Creative Teaching

When I got this article as a topic to write about, it made me startle. There has been so much said about creativity, what else can be added to that? However, there are still a lot of ideas and techniques you can use to engage your students in a learning process without them noticing. Take, for instance, Chaz Pugliese and his Being Creative. If you haven’t come across this book, we do recommend it. In this book, he talks about some creative strategies you can use.

Lesson Planning vs Lesson Thinking

Lesson planning is sometimes evil. We need a ‘backpack’ and a ‘torch’ on our adventure of teaching students. Our backpack is the knowledge of methodology and the subject. We need a torch to look for a ‘teachable’ moment. As Chaz defines it, it is a moment of the most interest of students; it arises when they ask questions when they do want to know how to do something. It can contradict our lesson plan and immaculately counted timing. However, this moment is precious.

Here comes lesson thinking. Lesson thinking is understanding what should be taught during the lesson and how it is going to be done. Anyway, we do not have to prepare tons of copies for our students. What we really need to concentrate on is WHO we are teaching, their needs and interests, but not on WHAT we are teaching.

Rapport

Your class cannot be creative if do not provide a safe environment for any crazy thing. Having established a good relationship between you and the class, you can embark on a playful journey. Help students find what they have in common. This will increase a sense of affiliation, make the environment safer for them and make them more open.

Ask students to divide a piece of paper into three categories:

Dictate some sentences suitable for their level (e.g. I hate school; I’m a morning person; I can’t live without my mobile). Ask them to write a sentence in a column so that it’s true for them. Ask students to work in pairs and find what they have in common. Ask them to find someone who they have most things in common.

Adding Simplicity

This means that we should look at what we are going to teach from the point of necessity and interests of our students. Adapt the tasks according to what is of utmost importance for them, not for you. The rule here is a creative task is new, valuable and pleasant.

Working on a reading or listening from your course book, you might want your students to retell the story. One way of doing it in a creative way is to do it taking turns in pairs. Ask the stronger students to be A’s, the weaker ones to be B’s. Ask A’s to retell the story backwards. Ak B’s to retell the story in a normal way. Tell them that every 20 seconds you will clap hands for them to change.

Combinational Creativity

Nobody tells that using ideas that generated many years ago are outdated. We always can change them according to our needs. This means that we still can use dictation or show students pictures. The question is how we use it.

Dictating questions is a good opportunity to give students time to think about how they are going to answer these questions. So during their pair work, first, tell them that they are going to interview each other. Then dictate the questions. Give them 3 minutes to discuss the questions. Ask them to change partners and tell their new partners about the previous ones.

Do not think that creativity is something innate, every teacher can foster creativity. It is a matter of practice. Each time you start planning or thinking over a lesson, ask yourself “How can I change this to make it more engaging for my students?”, “What can I do to make their learning process more pleasant and memorable?”

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