Creative Lessons
by Rebecca James
Not long ago, I watched an old video of my twin sons when they were 2 years old.
They were seated at the table playing with Play-Doh; their only tools were some toothpicks and their adorable, pudgy little fingers. In the span of five minutes, they made and imagined their way through about a half-dozen different scenarios. One proudly declared he was being a "'struction worker" manipulating a building out of the yellow lump in front of him. The other made a cake. It went on like that for a while, each one latching onto a different passing thought, working it out manually with the Play-Doh.
Creative benefits
When it comes to creativity, one might be inclined to argue there is a vast difference between the concept in the mind of a child versus that of an adult. Kids have constant, limitless capacity for being creative. Cardboard boxes are rockets hurtling through outer space; a box of crayons is the key to the kingdom of unique drawings; and their make-believe play will have you truly believing they are firemen or princesses.
Adults, however, will use creativity to solve a problem, make life simpler or to sell a product. They make use of their creative skills, rather than simply enjoy them for what they're worth.
Creativity also helps kids grow emotionally, not to mention act as a gateway to more effective communication. Jennifer Henk, a child and adolescent therapist with Lotus Group in Fishers, says the primary benefits of fostering creativity in children are vital to their emotional and interpersonal well-being.
"First of all, it really boosts their self-esteem," Henk says.
"It also allows the important parent-child relationship to develop, as well as allowing for fun in a nonstructured environment."
With the many demands on families - from work and school, to social and athletic commitments - there seems to be less and less time available for parents and kids to just have fun and spend some quality time together.
Embarking on a creative endeavor together, whether it's a specific project or just imagining "cloud creatures" in a sunny, summer sky, will give a child much more than a parent could ever know.
Henk says parents often times worry about not doing things the "right way" when it comes to their children. However, the beauty of spending fun, creative time with kids is that there's no way to do it wrong.
"You're not going to mess it up," she says. "Parents can struggle with acceptance from their kids, but spending time with them is great ... especially when there's no set schedule involved."
One suggestion Henk offers for families who are in constant motion, is to make the most of drive time. As you're shuttling from place to place, turn off the music and tune into the kids in the back seat. Choose any of the common car trip games to play as you make your way through town, such as the "Alphabet Game," or finding a specific color or landmark. True, these games make the time pass quickly, but the simple interaction between parent and child is even more valuable.
Even time spent around the house can prove beneficial - playing with favorite toys, making crafts, painting and cooking are all great opportunities to actively engage in creative work.
"Younger kids don't always have the vocabulary to express themselves," Henk says, "so using puppets or an object to communicate thoughts or ideas is important."
Everyday lessons
Simply put, creativity isn't just a "skill" or ability, but a true building block for children. Former teacher and current author/publisher MaryAnn Kohl has been publishing art-related books for kids since 1985, inspiring the development of creative processes.
"Creativity is as natural for children as fresh air and sunshine," Kohl says via her Web site, www.brightring.com. She also says providing creative outlets for kids gives them great childhood memories, in addition to helping them maintain their creative expression as they grow.
According to Kohl, creativity can be found in all aspects of a child's life - making it relatively easy for parents to integrate creativity in everyday activities. A simple trip to the grocery store can become an exercise in creative thinking if parents simply look past the shopping list and think about what's around them. The produce section invites discussion of colors and textures; aisle markers and sale signs encourage early readers to sound out new words and build vocabularies; even product logos or mascots can be triggers for inventing funny or exciting stories as you shop.
Westfield resident Lori Tebbe has ample opportunity to exercise creativity in young minds. She is the mother of five children and regularly baby-sits in her home.
"One of the kids' favorite activities is what we call 'The Guessing Game,'" Tebbe says, "where one child thinks of something, and it's up to the rest of us to ask questions and guess what it is."
