PD - Creativity Empowers Learning

Monday's staff PD was filled with Ooohs and Ahhhs as we watched the caliber of movie making Pt England had 10+ years ago. Our wonderful Dorothy Burt conducted our PD on how 'Creativity Empowers Learning'. Teachers who's work was shown shared their learning process and how they made those 'create' activities possible, but most importantly, the learning and motivation (engagement) students received while carrying out these tasks as part of their learning. 

This was great for us teachers who have only been here at Pt England a few year to see the types of activities and learning that can be had through movie making and animations. At times during my teaching here, I have been guilty of making my create activities a writing task or creating something with no real purpose or learning behind it. 

But with the start of my CoL inquiry at the start of this year, I have been more mindful and purposefully provided time in my class for students to be creative in their learning through the use of animations, acting, song and dance. This PD has helped me think of new ways to make this a part of students' learning and the pedagogy behind it has strengthened my resolve to ensuring this is happening daily for my learners.

Dorothy emphasised how Create is a DOING word which uses multiple sense and involves the use of your WHOLE BODY not just your brain.

SISOMO - Sight, Sound, Motion. This is what create is all about!

One of the excerpts shared from the Create part of the Learn Create Share Pedagogy was:

"One of the foundation goals of the Manaiakalani Programme is to 'motivate our learners to engage with the curriculum' and a significant driver for engagement has been our intentional use of modern technologies to enable creativity to play a significant part in learning and teaching opportunities."

It was great having this in front of us as a reminder that we have the same vision and are on this journey together. 

One of the slides I really liked and will hopefully talk about more in a later post is this one aligning Blooms Taxonomy with a SAMR type graphic, using TECH - moving from traditional teacher-created tasks to student-centered, tech-integrated learning.