I create what I imagine,
I imagine what I wish to create.
Albert Einstein rightly said, “Creativity is what others see and think what no one ever else thought.” Acquiring knowledge with lots of fun is creative learning. It is an amalgamation of discovery and desire to produce something new using mindfulness.
Every child is born with an inherent skill-set to create. It is a gift from God. When a toddler makes interesting shapes with colorful blocks or a piece of clay in little hands, when a child dismantles toys to arrange all the parts differently or when a toddler uses mother’s lipstick to draw something abstract on the wall; that’s creativity.This desire to create keeps growing within a child with age and experience can be witnessed in innumerable activities like drawings, craft work, recycling objects, innovating new games etc. Gradually, in every realm of life a child starts to display curiosity to experiment, discover and create.
In a theory by Benjamin Bloom, a renowned American Educational psychologist, ‘The taxonomy of the cognitive domain’, he has ranked ‘creativity’ as the most difficult skill to master. The school, further, plays an important role in developing creativity in a child by providing various platforms to think and present creative ideas in his/her formative years of learning.
Ways to Enhance Creativity in classes.
‘Stronger the base, better the model’: Equip the child with basic skills of reading, writing, drawing, art and craft. As they are the prerequisites for creativity. If a child lacks in any of these, he/she would be busy coping with the basic skills at the time of displaying productivity.
Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.: The teacher should be a role-model and a facilitator. Perform the activity before the learners and display the end product before the learners rather than just giving verbal instructions.The ‘deja vu’ impact on the child will stimulate his/her imagination to create something better than you.
Challenge their abilities to give their best: Inspire them to do better than they can do.Organize brainstorming sessions before every activity and then let them verbalize their unique ideas.Help them to make a mind-map for activity undertaken and the creative targets they wish to procure.
Give exposure for creativity: Proper guidance and assistance should be extended by textual knowledge, field trips, videos and other visual aids to widen their spectrum of thinking.
Allow them to do some independent work: Whenever permissible, let the child’s fantasy play wild in their comfort zone with ideas, designs, sizes, colors, theme and scheme. Allow freedom of movement and peer interaction in the class. Let them inspire each other’s work.
Create a compassionate, failure accepting environment: A teacher’s attitude plays a very important role when a child fails to create at the initial attempts. It can make or break a child’s confidence.Be patient with the child, don’t laugh at the learner or let the peer group do so. Construct a safe, loving, non-humiliating environment in the class that can embrace failure from every learner gracefully.
Give Enough chances to be creative: Creativity needs time to be perfect. It is attained by a child through regularly attempting the same creation at different intervals.
Remove all the constraints and obstacles: It is a mentor’s duty to remove any emotional or materialistic constraint that is hindering a child’s creative performance.
Provide necessary material to facilitate activity: Proper message regarding material required should reach the parents days in advance. A last moment post, may cost the teacher a failed session as most parents may not get enough time to procure the items required. Hence, some extra material should be available with the teacher to facilitate the learners who are not ready with the material.
Let their fantasy be unstoppable at any cost !
Celebrate the best, motivate the better, encourage the worst:. A loud round of applause, a phrase of appreciation, motivation, a prize or a certificate will push a child’s graph remarkably higher.
➤ Reward best learners.
➤ Give positive motivation to the average performers.Give feedback on each idea or step to improve the final outcome.
➤ Encourage the slow-learners. Provide them assistance and step-wise guidance to enhance creativity.
Weave creativity in daily lesson plans. Adhering to today’s trend of conceptual and differentiated learning, creativity should be linked to every subject as ‘Integration of art’ in the curriculum.
Showcase creativity more often: Provide a platform to present the creations. Let appreciation and motivation flow whole heartedly. Virtual presentations, classboards, corridor displays, exhibitions at school, and displays at the time of open house are not unknown but they should happen more often. Encourage Inter-class visits too in the school to derive motivations from the peer groups.
Make Creativity a grading criteria in marks: May sound as an added pressure but a healthy competition strives for excellence in creativity. Realize that grading is also a reward that stays for a lifetime.
Change the ambience, Play music: Last but not the atleast, don’t underestimate the power of some soothing music in the classroom. It can work wonders and can calm down the stress level and nervousness in a child. Create a peaceful, amicable ambience in the classroom throughout the session.
Creativity breeds creativity. The more you do, a step ahead will be witnessed further that will lead to more efficient learning. Listen to the learner’s thoughts, respect their ideas and help them to foster their seeds of imagination.
Let our future generations devise their own ways to change the world around them right from the school age.
Love,
Seedling.