The Creative Teacher

Tuesday, 25 October 2011

Creative Analysis

Using a "control panel" to focus students on key aspects of genres or text types - or anything really! You could use it in a very abstract way for extra creative challenge, eg. how "hot" "loud" or "spiky" is a piece of text?

http://www.teachingexpertise.com/e-bulletins/creative-thinking-classroom-learning-how-analyse-6843

Sunday, 23 October 2011

Wonderwall

How to make a classroom display interactive?

Before a new topic, make a display full of clues and riddles as to what that topic is going to be.

2. Loads of post-it notes for students to add to display - here, imperative verbs for a recipe.

3. Use laminated card to display shared success criteria.

4. Venn diagrams made with hula-hoops. Why is an argument text like a space-rocket? Why is learning like a conker? Why is Curley's wife like Lennie?

5. De Bono hat display made with real hats - pupils wear them when "thinking" aloud.

6. Socratic debate. Students use Bloom's question starters to generate open philosophical questions on a topic.

7. Dare to Read or Extreme Reading display, where suggestions for extreme reads/ photos of students reading in unusual places are displayed. Or pupils' suggestions for "the rights of a reader"...

Or cover wall with black bin bags for horror fiction display...

8. Go 3D!

9. Have a Wonderwall for incredible students' work. Automatic merits/house-points if any work appears on it.

10. Brightly coloured envelopes for students' research. They could go to the library/computer first, then post their findings.

11. Why can't secondary school classrooms be more like primary schools?

12. Displays should show the learning process, not the perfectly neat end result.

13. High-light punctuation and grammar: show moveable clauses with velcro; personify punctuation; link punctuation usage to levels; show the pupils' proof-reading and peer assessment. Display the process.

14. Or is a calm, ordered, uncluttered classroom the best display of all..?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1534477/Tear-down-your-distracting-classroom-displays-skills-agency-tells-teachers.html

Monday, 17 October 2011

Jack and Jill scamper up the hill

Guided writing: pupils retell each part of the "Jack and Jill" story using SCAMPER or CREATE.

SUBSTITUTE

COMBINE

ADAPT

MAGNIFY

PURPOSE

ELIMINATE

REVERSE

Jack and Bill went up the hill.
Jack and Jill went up the hill, whilst the Big Bad Wolf awaited them...
Jack's wife knew he'd gone up that hill again with Jill...
Jack and Jill climbed the huge mountain.
Jill shadowed Jack, keeping her sawn-off shotgun well hidden...
Jack was a loner; he sat in his cave in the hill, and never a soul did he see.
They fell, first Jack, then Jill. Painfully, they began the long climb up..?

What about applying it to well-known stories?

What if Harry Potter was a girl?

What if Red Riding Hood knew karate?

What if the handsome princess saved the sleeping prince?
What if the annoying wheelie creatures were deleted out of the final "His Dark Materials" book?

Students can apply SCAMPER to their own stories to edit and redraft...

Saturday, 15 October 2011

My blackberry is not working...language change in the 21st century

Hahaha..!

Could use for GSCE Spoken language?
Or debate on whether technology has improved our lives?
Or for A level language..?

The script:

MY BLACKBERRY IS NOT WORKING.

– I bought something from you last week, and I'm very disappointed.

– Oh yeah? What's the problem?

– Yeah, well, my blackberry is not working.

[laughter, applause]

– What's the matter, it run out of juice?

[laughter]

– No, no, it's completely frozen!

[knocking on table]

– Oh, yeah, I can see that.

I tell you what: let's try it on orange.

[laughter]

– That's got a few black spots, you see...

– Oh, dear, yes. Sorry about that.

– Well, is there anything I can do to get my blackberry working?

– Well, could be an application issue.

Where'd you store that Blackberry?

– Well, it was on my desktop.

– Well, you could try using a mouse to drag the blackberry to the trash.

[laughter]

Then after you've done that, you might wanna launch the blackberry from the desktop.

[laughter]

– Well, I've already tried that a few times. I mean, all it did was mess up windows.

[laughter]

– [clears throat] Well, it might be worth waiting a couple of weeks.

They've got the latest blackberries coming in then.

– Well, could you give me a date?

– Certainly.

[laughter]

– Let me put that date in my diary.

[laughter]

– Anything else I can help you with?

– Yes, yes. I've also got a problem, to be honest, with my apple.

[laughter]

– Oh, dear, oh, dear. That is an old apple, isn't it?