Tebbe says this activity comes in handy with her kids - Jacob, 12; Spencer, 10; Connor, 9; Maverick, 5 and Chesney, 3 - when they're waiting, whether for lunch to be served or waiting on food in a restaurant. Since her kids are involved in sports, she says they spend a lot of time in the car, traveling to practices and games. In addition to The Guessing Game, Tebbe says her kids also enjoy playing "I Spy."
When they're not on the run, the kids love to make up a game of charades and participate in a long-standing, favorite family activity - puppet making.
"This is something my own kids enjoy, as well as those I take care of during the day," Tebbe says. "I give everyone a brown paper lunch sack, and provide a box of stuff to decorate them. They love coming up with characters and stories on their own."
Many times, the kids' characters get to star in puppet shows featuring favorite nursery rhyme themes. To make things even more fun and different, they'll change around the stories and characters a little bit for fun.
"That's something my husband, Andy, has done with our own kids," Tebbe says. "He'll read them nursery rhymes wrong on purpose ... like making it 'Baa, baa white sheep,' instead of 'Baa baa black sheep.'"
Overall, Tebbe says the kids really love the activities, especially when one of them gets to decide what they do. All the kids play together nicely, and the activities have had a definite, long-lasting impact on her older children.
"The older kids did these activities when they were younger, and now I see them taking a definite interest in helping the younger children with them," she says.
Teach your children how to let their imaginations flow
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How to Make Lab Activities More Open Ended
Alan Colburn
"How to make lab activities more open ended." CSTA Journal, Fall 1997, pp. 4-6.
When your students do laboratory activities, are they simply following directions, asking whether they are getting the "right answers," and not really learning much from the experience? Are you bored reading a hundred identical lab reports?
You probably agree with the tenets of inquiry-based instruction --- students asking and answering questions. Still, you're more comfortable and successful with the cookbook activities you've done before. You have the materials on hand. Having done the activities before, you know how long they'll take and typical difficulties students will have. To begin anew, finding different activities, and learning a new teaching style requires more time than you have --- teachers have many extra demands placed upon them.
The situation is far from ideal. But what can we do? Perhaps the school gave us a lab manual, or we feel we must cover a particular curriculum. Besides, open ended activities sound good in theory, but have you ever seen what happens if you try that? The kids have no idea what to do... there's chaos! |
In the most recent CSTA Journal, McComas ( 1997) described how "openness"--- the degree to which students make decisions about the problem, the procedure and/or the answers (p. 8) --- is often scarce during laboratory activities. He presented a table, reproduced below for classifying levels of laboratory openness.
Table 1. Schwab/Herron Levels of Laboratory Openness
LEVEL PROBLEM WAYS&MEANS ANSWERS
O Given Given Given
1 Given Given Open
2 Given Open Open
3 Open Open Open
A level 0 activity is one in which the teacher or lab manual decides the question or problem students will investigate, how students will do the investigation, and the validity of the investigation's results. Students make few decisions-other than deciding whether they got the "right answers."
A level 3 activity represents the other extreme. Students decide what to investigate, how to investigate it, and how to interpret the results they generate. Level 3 activities are what most scientists do; level 0 activities are what most students do.
Modifying Laboratory Activities
So, what is the dedicated teacher to do? Gradually modify the activities you are already doing.
To begin, analyze activities by deciding who is making the decisions --- the teacher/text or the student. Choose a couple of "cookbook" activities. They should be activities designed for goals other than teaching students particular skills --- you may better teach skills with a more step-by-step approach.
Ask these questions:
Who decides the questions students are to investigate-teacher or student?
Who decides the procedure to follow answering the question-teacher or student?
Who decides what to observe and data to collect-teacher or student?
Who decides the response to the question(s) investigated-teacher or student?
Who decides how to communicate this information, including data-teacher or student?
Analyzing most activities, the response to each question will be "teacher." On the other hand, the ideal of inquiry-based instruction is something close to that of teachers supervising student investigations. Teachers in these situations would respond "student" to most questions.
