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The 3 Cs TESOL Spain 2016 Workshop
- 1. The 3 Cs: Creativity, Critical Thinking & Craziness in the Primary Classroom Michelle Worgan @michelleworgan
- 2. CreativityHelps us thrive in a fast changing world CrazinessLowers affective barriers and creates a relaxed setting for learning Critical Thinkingpromotes independent thinking, personal autonomy and reasoned judgment in thought and action
- 3. The 3 Cs: classroom ingredients for successful 21st century learners Creativity Critical Thinking Craziness
- 6. ‘’ “The role of a creative leader is not to have all the ideas; it's to create a culture where everyone can have ideas and feel that they're valued.” Ken Robinson
- 8. Creative Thinking: Renaming/rethinking purpose of objects Finding things that are not there (pareidolia) Fantasy Food New Identities
- 9. A Forest of Words (brainstorming) Circle Doodles
- 10. Fingerprint people Who are they? What is their relationship? What are they saying? Fingerprint stories Describe your scene
- 11. Cats and Dogs
- 12. What are their names? Where do they live? Who are their owners? What do they like doing?
- 13. A Cat’s Birthday Party Plan the perfect birthday party for your cat. Choose: Food and drink Games Decorations Presents
- 14. Tiger Activity Book to inspire creativity Doodles All the pages have plenty of space for doodling. Doodling can help learners to remember, has a calming effect and can help us express our emotions. Simple sketches The simplicity of the artwork encourages learners to add their own drawings, without spoiling the effect. This can also help with self- esteem, especially for those who “can’t draw”. Colour Some pages are in colour, others are black and white. Some are both. The bright colours can inspire creativity while the black and white encourages the learner to provide colour. Shapes Abstract geometric shapes run through the book. Circles, squares and basic outlines keep the pages simple and clean. The shapes are just waiting to be filled! Mixed media The use of different materials and printed backgrounds creates an interesting effect. Leaners can make their own pages using collage techniques as a frame for writing. Picture frames There are some lovely pages with images as a border that can inspire creative writing. Later, learners can make their own illustrative page borders.
- 15. Creative writing Emotions dice for storytelling Different perspectives Personalisation of inanimate objects Book page frames
- 17. ‘’ “Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction. The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.” -Martin Luther King, Jr. The Purpose of Education
- 18. Formulating opinions Justification Decision-making Analysis and evaluation Problem solving Reflective thinking Inference and deduction What is Critical Thinking? What will happen next? Was X a good idea? Why? How are X and Y different/the same? How else could the story end? How can we solve the problem?
- 21. Fact or Opinion? Dogs are friendlier than cats. Most dogs are bigger than cats. Cats are more beautiful than dogs. Dogs have more teeth than cats
- 22. A Cat’s Birthday Party Choose and give reasons: Food and drink: Sardine sandwiches Ice-cream Milk cocktails Salad Activities: Chase the mouse game Swimming Tree climbing Watch film about dogs
- 23. Design your own cupcakes: Which ingredients would you choose? Do x and y taste good together? Are your cupcakes suitable for everybody in the class? Does anybody have an allergy? Do the cupcakes contain gluten? What could you change?
- 24. Speech bubbles for evaluation and self-evaluation
- 25. 3. Craziness
- 26. ‘’ “I'm struck by how laughter connects you with people. It's almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you're just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy.” - John Cleese “The secret to humor is surprise.” – Aristotle "Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you." - Langston Hughes (poet, activist, writer)
- 27. Crazy Activities ▣Paper Plates ▣Crazy Consequence Cupcakes ▣Flies…
- 28. On the Beach Who are the people? Character profiles Draw yourself in the picture. What would you say to the man?
- 29. The 3 Cs Fact or opinion Give reasons Classify Differentiate Evaluate Subvert Rename Repurpose Find New identity Unusual behaviour, materials, images, order, activities
- 30. Over to you Choose a page or activity and say how you would use it. Click on the image to open the padlet and add more ideas.
