Creativity in the Primary Classroom

Juliet Desailly

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781473952478
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods

'A highly practical overview of creative teaching and learning for both novice and seasoned primary teachers; this second edition features useful content on the new National Curriculum in England, such as possibilities for creativity in different subjects and consideration of creative assessment. In a nutshell, super-accessible and inspiring!'
- Emese Hall, PGCE Primary Lead & MA Creative Arts in Education Tutor, University of Exeter

Creativity is an integral element of any primary classroom, and the new curriculum allows greater freedom than ever before to incorporate this in your teaching. Being a creative teacher involves generating new ideas, reflecting upon and evaluating different teaching approaches, and establishing an environment that supports creativity in your pupils.

Filled with ideas, activities and reflective tasks and underpinned by relevant theory, this practical book explores how to develop as a creative teacher, empowering you to implement your own engaging and inspiring approaches to planning, teaching and assessment.

Drawing from detailed real-life examples, this second edition includes:

· Updated links to the new National Curriculum and Teachers' Standards

· More guidance for each curriculum subject area

· Increased coverage of assessment and creative teaching for differentiation

PART 1 WHAT IS CREATIVITY?

• Chapter 1 The key elements of creativity
• Chapter 2 Creativity in education: History and theoretical background

This section introduces the whole area of creativity to give you a clear understanding of what it is and how it can be applied in primary education. The key elements of creativity are identified and we begin to explore the way they might manifest themselves in a primary classroom. The three different types of creativity in education are outlined and discussed, and the potential benefits and drawbacks of a more creative approach in the classroom are considered for both teachers and their pupils. The changing place of creativity in the primary school curriculum over the past decades is outlined, and you will be introduced to the work of some of the key researchers and theorists in the area. The place of creativity in primary schools at the present time is examined in this context.

Chapter 1 The Key Elements Of Creativity

Learning objectives in this chapter:

• To understand the three different types of creativity in education
• To know how creativity has been defined
• To recognise the key elements of creativity
• To consider the potential benefits and drawbacks of a more creative approach in the classroom

Ask a group of teachers what they mean by creativity and you will get a huge range of responses. Creativity means very different things to different people, and in terms of the primary classroom teachers can often find it hard to envisage what it actually looks like, let alone plan to encourage or foster it. This chapter will clarify the concepts so that we can be sure we are understanding creativity in the same way.

When groups of teachers are asked to do the above activity their lists often contain the following: thinking ‘outside the box’, self-expression, having new ideas, being a risk-taker, imagination, fun, making something new, music, dance, art, drama, inventing, working together, innovation, individuality.

Already, certain strands will be appearing. Firstly, there is the element of newness – of making or thinking something for the first time. Much of the early research into creativity was undertaken by considering genius, and obviously the great names of innovation in art or science demonstrated their creativity by being the first in their field ever to do or discover something. In children it is more likely that their creativity will show the first time for them that they have done or discovered something. Having said that, one of the joys of working with primary age children is that sometimes they will say or do something so new and so fresh that they will make you look at the world in quite a different way. Anna Craft (2000) has used the terms ‘big c’ and ‘little c’ creativity to differentiate between the types of creativity that change the world’s perceptions in significant ways and the types that everyone can practise in their everyday lives.

Another strand is that of creativity in expression or of communicating ideas in creative ways. Perhaps here the ideas are not necessarily new but are being presented in new and original ways. Linked here may well be the idea that creativity gives something of the self, that the ideas are personal and individual. Creativity is not, however, the domain for either strictly individual or exclusively group work. It can cover both of these and we will be looking at this in later chapters.

The elements of individuality and newness also imply a ‘difference’ to the status quo. People who are creative are, by definition, not conforming to tried and tested ways of doing things. This can be hard for primary age children to deal with and there are issues of conformity and risk-taking that teachers will have to address in their classrooms.

Many people would equate creativity mainly, or even exclusively, with the arts. Although the arts media are highly creative areas there is huge potential for creativity in all the other subject and curriculum areas.

Finally, the word ‘fun’ often emerges. While, hopefully, much creative work and working creatively will be fun, there will, by its very nature, also be times when this is difficult and frustrating, and for some children more open-ended activities can be extremely stressful. All of the above issues will be dealt with in subsequent chapters in more depth.

Relevant Teachers’ Standards for this chapter

A teacher must:

3 Demonstrate good subject and curriculum knowledge

3b demonstrate a critical understanding of developments in the subject and curriculum areas, and promote the value of scholarship

Individual or group activity

(Potential activity spoiler! Cover the paragraph beneath this box.)

