, students would be expected to make connections to other life cycles that we have looked at in previous units of study. They would have to draw on prior knowledge and understanding in order to make predictions of what would happen in the life cycle of a butterfly.

By allowing students to be exposed to multiple forms of media and complete the lesson independently, it would also allow for me to work with other small groups to follow up on the lesson. This would be an opportunity to connect other activities that would help me to encourage the use of the disciplined and synthesized mind.

The hardest part of this assignment was trying to develop a presentation that could be completed in parterships of independently with 5-6 year olds while trying to foster the disciplined mind. Now that I am gaining more undertanding of what types of lessons this would entail, as well as understanding how to use Prezi, I think future projects will be much easier to create and implement with this age group. I look forward to creating many of these over the summer to use in my classroom for the upcoming school year.

You can view my Prezi on "The life cycle of butterflies" by clicking here.

The Synthesizing Mind

Working through this unit was difficult for me because I realize that I might not be reaching the needs of my students for developing a synthesizing mind. Although I see my students doing this, it is not an active practice for us in the classroom. After reading through Howard Gardner's "Five Minds for the Future",  I realize I need to be actively engaging my students in this practice.

In order to synthesize, Gardner names four components: A goal, a starting point, a method or approach, and a draft.

One way my students completed these four component this year was through a project involving robots. We read both science fiction and non-fiction texts on robots, We watched an informational fiction film on robots and spent time discussing many advantages and disadvantages of robots. Our goal was to decide what life would be like with robots, we started by gathering as much legitimate information we could on robots, then we decided we would create a narrative to share our thoughts on how our personal life might be different if we had a robot. The final step (draft) came through a digital story. 

I feel that due to the age level of the students, the amount of information, and the difficulty of the final project, students had to use a synthesizing mind in order to demonstrate their understanding of how life would be different with a robot. I have shared two stories below for your enjoyment. 

Gardner, H. (2007). Five minds for the future. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Kindle Edition

EDIM 508

Unit 2

Two science units that I do in first grade are frogs and bees. Although I have a great amount of age appropriate books on the content, it is hard for the students to fully appreciate lify cycles of frogs without the videos from discovery. For frogs I use a video called "The development of tadpoles:Metamorphosis" to help the students get an up close and personal look at what happens during the process of metamorphosis. Although students already have some background knowledge on frogs and they are already engaged, this is when the students become highly interested in metamorphosis. Seeing this happen (even on a video) really helps to students to experience the change.

Another great video I use from discovery is for bees. Although I also use videos from Youtube and The Magic School Bus for bees, they all play a vital part in helping students to see first hand how bees communicate and work together. I have even had a local apiary come in with their bees but the kids still aquired more knowledge and were more engaged from seeing the up close action of the bees from the videos. Although I think it is important to provide real life expreiences as well as text to introduce and reinforce content, seenig the videos have helped students to better understand the information and retain much of the vital content.