Failure is not an upbeat subject. Now, as the school year begins, even in this strangest of school years, few of us are likely to be thinking, “OK, let’s go in there and fail!” And yet, I’ve been thinking about failure a lot. First, of course, I’m thinking about failure because it is the last … Continue reading
When is a choice not really a choice? Or when might choice make really bad assessment? In my last post I discussed the role of assessment in developing curriculum for creativity. I included the recommendation that assessments—even major assessments–sometimes include choice. We know choice is supportive of a climate of intrinsic motivation and creativity. But … Continue reading
Good curriculum and good assessment go hand-in-hand. So it is not surprising that the fourth key principle in developing curriculum supportive of creativity relates to assessment. In curriculum for creativity: Assessment includes multiple formative and summative assessments, including some that offer choices and use content in new ways. In all good curriculum, we start with … Continue reading
Questions. We ask them when we need directions. We ask them when we don’t understand. Sometimes we ask questions in outrage, other times we ask them in curiosity and wonder. Sometimes questions are rhetorical, other times they are urgent. If we want to help students be questioners, we need to help them understand the types … Continue reading
Think of the difference between these two questions. How did you do? What did you learn? Which one will help students be more successful in school (and life)? Which will help them be more creative? The idea of mindsets, introduced by Carol Dweck, says that there are two basic ways to look at our abilities. … Continue reading
One of the joys (and time-wasting dangers) of the web is that you never know where an interesting link will lead. For me, today’s exploration involved LEGOs. It started when a friend sent a link to 50 States of LEGO, a creation of photographer Jeff Friesen, with LEGO scenes representing (naturally) each of the 50 … Continue reading
Last week I wrote about McTighe and Wiggins’ Essential Questions: Opening the Doors to Student Understanding as a resource for developing creativity as well as learning for understanding. Today I’d like to consider the ways the same processes contribute to developing a creativity-friendly classroom. Questions can transform the class world! Recently, Wiggins posted an excerpt … Continue reading
This is the fifth in a series of posts on assessment FOR creativity, that is, classroom assessment that is not aimed at assessing creativity itself, but at thinking about the ways classroom assessments may support—or stifle—creativity. Assessment for creativity allows students to demonstrate knowledge by using it in varied ways, and is structured to support … Continue reading
A recent article in the Creativity Research Journal had an intriguing title, beginning, “Tell Me Your Name and I’ll Tell You How Creative Your Work Is.” The article looked at how a creator’s name and gender affected judgments about the work’s creativity. I found the results pretty disturbing. Authors Izabela Lebuda and Maciej Karwowski presented … Continue reading
This is the fourth in a series of posts on assessment FOR creativity, that is, classroom assessment that is not aimed at assessing creativity itself, but at assessing content in ways that support students’ creativity. Assessment for creativity entails at least three factors: Assessment FOR creativity builds intrinsic motivation through a sense of … Continue reading
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