In just two minutes, think of as many words or phrases as you can that mean ‘creativity’ to you. Think of creativity in its widest meaning, not just in terms of schools.

If you were working in groups, share what you came up with. Can you recognise any common themes that have emerged?

Definitions of creativity

After sharing first thoughts about what creativity means to us, let us consider the definitions of creativity that have been most prominent in recent years.

In 1998 the government set up the National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education (NACCCE). Its report, All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education (NACCCE, 1999), proved to be one of the most significant contributions to the debate about creativity, and its importance will be looked at further in the next chapter. This report was specific in its definition of creativity and that definition was subsequently used in a number of government initiatives and other publications:

Imaginative activity fashioned so as to produce outcomes that are both original and of value. (NACCCE, 1999: 30)

This definition, as can be seen, has four distinct parts:

• Using imagination.
• Pursuing purposes.
• Being original.
• Judging value.

When using the term ‘imagination’ in relation to creativity the implication is that it is more than fantasising. It incorporates all the aspects of ‘newness’ in what people see as creativity, including originality. So, it is not only about envisaging completely new ideas but also seeing things in a new light, seeing alternatives to the way things are usually done, or combining things in unusual ways. We often use the term ‘creative cook’ about people who do not necessarily invent entirely innovative dishes but do not follow a recipe slavishly, who put in a dash of this or a sprinkle of that to give something a new ‘twist’. You might also recognise this kind of approach in visual terms, for example there are many people who can put together a ‘look’ in the way they dress by combining elements you might not usually think would go together, or in home furnishing where selecting and positioning things in particular ways give a sense of style that other people might never be able to achieve. We can look out for this sort of imaginative approach in children in a variety of contexts.

Anna Craft calls this kind of imaginative activity ‘possibility thinking’ (Craft, 2000: 3). It involves the sort of thinking that asks questions such as ‘What if... ?’, ‘What would happen if... ?’, ‘Suppose she... ?’.

This leads us to the idea of creativity having distinct purposes or outcomes. Creativity doesn’t happen in a vacuum, a creative act happens when someone wants to try something or make something happen. It might, of course, turn out that other ideas occur during the process or that the ultimate outcome differs from what was first envisaged, but there is always the intention to do something or make something or try something out. This process can be very playful. Many a great discovery has been the result of playfulness with ideas or materials by the inventor. In the realm of the classroom this has many implications for time management and planning, which we will return to in later chapters.

Creativity happens in a particular medium or combination of media. It therefore demands skills in those media to be creative with. So, a child’s great idea about building a model of a tower to fit a particular land site will come to nothing if they don’t have the skills to join the component parts together strongly enough. A group wanting to create a piece of music representing the sea will not be able to communicate their ideas if they cannot use their instruments to make the sounds they imagine. Creativity maintains a balance between structure and freedom, between the linear and logical and the random or chaotic.

Being original involves putting oneself on the line, so to act creatively necessitates having a range of personal attributes. A measure of self-confidence is also essential: we must be able to be prepared to have a go at things, and to recognise that our attempts may not work out and to have persistence and the ability to bounce back if things do not go to plan. Although things can be created in solitude at some stage they have to see the light of day and be shared with their audience – this requires risk-taking too and the confidence to accept feedback. Even accepting praise and being the focus of attention can be hard for some people.

The final part of the NACCCE’s definition is of judging value. This is a particularly difficult area to judge in a primary classroom. It begs questions such as valuable to whom? What sort of value? Who is to be the judge? The report itself makes the point that just being original is not enough as this may be impractical or n...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Publisher Note
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• About the author
• Acknowledgements
• Teachers’ Standards Reference Table
• Subjects And Skills Reference Table
• Introduction
• PART 1 WHAT IS CREATIVITY?
• Chapter 1 The Key Elements Of Creativity
• Chapter 2 Creativity In Education: History And Theoretical Background
• Part 2 A Creative Child In A Creative Classroom
• Chapter 3 Building The Skills To Work Creatively
• chapter 4 Establishing The Ethos
• PART 3 A Creative Teacher
• Chapter 5 What Makes A Creative Teacher?
• Chapter 6 Key Skills For The Creative Teacher
• Part 4 A Creative Curriculum
• Chapter 7 Planning For And Assessing Creative Outcomes
• Chapter 8 Medium-Term Planning For Creative Outcomes
• chapter 9 Case Studies: Creativity In Practice
• Conclusion And Forward Planning
• References
• Index