Dear Grade 4 Parents and Students
The Grade 4 class is finishing up their Unit 1 on “People
use natural and synthetic materials to make goods for cultural and economic
reasons”
Mr. Mark and Mr. Derick would like to host our first
Unit Information Session next week.
We have wrapped up the first unit, and are now in the ‘tuning in’ phase of the
inquiry cycle for our second inquiry unit titled, Life Cycles. For this unit, we have designed a heavy focus on language
arts and the natural sciences. Math will be primarily taught in a stand-alone
context; however, we have tied a few math standards into this unit. Our
summative assessment will be drama based.
We need to set a day and time for this meeting. We
can do it after school on Wednesday at about 3:30; we have a teachers’ meeting
to attend first. We could also plan to meet on Saturday morning at NIS from
9:30 to 11:00, or just go a little crazy and plan a fun, BBQ lunch-party or
some other party idea (restaurant or whatever) for next Saturday and start this
tradition off in style. Please choose one of the following options:
1. Wednesday
after school at 3:30-ish at NIS
2. Saturday
morning from 9:30 to 11:00 at NIS
We would like to host this parent information
session in order to address the curriculum and pedagogy that we will be
engaging throughout the year with a special emphasis on the first unit while
also introducing the second unit. We will also be available to answer any and
all questions regarding grade four with Mr. Mark and Mr. Derick as well as
questions regarding your child specifically.
In the future, we hope to have at least one
information session per unit (about once every six weeks); we are thinking that
after the Life Cycles unit, we will host them at the end of each inquiry unit
as a celebratory event. We really like the idea to turn this into fun events
such as pot-luck dinners, BBQ, swimming party or some other event that brings together
our delightfully wonderful, grade-four community in order to celebrate the accomplishments
of our students/children. We are open to suggestions; we will certainly need
some help with logistics in the future should we decide on the end of unit
celebrations as described above.
Inquiry
Cycle
On the Edge of Chaos: Where Creativity Flourishes
If it’s true, in Sir Ken Robinson’s words,
that “Creativity is not an option, it’s an absolute necessity,” then
it’s that much more imperative to find ways to bring creativity to
learning.
But first, we have to understand what conditions foster true
creativity. One definition that scientists have agreed upon for
creativity is the ability to create something that’s both novel as
compared to what came before, and has value. “It’s this intersection of
novelty and value, a combination of those two features that’s
particularly important,” Dr. Robert Bilder, a psychiatry and psychology
professor at UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior.
In any system, there are forces pushing towards organization and others
introducing unpredictability. A truly creative idea straddles both of
those states.
“The truly creative changes and the big shifts occur right at the edge of chaos,” Bilder said.
For educators who have embraced the notion of the tightly controlled
classroom, it’s a worst-case scenario. But Bilder has a reason for this
theory. He tested it by asking children what aspects of a learning
environment make them feel most creative. “One of the things they found
most valuable in their arts classes was the freedom not to have to seek
right and wrong answers,” Bilder said. “It was that freedom to explore
that led them to be increasingly engaged and allowed them to forge
connections that allowed them to be more creative.”
It’s the lack of this type of freedom that has led skeptics to question if today’s schools could ever inspire true creativity.
While there are exceptions — schools that have built freedom of
expression into their models — the majority of schools, whether public
or private — expect students to conform to behavior norms that don’t
allow for the individual space to daydream, reflect, and create. In fact, creative behaviors are often associated with mental disorders.
“In the school environment, creativity can be considered pathological
behavior as opposed to the compliant traits of being reliable, sincere,
good-natured, responsible, tolerant, and peaceable — the qualities
associated with the lowest levels of creativity,” writes Cevin Soling.
Openness to new experiences and a “disagreeable personality” are also
associated with creative achievement, two attributes not always found in
schools.
To foster creativity, teachers can make room for more freedom around
activities in class, and highlight students’ ability to be creative
achievers, Bilder said. Freedom offers students space to generate ideas.
How does an educator know if she’s creating space for creativity? The
way Bilder describes it, students in a classroom that allowed for
creativity would appear to a visitor to be enraptured in what they were
doing — they’d be in the zone. “You’d have a hard time distracting them
and getting them away from what they’re working on,” Bilder said. He
highlighted project-based learning
as a way that educators are beginning to introduce choice, and thus
freedom, into school work, making space for at least some creativity.
COGNITIVE TRAITS OF CREATIVITY
Generating lots of different ideas is more important to creativity
than many people realize. That’s partly because of the free flowing
nature of coming up with lots of ideas, no matter how ridiculous they
seem, but it’s also because it gets the idea out of the brain, making
space for the next idea.
“When we look through examples of illustrious creative types these
individuals create a lot of work,” Bilder said. Picasso is a good
example. The artist created between 10,000 and 50,000 works of art
(depending on how they’re counted). The number of pieces produced is the
number one predictor of creative achievement, said Bilder.
Additionally, putting an idea to paper and expelling it from the mental
space allows the creator to react to it in new ways.
While many people cite disinhibition as a crucial element of
creativity — and it is — positive inhibition is even more important,
Bilder said. “The ability to inhibit the first thing that comes to mind
in order to get to the higher hanging fruit in the cognitive tree is one
of the cornerstones of creative achievement,” said Bilder. The first
idea is not usually the most novel one; pushing past the easy answer and
reaching for a better one is a mark of creativity.
Perhaps one of the most important parts of creativity is its
connection to emotions and the visceral parts of the brain.
“Neuroimaging experiments show us that we use the very same neural
systems to feel our bodies as to feel our relationships, our moral
judgments, and our creative inspiration,” said Mary Helen Immordino-Yang,
a professor at USC’s Rossier School of Education and an expert on the
neuroscience of learning and creativity. She and other neuroscientist researchers have found that this visceral connection to the body is a huge motivator of creativity.
To develop ideas that could be considered creative, the brain has to
be both stable and flexible at the same time. Brains perform just this
type of balancing act every second of every day. “The brain maintains a
duality of systems that are constantly introducing flexibility into our
thinking and then trying to stabilize our thinking,” Bilder said. The
brain evaluates a new stimuli, compares it the plan originally set and
then decides on the optimal degree of flexibility or stability to
pursue. This cycle happens three times per second.
To reach that perfect state of brain balance it helps if the creator
is feeling what Bilder refers to as “flow,” and what an athlete might
call “playing in the zone.” It’s an automatic, effortless, but highly
concentrated state when all the practice and knowledge leading up to
that moment comes pouring out in perfect harmony.
Musicians and artists describe this same sense of flow, which can
appear out of nowhere and often doesn’t happen when someone is trying
too hard to form an idea. “When you’re trying so hard to come up with
ideas you can’t do it, you can’t force it,” said Charles Limb, associate
professor of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at John’s Hopkins
University. “Then at another time, some flip switches and you’ve got
this flow going on, this generation of ideas.”
Limb’s research
has shown that when musicians are improvising, there’s a switch away
from the lateral prefrontal lobes responsible for monitoring and
self-censoring, allowing the musician to generate ideas more freely.
Limb’s research has led him to agree with Binder that freedom to explore
and practice without a specific goal in mind is a key element of
developing creative competence. “You have to cultivate these behaviors
by introducing them to children and recognizing that the more you do it,
the better you are at doing it,” Limb said.
So, can educators help their students become more creative? Some
teachers are moving in that direction, loosening the rules, giving
students choice, celebrating ideas and behaviors that challenge the
status quo, but without a drastic reimagining of the structures within which educators work, true creativity could be hard to find in school.
No comments:
Post a Comment