This week, Naomi ponders the level of scaffolding in her class that will support her kids without taking away that creative spark while Shona explores the importance of puzzles for all students and humans in general, as a creative learning tool.
Naomi
So I’ve finished week 3 with my classes and it’s been intense! There’s so much to consider and reflect upon along the way.
One of the questions I’m grappling with is how much to scaffold. I know that when I haven’t scaffolded enough, it can be very problematic and frustrating for learners. But I also see how over-scaffolding can restrict learners’ thinking, limit ideas and depth of understanding. It can turn nuanced learning into a clunky formula. Modelling examples is helpful, but then it is dispiriting when students then cannot think much beyond it.
From Toy Story to Dickens
On Friday, I learned that when a theme or prompt taps into learner passions, then you don’t need to worry so much. The learners just go for it. We were practicing tightening the tension in narrative writing and I had prepared a scaffolded learning process. To prepare, we spent time discussing how writers do this - students shared examples from movies including Toy Story and Despicable Me and books like Wings of Fire. We homed in on the techniques the creators used and created a checklist to guide their writing and feedback. I asked students to actively listen to a passage from A Christmas Carol to recognise how Charles Dickens did it and I modelled an example I had written.
A creative buzz
As soon as I gave them a prompt to write about a ghost appearing, the class jumped in with pencils blazing. One student who cannot usually access the same curriculum as the rest of the class was ON FIRE, suggesting brilliant, vivid sentences which their EA scribed for them.
Getting their ideas on paper became the most important thing; techniques and checklists not so much. They were excited to write, the atmosphere was absolutely buzzing. But was the lesson successful in terms of the intended outcome? I’d say, not yet. Some students created a sense of tension, others were too caught up in delivering non-stop action, with all the spooky dolls and ghostly faces in the mirror. But in terms of everything else that matters: yes! And I did a happy dance right there in the classroom to celebrate.
Educators have to create the opportunity to build the learning from this point. Their passages gave them all a first draft to work with: specific feedback is the next scaffold they need to increase their mastery of tightening tension. Learners can’t be expected to master a technique, achieve an outcome within an hour and move on to the next chunk. We need to keep coming back, keep building, keep improving…
Shona
With play gradually being squeezed out of our education system across all levels, it can be hard to give yourself permission to bring it back and remember why it is so important in the first place. This week I’m reminded that the simple things are often the best.
Last Friday was our first full session at the Foothills Learning Hub and I knew I wanted to it to start off with puzzles and construction when the kids first came in (just like the good old days) but is it just a time filler or are there real justifications to this activity? Let’s use the creative learning habits framework (Bill Lucas & Ellen Spencer) to explore why they shouldn’t be left in the box.
Firstly, collaboration. I found it was a great way to get to know students I hadn’t met before and were anxious about being left in a new space. It’s also a great way to connect with students who’ve had a bad time before they even get to school. They don’t need to talk about themselves or the tricky thing that happened that morning, they just get that sense of success and camaraderie from achieving something with a friend as well as a change in mindset as they think about something completely different for a while.
Persistence is another great benefit. The stakes are low but who hasn’t felt that frustration of not being able to find the right piece for that spot and wanted to send the whole thing flying across the room? With so many teachers talking about their students needing to become more resilient and sticking with difficulty, this is a creative way of getting comfortable with being uncomfortable and feeling that sense of achievement that so many kids find difficult to access at school.
And we can’t forget imagination as students try to imagine what the image could be. But don’t make it easy on them! Try taking away the box or covering up sections of it for more of a challenge. Which leads us on to discipline as students find new strategies for finding the right piece. Do you focus on the colour, line or the shape of the bits you are hunting for and do you separate similar pieces out first or just charge in and start seeing what fits?
So why don’t you find a way to bring puzzles back into your classroom regardless of your students' age and find any excuse to work alongside them. It doesn’t need to be a guilty secret with all that learning going on!
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Until next time... stay curious!
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