Activity Resource 5: Additional ideas for creative teaching and learning

This unit has explored how to develop creativity in both teaching and learning. You may wish to develop your ideas further, to consolidate, to apply ideas in different contexts or to explore an aspect in more depth and innovate.

Developing practice

Here are some suggestions for developing your practice further.

• Identify a task that you feel rarely results in the quality of outcomes you would hope for or expect. Review the key messages in this unit, and consider what particular changes to your planning or teaching strategies would have most impact on the quality of pupils’ work. Implement the necessary changes and reflect on the impact on outcomes. For example you might:
  • Compose a piece for the class to play. Model the composing process by developing the piece collaboratively in the classroom, so that pupils work with you in adapting, refining, selecting and rejecting.
  • Create a composer’s notepad from which pupils can develop a composition, working in groups from a set of abstract materials. Document 3b  88kb is an example called ‘Haiku’.
  • Design a performing task in which pupils are required to create their own expressive interpretations of material that they have chosen or that you have taught them by ear.
  • Plan a lesson focused on a creative approach to listening and appraising. Choose one piece of recorded music, or two short contrasting pieces. Use Bloom’s taxonomy (see the Challenges section) to develop a series of questions at different levels, for discussion in groups or pairs. Use group talk strategies to support pupils in tackling the questions, for example Jigsaw, Envoy, or Listening triad. Define the nature of the outcome – it might be a spoken presentation of findings, a written piece, or a poster. Document 3a  42kb is an example created in order to listen to a piece of jazz: ‘Night Train’. The example includes the questions and the pupils’ responses.
• Now look at other units in your scheme of work. Find further places where some or all of these strategies will be useful.
• Identify a lesson or unit of work that you feel does not currently offer pupils an effective balance between freedoms and constraints (e.g. in the time allowed for a task, the scale of its outcome, the choice of musical materials, resources, style or genre, starting points or tasks). Adapt the lesson or unit to address the following points.
  • Are freedoms and constraints clear in your planning?
  • Are they clear to your pupils?
  • Is the balance between them such that pupils can be focused and engaged, while allowing them to make choices about their methods and direction?
  • Is the work likely to result in a range of outcomes that demonstrates pupils’ imagination and originality?
• Look at Training materials for the foundation subjects, Module 12: Thinking together (DCSF 0350/2002).
  • Note the thinking strategies outlined in the module. Introduce one of the strategies into your next lesson involving group work.
  • Monitor and reflect upon the impact of the strategy on pupils’ learning and outcomes.
  • Aim to develop your practice in this area in future lessons and units, building it into your planning where appropriate.