Hello there. I am dedicating my blog to “Wow” moments in teaching. These moments are creative teaching lessons and experiences that excite the students and often the teachers as well.
My first blog refers to an article I read entitled, “We Want the Wow Factor” by Naomi Westland http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/may/26/creativity-schools. This article is about how certain schools in England are changing the curriculum to make a “creative curriculum”. This curriculum still teaches the students what they need to know, but takes a broad theme and uses that theme to aid in teaching classes for a half term or up to a full term. For instance, some of the themes used were castles, aliens, space, water, and minibeasts. These themes often present a lot of history or geography, but the schools also find ways to relate them to all subjects. The tough part of this new curriculum is making sure it still meets national curriculum objectives. This is tough being it is taking a risk and thinking more outside of the box. However, with this new curriculum in effect, behavioral problems have “evaporated” and it has made the teachers enthusiastic and the students willing to learn. Teachers are not sitting around lecturing to the students and are there more to help promote the creative learning process. Due to this, teacher morale is up.
Most activities are hands on and students often go on field trips to experience learning. For instance, the article explained how the children were learning about castles and were making a traditional Chinese Dish that people would eat in the castles in China. For learning about Medieval Castles the students get to dress up in the appropriate dress for the time period. These activities excite the children and they often go home telling their parents what they learned in school, which is instead of the parents having to drag it out of them.
Another idea that I found interesting is all students who go to a school that incorporates this type of learning has to learn an instrument. I myself being a band teacher, agree this is important and infuses culture and teaches the students about not only culture, but also incorporates history, geography, and math. I can see why the schools would want to make this a must for every student.
I personally found this to be a very interesting article and thought it gave a lot of great ideas of how to make your lessons exciting for you and your students. However, I do think that starting a “creative curriculum” would take a lot of time and planning. It would need to be exciting and activities would need to be planned out, but also it would be somewhat difficult to make sure it lined up with the national curriculum. It would be good though because people are always talking about cross curricular activities and I can easily see how this would be perfect for doing those types of activities. Those are my thoughts, what are yours?
Westland, N. (2009) We Want the Wow Factor. Retrieved on May 27, 2009, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/may/26/creativity-schools
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This seems like a really cool idea. It seems to cater to many different learning styles. When I teach Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" I make each student take on a character and have a prop of costume piece with them so that students can associate something with the character. It helps them to differentiate between the characters. The idea you blogged about would be similar except spread throughout the curriculum. Seems like it would take a LOT of cooperation from the staff.
ReplyDeleteEvergreen State University in Olympia, Washington does not teach traditional English 101, Speech 110, Math 103, Biology 111, etc... Instead, they teach courses such as Environmental Studies, which has a math component, a speech component, a writing component, and a science component. The course is worth 12 credits, and students do not get a grade for it (A, B, C, etc...), but instead a report from the instructors on their strengths and weaknesses in the course. It's quite a different direction that some other schools are considering.
ReplyDeleteI would love to see actual academic data on these kids. Their behavior improved but did they learn anything? Personally, I am a huge believer that todays kids actually think differently. Sitting them in quiet straight rows and making them drill or listen to paragraphs read out of the book simply are not the most effective way to teach them. I don't know that I would go so far as to say we need to entertain them, but we do need to give them a reason to be interested. I am a super strong advocate of technology for this very reason. I am also a strong believer in the concepts of multiple intelligences, so I am convinced some kids need to put their hands on things to learn. Others need to see things and so on, so our teaching methods and our teaching environments must be varied. I think the examples of kids dressing up or cooking meals would be very effective. However, they cannot be all there is. the whole point cannot be to entertain them or make everything fun. I think it has to be a combination of the interesting and the academic, combined with freedom based on personal responsibility
ReplyDeleteMany teachers dabble in theme based instruction, but I am not aware of any situations where the entire school uses theme based instruction. The biggest challenge would be the planning. If a district would provide teachers planning time, this form of instruction could have life changing effects on the students. Changes include behavior problems would decrease since the students are engaged and students would learn how the information is related not because a textbook tells them they must learn the material.
ReplyDeleteI do several units in my class. These units are the most enjoyable time of the school year for the students and me. I need to do a better job of thinking outside the box and finding ways I can tie various standards together and form more hands-on learning in each subject I teach.