I teach my kiddos from day one to "Think Outside the Box". Every single one of my students can explain to you what that means. I expect them be creative in their responses whether orally or on paper. If they are doing divergent art, where I give them a squiggle and they have to turn it into something else-they know better than to just give me a snake. Their answer should be different from every other child's answer in the class-be original, take risks. I even told them this year about a billboard I saw, I think it was for the tv channel FX - it said simply: There is no box. I love that!!! So far outside the box, there isn't even a box! :) So now if someone says "think outside the box", you can hear a little chant of "there is no box" from several of my kiddos.
Well, yesterday I was doing a probability lesson with them. We touched on it a little bit last year and I wanted to see where we stood. They all had dry erase boards, as we were reviewing some other math objectives. I gave them this scenario: I was doing the laundry and I had 10 white shirts, 2 blue shirts and 1 red shirt. I reach in to pull one out, what color will I most likely choose? Easy, right? Common sense?
The responses:
blue -because it's my favorite color
pink-because it's your (as in their teacher's) favorite color
pink-because once my mom washed a red towel with white ones and they all came out pink
purple-because that's what you get when you mix blue and red
green-I like green
turquoise-I don't know why
Wow! Some days you just have to laugh. My only fear is the standardized testing we have coming up-hopefully because they are limited by multiple choice it might narrow down the answers they choose-but it does scare me a little bit. Maybe we need a new box!
I love the answers! I remember teaching creative writing and many of my kids failed the writing test because of their creative responses. The following year, I trained them to just answer the question and they did well. But many lost the creative component because so much of the time was spent preparing for the test. I wish there was a way to balance both.
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