The Creative Individual
2/14/2020
Even as second graders, students at PNA know that they are encouraged and expected to be creative. When we were writing our classroom guidelines at the beginning of the year, one student proposed "Be Creative" as one of our guidelines for the class to work towards this year. During our early conversations on growth mindset and how to stretch your brain, students read "Beautiful Oops." This great book shows that not only is it okay to make mistakes, but that it's an opportunity to be creative. "Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun." -- Mary Lou Cook While it's easier to be creative in certain subjects, such as in art or writing, there are still opportunities for individual creativity in other areas as well. Take math for example. Most of the time, math can be seen as a strict sequential subject with little room for deviation into the creative realm. However, some recent activities the second graders worked on show that there is a bit of room for fun and creativity. Studies have shown that visuals help with comprehension, retention of content in long term memory, and transmit information to the brain faster than text. They can also be very motivating to learners, such as these math activities were. The first activity involved students creating snowman cards in order to create a class chart in which they explored repeated addition, patterning and multiplication. The creation of the snowman cards is a creative endeavor in and of itself; however, some students showcased their natural creativity even more so and still managed to stay within the constraints of the project - having a snow person with three snowballs on each card. "Creativity involves breaking out of expected patterns in order to look at things in a different way." -- Edward de Bono Another example shows a different way of looking at units of measurement. Using visual representations of inchworms, "footworms" and "yardworms" students were converting the typical units of measurement - inches, feet and yards - by visualizing them as worms. These "worms" were helpful to each other as the bigger "worms" gave the little "worms" rides on their backs. Students were able to measure and create their own individual worms to work with and collaborated with each other to figure out problems such as "If 100 inchworms were waiting for a ride, how many yardworms would be needed?" or "Could 3 footworms fit on one yardworm's back?" Not only is this another way for students to visualize the relationship between units of measurement, it also gave them another change to exercise their creativity. "Creativity doesn't wait for that perfect moment. It fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones." -- Bruce Garrabrandt Everyday in 2nd grade brings about opportunities for every student to exercise their creativity and individualism in each and every subject area. They are comfortable in being themselves and each student is respected as the unique individual they are.
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Marcella HitchcockMs. Hitchcock teaches second grade, is a mom of two, an avid reader, lifelong learner, and a seeker of sunshine! Archives
March 2021
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