Shake Up Learning: Ch. 9: Unleash Creative Thinking

Most of my projects allow student choice in topic (within a time period), medium (digital or physical, website, podcast, video, poster, board game, etc.), and level of creativity (creativity earns students XP in my gamified class, and does not affect their grade). Students love the competitive aspect of gamification and many will go above and beyond even my expectations of what an incredibly creative project looks like. When a student wants to try something new or really challenge themselves with something they’ve never tried before, they can earn XP for creating a challenge for themselves. One time I had a student that loved woodworking. She made a box and used that as her medium of presentation, attaching her information to the outside and inside of the box. It was very creative and she was able to do something she loved by woodworking.

Each project is an opportunity for creativity and problem solving. Sometimes a student will challenge themselves to create a project such as a music video, and they will run into problems along the way. I help them through the best that I can and we recruit help from other students. Most students push through the challenges and complete the project by solving the problems they encountered because the bigger the challenge, the more points they can earn for themselves and their team. We also do gamified challenges that encourage students to problem solve. I would like to incorporate more of these challenges this year.

Some day-to-day formative assessments have to be rigid, because I am checking to see what my students have learned, but the practice can be more flexible. My projects are already extremely flexible.

I don’t provide my students with very many rigid expectations for working on assignments and projects. Most of the time when I assign research, even just a short answer to a research question, I don’t provide a text for my students to read. I take away the obvious resources and have my students find resources on their own. At first they seem lost and many just try to Google the answer, but this is a learning opportunity. We talk about how to Google using the advanced search, how to avoid websites that lack credibility, how to corroborate resources to make sure that we’re finding the truth, how to avoid websites that are basically just ads, etc. Taking away the obvious resources such as the text has helped my students learn to find credible answers for themselves.

Example of a Creative Project:

I think the best way to make an assignment to unleash more creativity would be to give less specifics in the rubric. Make the learning target clear, and let students find a path to it. If you spell out each and every part of the project, you will get identical results from each student. Boring! Allow students more choice. Giving a choice in topic, medium (video, podcast, website, poster, song, etc.), and whom they would like to work with as well can open many creative doors.

This was a final project I used with my US History class. The only requirement was this:

"Choose any topic that interests you, as long as it concerns US History. Your task is to research your topic across at least two different periods of US History. The two time periods that you research must be at least 20 years apart. Compare and contrast how your topic is/was perceived by Americans, as well as how your topic has changed over the course of time. (Historical Thinking Skill: Patterns of continuity and change over time). You must cite your source in MLA format."

Everything else was up to the kids! Some freaked out a little because they didn't have much guidance, but in the end most students liked the freedom. Presentations went very well because there was such a great variety of topics and types of projects!

My first piece of advice: Be patient with your students! They will ask you a million questions, mainly, "Is this what you want?" Just let them explore. Also, encourage peer feedback. The kids are willing to help each other more than you'd think. Also, start small. I did similar projects with minimal rubrics on much smaller scales before we did the final project. The small projects were minimal amounts of points as well. Students are less likely to be creative if the risk is too high. My classes are gamified too, so I give extra XP to students who take risks, try more difficult projects or something they haven't done before, or really put an incredible amount of effort in.This doesn't affect their grade, so students really get creative and show you their strengths!