- 31. Thanks!Any questions? You can find me at @michelleworgan michelleworgan@gmail.com
- 32. Bibliography ▣Creativity in the English Language Classroom Ed. Alan Maley and Nik Peachy ▣Fuel Creativity in the Classroom with Divergent Thinking, Stacey Goodman, Edutopia ▣How to Explain Critical Thinking Skills to Young Children, Heidi Butkus, www.heidisongs.com ▣eisforexplore.blogspot.com - science activities, creativity, critical thinking ▣The Adventures of a Cardboard Box https://vimeo.com/25239728 ▣Bloom’s Taxonomy Questions Poster: http://www.hendersoncountypublicschoolsnc.org/instructional- technology/files/2011/02/05-2Bloom-13-Elem-Posters.pdf ▣Critical Thinking Skills for Young learners and Teens, H. Puchta ▣Developing Thinking Skills in the Young Learner’s Classroom, H. Puchta ▣To encourage creativity, Mr Gove, you must first understand what it is http://gu.com/p/3gvf6 http://blog.ted.com/4-inspiring-kids-imagine-the-future-of-learning/
- 33. Credits Special thanks to all the people who made and released these awesome resources for free: ▣ Presentation template by SlidesCarnival ▣ Photographs from Morguefile
Editor's Notes
- Why have I chosen to talk about these 3 Cs? The first two are important life skills that many people currently lack. Reports such as the PISA have announced that Spain has some of the lowest scores in Europe in matters such as solving practical day-to-day problems. If you have read any press about education in Spain over the past year you will have noticed that people have started to question and criticize the current model. Finland has received a huge amount of positive coverage due to its education system. Spain has begun to realise that its model needs updating.
- Creativity and critical thinking are two of the most important skills that employers value, but are those that are most lacking.
- We need to help our children acquire these skills at an early age, and we can start introducing activities which encourage them in our English classrooms. Both these skills can be inextricably linked - many CT tasks require creativity and vice versa. The third C, craziness, is an additional aspect of what goes on in the classroom, but one that I think is important when we want our learners to be comfortable, have fun and learn at the same time. By the way, what I am calling craziness is really humour, but that didn't start with a C. If you want some real craziness you should go down to see my friend Chris Roland in Room Gasteiz after the break!
- If you have been to sessions of mine before, you may be expecting me to talk about technology. However, today I want to focus more on Going back to basics - there is so much tech in our lives that I think we need to focus on people, relationships and communication in the classroom. Kids can watch a youtube video at home, let them have quality time in class. Basic materials or whatever you have to hand can lead to a high level of creativity. Of course, the same can be said of a video or digital image as inspiration, but I don't think that using digital materials is as essential, especially for younger learners, as we are lead to believe.
- I have chosen this quote by Ken Robinson, the king of creativity in education, because I think it is an essential one to remember. In order to improve learners' creative skills, they must feel relaxed and comfortable. They must feel that whatever they say, write or do, that no-one is going to judge them or laugh at them. Effort must be rewarded, rather than the end result. There should be no right (or wrong) answer to open questions and tasks. Our job as teachers is to make sure this happens in our classroom. We also need to show that we are taking risks too, that we don't mind being laughed at, and that our ideas are not THE answers or the best.
- Let's look at some other ways of fostering creativity. One way is trying to think of as many uses as possible for an ordinary object. I'm going to show you part of a video which you may have seen before as it is quite old. I first saw it in another conference talk, a few years ago, but unfortunately I can't remember whose, sorry. It is about a boy who gets a cardboard box and basically spends the whole summer playing with it. Let's spend a minute thinking of a few uses a child can find for a box. If you've seen the video, see if you can remember. With a partner, make a list. Now let's watch the video. Tick off any that you have. This video for me sums up the idea of creativity and the fact that children are naturally good at it, when left alone. It's our job to enable them to do the same in more restricted circumstances.
- Here are a few simple ideas: Ordinary objects and renaming / rethinking their purpose e.g. Turn things upside down, now how could it be used? Basic level a bucket becomes a hat, an umbrella a boat. Looking at something e.g. clouds and finding things that are not really there (faces etc) Pareidolia - Watch short film The Deep. Get sts to take pics of things in the classroom. I will not ever never eat a tomato - new fantasy names for foods. Look under your chair now. You may find an object. If you don't, get together in a group with someone that has. You have 30 secs to come up with a fantasy name for your piece of food. Let's do something else. You have a piece of paper. Try to think of ways in which you could use this in a class of yours. Work in pairs. You have two minutes. Now talk to the people in front or behind you. They have a different sheet. Discuss your ideas. (2 mins).
- Here are two ideas. The first is a good activity to do when you have a bit of time at the end of the class. You can give a time limit, then get the children to say what they have drawn and compare their ideas. The second is using it as a visual stimulus for brainstorming. The circles limit the number of words the students have to come up with but students can add more branches if necessary.
- I love these little fingerprint people. What are they saying to each other? Learners can create identities for their fingerprint people, decide on the relationships between them, create fingerprint families, tell stories with them. It is even better if you get them to make the fingerprints themselves. You could also dictate scenes of fingerprint people, although it wouldn't be as creative.
- The next worksheet I call cats and dogs (I wasn't very creative there!). Imagine you ask your class to choose one of the characters. Can you think of some questions you could ask them to answer about the pet they have chosen?
