Changing the Details

I love reading chapter books with my students. I think it helps them develop vocabulary and comprehension skills. We usually start off with Charlotte's Web. One of my favorite things about this book is that the setting plays such an important role in the story. The fact that it takes place on a farm-farm animals, farm life. What would happen if we changed that setting-what other details would change? I assigned different settings to different tables and asked them to think about that.

Introducing Multiple Perspectives

Multiple Perspectives is usually the first concept of Kaplan's Depth and Complexity that I introduce to my 1st Graders. 

I channel Robin Williams in Dead Poet's Society and jump up on a table look around see how your perspective changes. Kids stand on their chairs and do the same thing.

We read the story A Fine, Fine School and talked about the job of a principal. I asked the students to put themselves in the shoes of a principal what would you see/hear, what would you feel, what would you wish?

Vocabulary Journals

One of my favorite parts of teaching young children is all the new words they learn in their year with me! We learn a multitude of words to replace words like "pretty" and "big". We learn adjectives they can use in their writing and words just because they are my favorites (yes, I have favorite words, yes I am a nerd :) .

We have Vocabulary Journals where students can document the words we learn throughout the year. I mostly use Frayer Models where the students write a definition, illustrate the word, give examples and give non-examples. But I also include other pages where they can write about words we are learning. Here are a few examples:

Invent a New School Supply

At least once a week, I try to give my students an opportunity to invent something new. This is challenging for them-they have difficulty in the beginning seeing past what already exists. So if I ask them to invent a new holiday for example, they want to do Christmas or Valentine's Day. But as with a lot of higher level thinking activities-the more we do it, the easier it gets for them.

This time of year we are all familiar with school supplies. I asked them to think about how they could improve an existing school supply or to invent a new one. What is not working now or what could work better. They came up with some exciting responses-especially for their first time doing an activity like this.

Tracking Creativity

There is a lot of controversy in the research as to whether or not creativity can be taught. I think everyone has some innate creativity and we can teach students how to tap into that. When we set the expectation that we want them to think of a unique answer, something different from their friends and we give them many opportunities to put this into practice-we see growth in how creative their answers are. How do I track this throughout the year? I use divergent art.

Divergent Art is giving students a squiggle or shape and asking them to use that in a picture. You "grade" their response as to the level of creativity you see. How unique was their idea? How detailed was their picture? I start with something simple, this year just a straight line. Here is the baseline for my class this year-lots of cones and triangles:

lemon

very creative!!!

Every month we do about 2 of these. I share the ideas afterward that I thought were creative and unique. The more we do it, the less simple their answers become. We can see their creativity blossom.