Maximising Creative Learning Opportunities

Written by Alexandra Read; Coordinator for Digital Teaching and Learning, ACS Hillingdon.

Creativity in the classroom doesn’t happen by chance. Maximising opportunities for students to be creative in their learning is a carefully planned process that involves the collective efforts of the entire school community.

Classrooms that foster and encourage creativity emerge from a common understanding by our teachers and school leaders that effective learners use creativity and imagination to address big questions. Becoming an effective learner is one of three ACS student learning outcomes that drive our school-wide strategic curriculum plans.

Students in Jeremy Williamson’s coding and media classes in grades 5 through 8 are guided through a phased approach to the creative process for class activities which begins with defining a problem, imagining possible solutions by exploring ideas, creating a product that responds to a problem and then refining through review and reflection. This structure of DEFINE, IDEATE, CREATE and REFINE is embedded into every class to ensure that the creative process is exposed and embedded into the delivery of curriculum.

Developing creativity

A large part of developing creativity is helping students understand their own creative potential and nurturing their creative self-efficacy. The late Sir Ken Robinson PhD, an international authority on the subject of creativity raises a national concern in his bestselling book Out of Our Minds (2020) that young people are becoming less creative as they matriculate through school, believing that creativity is at its peak in their younger years and is reserved for fine arts and music class as they get older. Our teachers help students to articulate how they are creative and determine what kind of creative individual they are growing into by asking them to think about their own creative persona and develop an understanding of their unique learning profile.

Students in grades 11 and 12 complete a survey about their approaches to learning. The survey asks them to rate themselves on a range of learning skills, including providing creative ideas when approaching problems. The self-evaluation provides a springboard for discussions with teachers about their learning strengths and challenges, and also helps them to identify examples from their learning experiences. This reflection forms the foundation for setting their own goals and learning targets for the year. We have found that when students take charge of their own learning they are empowered to forge a pathway that belongs to them and has personal meaning and importance.

Make Thinking Visible

Thinking can be a very private process because it takes place inside the brain. Similarly, creativity in education can only be recognised when it is unleashed and emerges from our students’ mental landscape in learning activities, discussions, assignments, projects and exhibitions. Our classrooms are set up to help students articulate and share their thinking with their peers and teachers. Examples of making thinking visible include writable surfaces that help students express their ideas when working in collaborative groups. Our maths and modern foreign language teachers use hand held dry erase boards and our coding and media Think Tank has writable wall surfaces to encourage our students to think aloud using drawings and words to share their ideas with each other. Student work is on display in classrooms, corridors and audio visual displays throughout the school serving as a window into the imagination of learners of all ages and all subjects.

Providing a range of options for students to demonstrate their understanding allows students to explore their ideas using a variety of media. The Apple suite of applications are used by teachers as a sandbox for students to play with their ideas and express themselves creatively using a combination of images, words and sounds. Our lower school has been an Apple Distinguished School since 2016 when Sue Wakefield and the Principal Michelle Erikson wrote their first book Changing Culture, describing how the use of iPads transformed the learning culture in grades Pre-K – 4. Their follow up book Continuous Innovation published in 2017 showcased how our lower school teachers use a range of technology and applications with their students to reshape their learning experience.

This academic year 2021/22, the Lower School program continues to use technology where appropriate, as a catalyst for achieving their desired learning outcomes and maximising creative opportunities in the classroom. Apple’s ‘Everyone Can Create’ professional development programme will be an integral piece of our school-wide learning for the remainder of 2021 and into 2022 as we embark on our first year as an Apple Regional Training Center, hosting trainings for ACS teachers and local schools to understand how to develop and enrich teaching with technology to provide more creative opportunities for students.

References

Robinson, K. (2020) Out of our Minds: The Power of Being Creative. Third Edition. Capstone. Publishing Ltd, United Kingdom

Wakefield, S. & Erikson, M. (2016) Changing Culture: The Impact of iPad Integration on the Lower School Programme. 

Wakefield, S. & Erikson, M. (2018) Continuous Innovation.