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Teaching creativity step 2

Watch Jonah discuss ideas for teaching, assessing, and reinforcing creativity step 2 from the Skills Builder framework.
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Role-play can be a useful way of bringing imagination to life by asking students to imagine that they are two well-known figures or act out a familiar scenario, like a shopkeeper and a demanding customer. Students could then explore what they learned through having to act out this scenario. This might include empathy for the characters, and also ideas about how they would deal with the scenario if it really happened. Acting can be a useful way of bringing imagination to life. For example, by asking students to create a short sketch in response to a stimulus, such as, “When the aliens landed”, learners can explore how acting can help share the feelings and emotions that they imagine.
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To engage students’ creativity more deeply, you could encourage them to put themselves in the shoes of the characters they would be acting. They could try thinking the thoughts that these characters would be thinking. They could feel the emotions that they think these characters would be feeling. They could speak the way they think these characters would be speaking, including accent and mannerisms. Students can also take on the challenge of sharing what they imagine through art using a stimulus, for example, when it wouldn’t stop raining. Students might also create a diagram, for example, of how they would arrange the classroom if they could, or an invention that would help do a task they regularly perform manually.
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Carrying out a brief reflection discussion of these activities for teaching creativity would greatly enhance learners’ appreciation of this skill. During the reflection, you could ask questions such as, what have you learned about bringing out your own creativity? Or based on the activity you have just completed, how can you apply creativity in one of your core subjects, such as mathematics or language? It’s important that you monitor and assess your students’ ability to complete each creative task successfully. You can plan simple assessment criteria in advance of teaching each activity, for example, by using can-do statements, such as, “The student can take part in a role-play to act out a familiar situation”. You should also identify opportunities to reinforce the skill step.
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You might do this by encouraging students to engage their imaginations and use these techniques during other learning activities.

The previous sections looked at how the core skills could be broken down into teachable chunks or steps. You also saw how one of these steps could be taught, using the example of teamwork step 1. This session is about really putting that into action by considering how to teach a step of one of the skills.

In this section, you’ll learn how you can teach a step of a core skill to your students, how you can practise and assess a step of a skill and what you might need to adapt to suit your students.

In the next activities, we’ll look at specific steps from two different skill areas in the Skills Builder framework. These are creativity step 2 and problem solving step 3. You’ll need to consider how you would teach and assess at least one of these steps.

Firstly, we will consider some general ideas for teaching creativity step 2. Read the information about the step before watching the video.

Now watch Jonah introduce some ideas for teaching the step. As you listen, make a note of each of the ideas he mentions. Think about the following questions as you watch:

  • Which ideas do you think would work best with your students?

  • How might you adapt the ideas to suit your classroom context?

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Teaching and Assessing Core Skills

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FutureLearn - Learning For Life

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