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Ten Tips for a More Creative School Year: School Version
Having a more creative school year not about cute bulletin boards or expensive materials—it is about becoming a classroom in which students are encouraged to be their most creative selves, while...
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Creativity and The Common Core #1: It’s Not the Whole Curriculum
In the United States, The Common Core State Standards Initiative is one of the most powerful forces we’ve seen in education in a long, long time. So what is it? And how does it influence teachers’...
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Creativity and the Common Core #2: It Doesn’t Tell You HOW to Teach
The Common Core State Standards Initiative outlines core math and language arts content to be addressed at each grade level. That is, the Core Standards carefully delineate WHAT is to be taught at each...
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Creativity and the Common Core #3: It Doesn’t Tell You What Students Should...
For the last few weeks I’ve been writing about teaching for creativity and the Common Core State Standards. The Common Core State Standards Initiative outlines core math and language arts content to be...
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Creative Blogging: The Safe Way
Class blogs can be a fabulous way to motivate students to write and to provide families with insight into your class. Sites like Edublogs and Kidblog make it easy to get started. But if students are to...
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Creativity in the Classroom Model #1: Understanding and Creativity
CREATIVITY: A Celtic Knot I’m coming near the end of my first year of creativiteach.me, and like most anniversaries, this one has prompted some reflection. In the past year I’ve been honored by...
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Creativity in the Classroom Model #2: Intrinsic Motivation and Learning for...
Few things concern teachers more than student motivation. The degree to which students are invested and engaged in classroom activities is basic to their success. We may sometimes talk of “unmotivated...
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The Question is the Teacher: Creativity and the Role of Essential Questions
I recently read Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins’ Essential Questions: Opening the Doors to Student Understanding, and thought, “How wonderful to have a book so totally supportive of creativity, while...
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Put on Your Thinking Cap for Creativity: Metaphors and More
One of my favorite small education blogs is called “v. to put on one’s thinking cap: A reflection on social constructivism in the elementary classroom.” It recounts the learning and thinking of a class...
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Creativize Your Curriculum
Recently I had the wonderful opportunity to work with some Korean teachers interested in incorporating more creativity in their teaching. We had only a short time together, and so it was important to...
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When is Failure Not Failure?
So, when is failure not failure? When it is defined as an “iteration.” What does that mean? An iteration is a repetition, but not an exact one. An iteration is a repetition that changes just a bit,...
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Travel, Creativity, and the Wonder of it All
I’m back from an amazing 40th anniversary trip to Mainland China and Tibet (yes, obviously, we were married as babes!) On one hand, it was a blissful opportunity to leave everything work-related...
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Practice Makes Perfect? Maybe Not Always
How many times have you heard it—or said it, “Practice. Work hard. Just keep trying. All you have to do is work harder. Then you’ll succeed.” But in a recent Washington Post blog post, Alfie Kohn...
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Design Thinking 2: Design in Curriculum
As more and more schools realize that creativity and problem solving are essential skills, we face a dilemma—how do we manage organize curriculum in ways that do both? One possibility is using design...
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Let’s Get Curious–And Learn More
I’ve always been curious. In one of my more memorable childhood experiments, I decided (age 5) that it was very important to know how loudly I could scream. I mean, if I never tried screaming my...
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Music and Your Brain: 10-Minute Lesson
If I want fireworks in my brain, I’d better get back to practicing. That’s the message of a TedEd video by Anita Collins and Sharon Colman Graham, recently featured on National Public Radio. Take a...
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When Do We Play?
Play is important. Why else would it be so consistent across the human and animal worlds? When we had kittens in our house, the two of them found the world a continual source of adventure. They...
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Playfulness in High School: It’s Time
Play is in the air. Maybe it is because the heaps of snow are, at long last, melting from my back yard, but thoughts about play and playfulness seem all around. I had just written the last blog post...
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Hooray for Wales!
The small country of Wales has just done something big. The government of Wales, in conjunction with the Welsh Arts Council has issued a 5-year action plan titled Creative Learning Through the Arts: An...
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Peter Pan, HighScope, and Kids
Sometimes, Peter Pan is right. Remember his song, “I Won’t Grow Up?” When I think about some of the things going on in the name of early education. I’m about ready to start singing it. There is a time...
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