Do you find yourself standing over the copier with your latest worksheet for your students? Do you ask yourself, “Is there a more engaging and creative way to have my students demonstrate their mastery?” If your answer is YES!, then read on. Creativity excites our students to learn, practice risk-taking, support emotional growth, and sets our students up for success in their future lives. Here are 3 ways you can easily increase creativity in your classroom.
- Have students engage in sketchnoting with iPad and an app like Notability or Explain Everything. You’ll be amazed at what you can learn when you see visually how your students interpret content. Take it one step further by allowing them to add their own audio thoughts to the file. Imagine doing laundry and hearing your students explain long division. You will know right away if they understand the concept or not! Talk about useful information. Remember that you have access to 40 iPads and stylus pens in the Middle School.
- Allow students to create a beautiful webpage on a topic they are studying as a formative assessment using Adobe Spark. This site is similar to Canva, but is a slimmed down version. I also love the availability of a report template for student reports, journaling, how-to’s, etc. Let’s seek out opportunities to allow students to use the skills they will need in the real/digital world that they will undoubtedly inhabit in their future professions.
- Have your class document growth over time by taking one snapshot a day of a work sample, science experiment, or use time lapse videos for projects over time. Being able to document learning in real time is unlike any other data. It allows for multiple learning modalities, reflective practice, and discussion points. If you are uncomfortable allowing students to use an ipad for this there are some amazing apps like One Second Everyday, Apple Clips, BeReal that you could use on your phone and then share the images/videos with your students in class.
These three ideas are methods that anyone can try out quickly. With a little guidance, most students already have the skills to create beautiful content as well as demonstrate learning using multiple modalities. Remember the key to this success is to be able to share this content back to you. One simple work flow is to have everything saved in either Google Drive or through Google Classroom. If you want an even faster way to have them share what they create there is always Airdrop on mobile devices and laptops. As with everything I share I am here for you to make these ideas come to life. Always reach out!
https://www.iste.org/explore/5_Reasons_Why_It_Is_More_Important_Than_Ever%20_Teach_Creativity
Ensworth Techie Tigers 