Reading Practice Intensive - Session Eight

 Session Eight: Creating

As part of my own practice I have always endeavoured to have “Design Tasks” as part of the reading program; usually, a visual task in which students apply what they have learnt in the previous week to create something.

Creating as a response to reading; designing opportunities for students to create interesting, and imaginative responses to the texts they are reading. These tasks are engaging, and allow students to utilise different thought processes, and open up opportunities to try new things, and experiment.

Creating gives our students purpose, and gives them a tangible outcome for the learning that they do, the research shows us that the students who make higher shifts spend a lot of time creating, and applying their learning into making something for themselves, or for others.

Why do we create?

• Engaging for students

• Applying their understanding

• Excercising choice

• Collaboration with peers

• Make connections with the learning intentions

“Creativity combines Sight, Sound and Motion with innovation and imagination as well as accuracy, and attention to the last detail” SiSoMo (Saatchi & Saatchi)

One of our tasks today was to complete a Create task of our own; we were asked to read aloud a poem using expression, and tone which matched the tone of the poem, as well as to create a visual representation of what we were reading. I was amazed at how much of my own interpretation of the poem influenced the image that I came up with, in contrast with what some of the other teachers came up with. This reflects something that I think we all know inherently, is that every reader is going to have their own interpretation of the text, and how it makes them feel. I have included my own, as well as some of my favourites as I think it shows just how open minded, and creative we, as humans, can be.

Why is Creativity so Important? 

The refreshed English curriculum now has a new focus on Creating Texts for themselves or for others which indicates that the Curriculum will take into account how important the Create element of our student’s learning is.

Mayer’s 12 principles of multimedia learning empirically demonstrate the increased learning potential of combining visual and verbal modes (than either mode alone).

Create to Show Learning

How do we fit these Create tasks into our own practice?

• Short creative responses to texts

• May involve tighter or looser instructions (Scaffolding for the students to incorporate elements and reflections of our learning into their designs)

• Involve opportunities for choice to allow students to try different things, and experience new challenges

• Independent from teacher, but should involve opportunities for collaboration between students and/or the teacher.

There is such a huge variety in the different types of Create tasks, and during this session we have discussed, and reflected on so many. Building a library of these tools is something that I can’t wait to do - it requires a certain type of thinking to come up with original ideas for these tasks, so it’s great to use collaboration, and the skillset of other teachers to be able to borrow tasks and apply them to what we are doing in our classroom.

One of elements I will be focusing on in my own practice is collaboration; there are so many online tools, not just through the Google Suite, that students can work to create together. One of the ideas I had is to get students to create their own Kahoot quizzes to test each other (within reading groups), or between reading groups who may be reading the same text. Another tool I want to explore more is MindMup; this tool appears to allow students to collaborate to create mindmaps based on prompts, or important ideas from the texts that we read. This will allow them to understand different perspectives, and points of view as they work to understand the big ideas in the text.

We were asked to do something else today that I will definitely be borrowing, and using in my own classroom, and that is the One-Shot Book Review. In this task we were asked to promote a book that we enjoyed, and to "sell" it to other readers. The book I chose was "A Light in the Attic" by Shel Silverstein. This book is actually a poetry collection, and one that gave me a love for poetry, which for years I thought was just about describing boring places, and emotions using complex metaphors, and simile. This author showed me that poetry can be fun, and silly, and can use those language features to make poems
MORE interesting, rather than harder to understand. Check out my One-Shot Review below;

In summary, I think it is especially important for our student's engagement to apply their learning in creative, and interesting ways. Their ability to produce interesting, and engaging content of their own opens up a whole new world, especially in the modern day where we are seeing podcasts, TikToks, vlogging, and so many other forms of creative outlets becoming viable outlets for expression, for creativity, and, although not critically important, for monetization. The world is their oyster, and as teachers, we are doing them a disservice if we focus all our time on having kids work on OUR content, instead of using their wonderful minds to make content of their own that they and others can enjoy!