- We often ask our children about their birthday parties, but what about changing it slightly? Get them to plan a birthday party for a cat. They can then present their party plan to the class. If they have chosen a cat in the previous activity, they could think about that specific cat, using its likes and dislikes to help them. You may have noticed some similarity among the images I have shown you so far. This is because they are all from an activity book I picked up in the Tiger shop for about 3 euros. I loved the strangeness of the pages and I really think it inspires creativity. I'm not sure what the copyright laws are for this, as there is no copyright symbol or information inside the book. However, if you don't want to make copies, the drawings are so simple that you could create your own ina few minutes. Here are some reasons I like the book so much.
- I have also come up with some CT activities based on pages from the AB. Critical thinking is also known as higher order thinking skills. Basic skills are things like recalling and understanding. However, as we mentioned earlier, problem solving, evaluating and designing are necessary skills in the present and the future.
- This in an important quote on CT by Martin Luther King. I think this is especially true nowadays, especially in the area of digital literacy.
- Lets look a bit more closely at thinking skills. LOTs are lower order thinking skills. HOTS are higher order thinking skills. On the slide you can see some aspects of HOTS and some questions that could be asked to encourage critical thinking. I've made a short video demonstrating the types of questions. Let's watch it.
- Here we can see some useful questions and tasks for learners set out according to the relevant aspect of Bloom's Taxonomy from LOTS to HOTS. Of course you can reword these questions so they are relevant to the level you are teaching. Critical thinking sounds complicated, but it doesn't have to be. It's more about asking how and why, as well as what, who, where and when. For younger children, or those not very familiar with CT, a task such as Fact or Opinion is good. Again, knowing if something is fact or opinion is an important skill in our online lives.
- Going back to the cat's birthday party - ask students to choose and give reasons for their choices. Choosing is easy but explaining your reasons behind those choices is more difficult for young learners.
- Design your own cupcakes can be a creative activity, but you can also bring in CT by asking more questions.
- Finally, evaluation activities allow students to think about different aspects of their lessons whist giving you clues to what they enjoy and what they find difficult. I did this activity towards the end of the year.
- The final C is Craziness, so let's have a bit of fun. Humour, when used appropriately, is a way of encouraging a positive environment in the classroom. Laughter lowers affective barriers and allows students to take more risks, which is very important if we are trying to encourage creativity. People can only be creative if they feel relaxed enough. Humour is also a way of reducing stress and anxiety. When our students are worried about an exam they have the following day, it can be a good idea, as well as reassuring the student of their capabilities, to involve a little humour in the lesson.
- Humour doesn't mean telling jokes, at least in my case as I couldn't tell a joke to save my life, or even remember one! Anything that seems a little out of the ordinary can be amusing, something unexpected or slightly shocking, as you may find this image of flies around a piece of shit (sorry!) You probably weren't expecting me to use a swear word either, but if you were falling asleep, perhaps that got your attention! This is another benefit of humour - it can help learners remember the lesson. Sticking to the topic of cupcakes, why not create some crazy cupcakes with the traditional game of consequences. Ask sts to write an ingredient (don't tell them it's for a cupcake) - meat, veg, insects are all fine, anything goes, in fact it doesn't have to be food at all. They then fold over the top of their paper twice so the next person can't see, and pass it to their left, where the next student write a new ingredient. Do this four or five times and you have your crazy cupcakes. It doesn't have to be cupcakes, it can be sandwiches or pizza, or anything else. You could use the Super Simple Song Do you like broccoli icecream. Now I need three volunteers. Put the plate on your head. You're not allowed to move it. Try not to draw on your hand - it's permanent marker! And the flies, what could we do with the flies? I haven't come up with anything yet, but I know my ten year old boys with obsessed with poo, farts and toilets so I'm sure they could think of something!
- The last page from the Tiger book I'm showing you today kids find hilarious. Any ideas on whose name they shout out when they see this guy in the corner? Torrente! And they all love disgusting Torrente, even though (hopefully) they haven't seen the films. Here are a couple of ideas on how you can use the image.
- So the three Cs. This is a brief summary of keywords. If we try to incorporate one or more of the 3Cs into each lesson, even if it is only a five or ten minute activity at the beginning or end of the lesson, we will at least be on the right track. It is difficult when you only teach a class 2 hours per week, but that five minutes each day is beneficial. Try to mix them up a bit, a pound of creativity, a 100g of critical thinking and a pinch of craziness will help our learners on the road to becoming successful 21st century citizens.
- One last thing I’m going to ask you to do. Think of one activity you have liked from this session and write it on your post it.