Begin changing procedures by taking a level 0 activity and making a few changes to make it more like a level 1 activity. The idea is to progressively make small changes in the activities your students do. Over the course of weeks or months, students move from doing level 0 activities to doing activities that seem more like level 2 or 3 activities. By then, they are figuring things out for themselves, interpreting results, perhaps even repeating procedures. In short, they are thinking-the way scientists do-about what they are doing!
Perhaps the easiest and best place to start is with modifying who decides how to communicate the information. Many commercial activities include a preformatted data table. The teacher can remove the data table. In other words, you give students the same laboratory activity, except the data table.
What happens to a group of students accustomed to doing activities complete with data tables, suddenly confronted with an activity lacking a table? Let's assume you told students they would need to record relevant data.
Students might initially be confused. Most likely, some fraction of students would not record anything, despite your instructions. Another group of students would record much more than, perhaps, necessary. They do not know what data are relevant; fearing an error, they record everything. Another group would record the "expected" data, but less clearly than the convenient data table otherwise provided. A fourth group would record the "expected" data and use a data table similar to that which would have been provided.
Finally, a fifth group of students would record relevant data creatively, in a manner that works for them. This last group might, for example, record information in a visually appealing manner that you never would have imagined. Those with other learning styles might create similarly imaginative methods to record their data.
Three major results happen when teachers omit data tables. First, students present a variety of data display methods. Some are easier to understand than others. The situation presents you with an opportunity to discuss and teach students about the communication skills involved in helping others see information at a glance. The chance is there to help students compare data display methods and decide which methods communicate the information most easily and pleasantly. This is a valuable skill.
Second, you won't have to look at dozens of identical lab tables when reading student lab reports. A little variety and creativity in student work makes grading less tedious. Make data presentation count for part of the lab's grade.
Third, students eventually learn to think about the data they should record and how to record it. It may take a few activities sans data table for students to realize they must do these things, but most will catch on.
More Modifications
Teachers can then consider modifying student procedures, without eliminating them. For example, you can modify (or omit) many measurements given within directions. Directions might say to put 20 ml of a solution into a test tube. Why 20 ml? Why not 18? If a student used 26 ml, would the results be different?
Consider what would happen if students were told to put "a few" or "several" rnl into the various well plates. Some would put such a small volume of liquid they couldn't see what was happening; they would learn something about why 20 ml may be optimal.
Some students might use considerably more than 20 ml. If given a limited volume of chemicals to work with, they would learn about the need to think ahead and plan, especially if they ran out of reagents and were unable to complete the activity. This latter point is something you might tell students about before beginning the activity.
As with the data table discussion above, the lack of directions may initially confuse some students. However, students do eventually catch on if the teacher perseveres.
Remember: make changes gradually. You may want to leave the data table out for a few activities before starting to modify procedures. You and your students need time to accustom yourselves to new elements of teaching and learning.
More Radical Changes
Finally, after students are used to the independent thinking that comes from activities without data tables and total step-by-step directions, they (and you) may be ready for occasional activities demanding more thought on their part. You can often distill commercial activities to a single question that students answer when doing the activity. So, rather than be given complete directions, students can simply be given the question they are to investigate. As "hints" you can give students limited materials to work with or even show a sample experimental setup. You are ultimately still in control of the environment in which students work.
Still, they must decide the order to follow when doing their work, quantities of supplies to use, what to record, and how to interpret their data. You may want to try this sort of activity after students understand relevant background information. You may also want to try this first with an easier actlvlty.
I think it is realistic to say that, if you try the changes I am advocating in this article, some students will struggle. However, in this case struggle is good. Students will eventually or immediately rise to the challenge. Higher expectations are good for teachers and students alike. So, try it! You can use materials and activities you have on hand and feel comfortable with, yet still challenge your students in ways that help them think like scientists. Isn't that why we're here?
http://www.exploratorium.edu/IFI/resources/workshops/lab_activities.html
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