Description
By one popular estimation, 65% of our children entering primary school today will ultimately end up working in completely new job types that don’t exist yet. Given the unprecedented and rapidly changing challenges in this era, creativity is an essential skill that empowers young people to adapt and innovate, as well as to approach problems with curiosity, empathy, and openness. Accordingly, the need for teachers to learn how to embed creativity into their classroom practices is getting immense.
This course will boost your confidence in nurturing creative students. Instead of providing you with a list of activities, we aim to help you deliberately understand the characteristics of creative people and the elements in a creative process, so that you can help students to nurture those traits and create a learning environment that allows creativity to flow.
You will learn the Five Core Attitudes and the Seven I’s of Creative People, alongside discovering interesting exercises that help you and your students to practice as individuals, as well as how to embed the new concepts into the curriculum and daily classroom interactions. You will also get to know some assessment tools that will help you to scaffold creativity and give clear guidance to your students on the growth of their creative minds.
This course uses the World Café method to stimulate professional exchange among participants on real-life application of the presented concepts. You will have the opportunity to explore and expand possibilities to embed creativity into your curriculum and daily teaching.
By the end of the course, not only will you gain a better understanding of creativity, but you will also be more confident in taking relevant actions in your teaching that help students to become creative people. There is no mystery in teaching creativity for 21st-century skills, nor should you be afraid. This course will definitely help you expand your capacity to experiment with embedding creativity into your curriculum.
Learning outcomes
The course will help the participants to:
- Understand the characteristics of creative people;
- Assessment of creativity and its pros and cons with specific tools;
- Nurture the traits of creative people with abundant examples and interesting exercises;
- Overcome the blocks and strengthen the stimuli of creativity in the school environment;
- Deliberately embed creativity into their curriculum and classroom practices.
Tentative schedule
Day 1 – Introduction to the course
- Introduction to the course, the school, and the external week activities;
- Icebreaker activities;
- Presentations of the participants’ schools.
Creativity as a vital life skill in the 21st century
- Goal setting: Generate personal/ and professional goals to be achieved in the course, and evaluate personal progress toward those goals;
- Unpacking creativity;
- Everyone is creative, do you believe so?
- Can creativity be taught?
- Can creativity be embedded in every subject?
Day 2 – The Five Core Attitudes for creativity
- Self-discipline, openness to experience, risk-taking, tolerance for ambiguity, group trust;
- Concrete and practical examples to practice as individuals and embed the concepts into the curriculum and daily classroom routines;
- World Café discussion on the application of the concepts in your specific contexts.
Day 3 – The Seven I’s for creativity
- Inspiration, Intuition, Improvisation, Imagination, Imagery, Incubation, and Insight;
- Concrete and practical examples to practice as individuals and embed the concepts into the curriculum and daily classroom routines;
- World Café discussion on the application of the concepts in your specific contexts.
Day 4 – Scaffolding creativity for growth
- Introduction to several assessment tools to scaffold creativity;
- Pros and cons of assessing creativity;
- Practical use of the assessment tools.
Day 5 – Blocks and stimuli of creativity in the school environment
- Opportunities and potential struggles to embed creativity into curriculum and teaching;
- Ways to overcome the blocks and strengthen the stimuli of creativity.
Day 6 – Course closure & cultural activities
- Course evaluation: round-up of acquired competencies, feedback, and discussion;
- Awarding of the course Certificate of Attendance;
- Excursion and other external cultural activities.