The Creative Classroom

Challenging students to create is an important part of the digital age classroom.

Students need the skills and opportunity to construct knowledge and to creatively communicate their thinking with an authentic audience, rather than simply consuming information. Ultimately, the abundance of technology available to students makes assigning creative tasks easy for teachers and creating professional, final products accessible to students. But for many, the idea of giving students choice in this process can be overwhelming.

Have you heard that "creativity craves constraint"?

Truthfully, students want parameters when given a creative task in the classroom. Of course, we also want to give students the freedom to explore and push boundaries, but by giving students healthy constraints and clear expectations at the launch of a creative assignment, we make the classroom a safer space for students to be vulnerable throughout the creative process.

Teachers can make it easy by limiting assignments to the 'What' or 'How' of creation, but not both.

For example, a teacher could tell their students to show their learning through Adobe Spark (the how). Spark allows students to create a video, a web page, or an infographic, giving choice in what students create. Alternatively, teachers could challenge their students to create a video (the what), while suggesting Adobe Spark, WeVideo, or iMovie as choices of how they could create their final product. In both scenarios, there are boundaries to the creative task, but students still have choice and autonomy.

Building a creative classroom means releasing the responsibility of learning to the student.

In creative classrooms, the learning happens throughout the creative process, as opposed to at then end of the lesson or unit, and effective differentiation and scaffolding is built into that process. To achieve this, teachers must require students to learn through creation. This means they synthesize their learning, apply what they know in authentic ways, and even present/ share their learning with a relevant, authentic audience. We can ensure that these learning tasks maintain high, academic rigor and lead to student success through intentional backwards planning and by creating thoughtful standards-based rubrics. On the topic of rubrics...

Can we all acknowledge that a checklist with a few noted, max scores is not an effective rubric?

When assigning a creative task and writing a rubric to assess it, teachers need to first start with their standards and skills. They need to answer: what do I want to see my students know or can do by the end of this task? Here's the thing: Visual appeal, creativity, and artistic acumen are all subjective, but it is entirely possible to assess a student's knowledge of content, their ability to apply skill in practice, & the professionalism of a final product. Through well-written, standards-based rubrics, teachers ensure that students' final products will be a true representation of student achievement.