The Creative Classroom: 50 Key Techniques for Imaginative Teaching and Learning (The 50 Key Techniques Series) by Sue Cowley

Author:Sue Cowley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Sue Cowley Books Ltd
Published: 2013-04-21T23:00:00+00:00

25. You can … offer the children a range of creative experiences

With the pressures of the curriculum, and the push to cover the core subjects, it seems that there is less and less time available in the school day to devote to creative projects. In many schools, the entire morning is given over to ‘the basics’, with an inevitable impact on the time available for other subject areas.

Thinking points:

* ‘Creative experiences’ can mean a whole range of things. As well as the traditional arts subjects (dance, drama, music, art), topics such as gardening and design technology offer many creative opportunities.

* For students who struggle with the basics, school must sometimes seem like a very difficult place to be. By allowing children to express themselves, and to let off some creative steam, we can hopefully re-engage them with the idea that learning is fun and exciting.

* Although the basics are clearly important, we should take care not to create a whole generation of children who get very little time for creative activity during the average day.

Tips, ideas and activities:

Bring plenty of visitors into your school, to get involved in creative activities with the children. This is perhaps especially important if yours is a small school with only a few members of staff. You could invite:

* Arts students from a nearby secondary school, sixth form or FE college;

* Local writers, poets or musicians;

* Parents who are experts on various creative subjects, for instance a graphic designer;

* A local architect or furniture maker.

A vibrant extra curricular ‘scene’ in a school is a very good indicator of staff morale. Lunch time or after school clubs offer opportunities to extend and enrich the curriculum beyond what is possible in lessons. To ease the load on staff in smaller schools, ask whether volunteers (parents, local people) might be able to run an activity for you. For instance, I have run a school magazine club for my own children’s primary school for a number of years.

If you currently only put on one school show a year (typically a Nativity play), consider whether you might add an additional performance date or two. Put the onus on the children to devise the show. You might also set up a dance competition, a music evening, a fashion show, a sculpture trail, and so on.

The more you can get your children involved in adding their own creative touches to their school, the more likely they are to respect and enjoy their environment. The children could:

* Create a mosaic version of the school badge or crest;

* Be given an ‘art (or graffiti) wall’ in the playground on which to paint their designs;

* Design a reward postcard for teachers to use as part of the behaviour system;

* Design their own Christmas cards;

* Plant and care for a small garden area in the school grounds.

Look into the idea of holding a ‘collapse’ or ‘break out’ day at your school. This is a day on which the normal timetable is suspended. During the day, students of all ages work together on creative cross-curricular projects around a central theme.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.