– Yeah.

– When'd you buy that?

– Last week.

– Last week? They've brought out two new apples since then!

[laughter]

What's the problem with it?

– Well, I tried to put my dongle in it... [laughter] and it won't fit.

– Oh, yeah. [laughter]

And how big's your dongle?

– Well, I don't know much about these things, but my wife's seen a few dongles in her time... [laughter]

and she says a little bit on the small side. [laughter]

– Well, I'm afraid there's not a lot I can do about that. Tell you what: let me try booting it. [glass shatters]

Now it's crashed.

[laughter, applause]

Anything else I can help you with?

– Well, funnily enough, yes. My grandson's birthday's soon.

– Oh, yeah.

– Now, he's already got an apple and a blackberry. I mean, have you got anything else that he might just like?

– Well, we're doing a special offer on these. I mean, I can't make head or tail of them, but the kids seem to like them.

– Oh yeah?

– "Eggs box," £3.60.

[laughter, applause]

Digging for depth - the art of philosophical debate

When is a question philosophical?

using words to make sense of life
when there's another answer, not the answer
open and creative - no closed answer that only the teacher knows

Creating a Socratic community of enquiry

First you need a puzzling topic: God, Truth, Beauty, War, Death
Get the students to generate their own open questions: Is God real? Why does God kill us? Why did God make the Devil? Can you be beautiful and ugly? Is beauty on the inside and outside?
Think about what is strange, puzzling and interesting.
Get the students to devise their own rules for good discussion - always 7. Make the "difficult" pupil the "rules referee" who reminds the group of the rules.
See "Being a Groupie" post for suggested rules.
Use the plenary to discuss success of rule-following.
Use Bloom's to get a wide range of creative and critical questions - give everyone a "fan" of question openings?
Ask them to use metaphor: is philosophical discussion like a ladder? A space rocket? A maze?

Practical organisation in the classroom

All sit in a horse-shoe or circle - all equal, everyone sees everyone else.
Agree rules & focus.
Share a stimulus - You-tube clip/ recent news item/ story.
Thinking time: think, pair& share.
Thought-shower all questions - one is chosen.
Discussion, with teacher as participator. Emphasise listening skills (will be another post!)
Review - reflect on discussion's success, who showed good listening skill...

How to "dig for depth" in talk

Bloom's question "fans" (must get round to making some...)
Use the question of "truth" for characters in a book: who is honest? Who is a liar?
Give statements relating to the question and get students to rank or sort into (eg) bullying/ not bullying; true/ not true...
Thinking chain or talk tennis in pairs to generate creative ideas: each says a line of a story, stopping whenever they want to, the next continues etc.
Creating categories: classify statements into 2 groups and come up with rules for each group. Eg sentences and non-sentences, good or evil characters...

Philosophical Questions to Discuss:

How do you know you're not dreaming at this moment?
Is it right to eat animals?
What are the most important rights of young people?
Is it ever right to steal?
What is the difference between a real person and a robot?
If technology continues to advance at its current rate, will people become robots?
How can many religions be true?
If you fail, does it make you a failure?
Is an apple dead or alive?
Is there such a thing as the American Dream?
Who or what is the Inspector?
Is life better or worse for young people today than in the past?
"Reading is not a matter of life or death. It is much more important than that." Discuss!

What if..?

What if, like Ewan Mcgregor's new film "Perfect Sense", all human-kind lost one sense at a time in a global pandemic, starting with the sense of taste..? http://blog.starsinmyeyes.tv/wordpress/?p=1263
What if all homework was abolished?
What if all marking was abolished?
What if dogs doubled in size and grew superior intelligence?
What if apes grew superior intelligence? See trailer for "The Rise of the Planet of the Apes" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbCoDf44oCE
What if we never had to sleep?
What if a group of school-boys got stranded on a desert island?
What if in the blink of an eye, all grown-ups disappeared? http://www.trailerspy.com/trailer/1185/Gone-by-Michael-Grant-Trailer
What if we could read people's minds...and they could read ours?
What if you were in the middle of a party and a police inspector just walks in and knows your deepest, darkest secrets..?
What if you found out you were a wizard?

Can you pare back any book/ film to a single "what if" line?

What if you found out the reason you were in a wheel-chair is because you are a mer-boy?
What if everybody looked almost exactly alike?
What if the whole world ran out of petrol?

And finally, the last word from George Bernard Shaw...

"You see things and say "Why?" But I dream things and say, "Why not?""