Good morning! I know, Anne and I haven't posted for months, and now I've posted twice in two days. I think it's because I'm getting antsy for all things school and third grade. I'm getting excited to get back into my classroom to clean and decorate. It's one of my favorite things to do. However, once I'm given the "okay" to go in, my days will be a whirlwind, so I wanted to take advantage of this calm moment to share some cool websites I learned about while taking a graduate literacy course this summer.
The course was called Activating Students' Creative Thinking Through Literacy ELA Grades K-5. I did not realize the rigor these concepts, theories and activities would provide for our students and us. It is all very exciting. Below is an excerpt from my final research paper that may give you some insight into the course objectives.
“If we teach today’s students as we did yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.”
John Dewy
According to Module One’s foundation reading resource, activating students’ creativity is vital because it will aid educators in teaching students how to be flexible in their thinking, so when they encounter new situations they can solve problems in innovative ways. We must explicitly teach our students to think creatively because they are going to be performing jobs and having careers that have not even been invented yet. We need to change our teaching so it matches what our students will face when they leave our classrooms. Now more than ever, we need to teach our students how to be creators and innovators, (Spencer, 2019).
“Creative Teaching and Teaching Creativity” (2018), as well as Module One’s foundation text, had similar definitions for the word creativity. It is the “generation of a new product that is both novel and appropriate in a particular scenario.” Research has shown that creativity increases motivation, deepens understanding and helps students develop intrinsic rewards and enjoyment. These feelings lead to life-long learners, which is my ultimate goal as a teacher. According to the article, implementing activities that promote creativity, help students make cross-curricular connections, which in turn deepens understanding.
To synthesize everything I learned in this course, I wrote a lesson plan that includes seven literacy activities that will give students opportunities to make their thinking visible and divergent. The lessons are designed to help students move from the knowledge level of visualization to a deep understanding of this literacy strategy. Not only is the visualization reading strategy one of our favorites, we believe it is one of the more useful strategies our students can use to deepen their reading comprehension, as well as their love of reading.
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| You can find this entire lesson plan bundle on our TpT store. |
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Below is a website that explains this thinking strategy: See Think Wonder. You can use this strategy with any lesson, however in this plan I use it with the Newsela article titled Sunglass Cat. |
You can use this strategy with any text, too. In my lesson plan I use it with Dog Breath: The Horrible Trouble with Hally Tosis by Dave Pilkey.
I cannot wait to use these lesson plans in the fall. I'm most excited about my kick-off lesson. Anne and I are going to dress up like movie directors complete with sunglasses, megaphone, beret, and clapboard. This is because we teach visualization as making a movie in our minds. The kids will all get a pair of movie star glasses, too, to use when we visualize various texts and genres. This lesson plan bundle includes visualizing poems, music, fiction and non fiction texts. At the end, the students must use their understanding of visualization to design an animal shelter. It will be the first time we will incorporate a project-based activity when teaching reading strategies.
Below are some websites I found useful when researching how to activate my students' creativity. We hope you find them helpful, as well.
I will try to post our first day scavenger hunt and our safari outfits we wear on the first day of school later this week. Otherwise, Anne and I will post it when she gets back from vacation.
Have a great rest of your summer.
Kim
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