The thing I liked best about this assignment was that the students enjoyed doing it, and their work far exceeded my expectations in many cases. I had to give a little “wiggle room” on the time constraints for some students. Letting go of our idea of “on time” versus “in time” also makes sense to me if we really want to encourage creativity in our students.
Friday, February 13, 2015
4 C's February, Day 13 - Lori Meyer
This month, we focus on the 4 C's: Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking. Today's entry comes from Lori Meyer, English teacher at Carmel Valley Middle School:
My students think more creatively when I let go of controlling the outcomes. This year when we read Call of the Wild, I decided to give the students more control over what they did as a culminating project at the end of the book. I did not give a test. I gave them freedom to decide what they wanted to do after reading the book. Some took traditional roads like writing an essay, writing a test, and making a Powerpoint presentations. Others created a playlist of songs to go along with scenes from the book. Several created timelines using technology they had not tried before. Four or five created pieces of art. They collaborated with me on writing a rubric that would be used to score the project, which required much “letting go” on my part.
The thing I liked best about this assignment was that the students enjoyed doing it, and their work far exceeded my expectations in many cases. I had to give a little “wiggle room” on the time constraints for some students. Letting go of our idea of “on time” versus “in time” also makes sense to me if we really want to encourage creativity in our students.
The thing I liked best about this assignment was that the students enjoyed doing it, and their work far exceeded my expectations in many cases. I had to give a little “wiggle room” on the time constraints for some students. Letting go of our idea of “on time” versus “in time” also makes sense to me if we really want to encourage creativity in our students.
