The Creative Classroom

The Creative Classroom presents an original, compelling vision of schools where teaching and learning are centered on creativity. Drawing on the latest research as well as his studies of jazz and improvised theater, Sawyer describes curricula and classroom practices that will help educators get started with a new style of teaching, guided improvisation, where students are given freedom to explore within structures provided by the teacher. Readers will learn how to improve learning outcomes in all subjects—from science and math to history and language arts—by helping students master content-area standards at the same time as they increase their creative potential. This book shows how teachers and school leaders can work together to overcome all-too-common barriers to creative teaching—leadership, structure, and culture—and collaborate to transform schools into creative organizations. Book Features: Presents a research-based approach to teaching and learning for creativity. Identifies which learning outcomes support creativity and offers practical advice for how to teach for these outcomes. Shows how students learn content-area knowledge while also learning to be creative with that knowledge. Describes principles and techniques that teachers can use in all subjects. Demonstrates that a combination of school structures, cultures, incentives, and leadership are needed to support creative teaching and learning.

Participatory Creativity: Introducing Access and Equity to the Creative Classroom presents a systems-based approach to examining creativity in education that aims to make participating in invention and innovation accessible to all students. Moving beyond the gifted-versus-ungifted debate present in many of today’s classrooms, the book’s inclusive framework situates creativity as a participatory and socially distributed process. The core principle of the book is that individuals are not creative, ideas are creative, and that there are multiple ways for a variety of individuals to participate in the development of creative ideas. This dynamic reframing of invention and innovation provides strategies for teachers, curriculum designers, policymakers, researchers, and others who seek to develop a more equitable approach towards establishing creative learning experiences in various educational settings.

The Creative Classroom presents an original, compelling vision of schools where teaching and learning are centered on creativity. Drawing on the latest research as well as his studies of jazz and improvised theater, Sawyer describes curricula and classroom practices that will help educators get started with a new style of teaching, guided improvisation, where students are given freedom to explore within structures provided by the teacher. Readers will learn how to improve learning outcomes in all subjects—from science and math to history and language arts—by helping students master content-area standards at the same time as they increase their creative potential. This book shows how teachers and school leaders can work together to overcome all-too-common barriers to creative teaching—leadership, structure, and culture—and collaborate to transform schools into creative organizations. “This work will make it easier for educators to harness and develop the creative potential of the people around them—young or old.” —Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Claremont Graduate University “This guide is important for all educators that are seeking to be in sync with the changing demands of the 21st century.” —Kylie Peppler, Indiana University Bloomington “Keith Sawyer has written a wise and judicious book that will challenge and inspire teachers at all levels and in all disciplines.” —Ellen Winner, Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education “Keith Sawyer is a field leader in studies of creativity and education and he does not disappoint with this text. If teachers take one thing from this book, it’s to say ‘Yes!’ to kids’ voices.” —Erica Halverson, University of Wisconsin–Madison

This book borrows from a range of theories about creativity and about learning, while remaining largely practical in focus. It contains numerous examples for teachers of how to apply ideas about creativity in the classroom. In doing so, it attempts to maintain the subject's core identity while also keeping abreast of contemporary social, pedagogical and technological developments. The result is a refreshing challenge to some of the more mundane approaches to English teaching on offer in an age focussed excessively on standardisation and teaching to tests.

The Creative Classroom provides teachers in grades PreK-6 with a number of creative drama strategies for use in the classroom, on a daily basis and across the curriculum. Designed for the teacher who may not have had any prior knowledge or experience with creative drama, the book presents activities that are uncomplicated and versatile with a step-by step procedural guide to help the teacher implement the activities successfully. The activities are ideal for the whole language classroom and their multi sensory approach makes them applicable to students of all learning styles. The techniques in the book can be used to reinforce and review subject matter as well as to promote language, comprehension, and thinking skills. Organized sequentially, from simple to the more complex, the instructional strategies allow teachers and students to risk in increments as they try something for the first time.

Book advocate Colby Sharp presents more than forty beloved, award-winning, diverse and bestselling authors and illustrators in a creative challenge! Colby Sharp invited more than forty authors and illustrators to provide story starters for each other; photos, drawings, poems, prose, or anything they could dream up. When they received their prompts, they responded by transforming these seeds into any form of creative work they wanted to share. The result is a stunning collection of words, art, poetry, and stories by some of our most celebrated children book creators. A section of extra story starters by every contributor provides fresh inspiration for readers to create works of their own. Here is an innovative book that offers something for every kind of reader and creator! With contributions by Sherman Alexie, Tom Angleberger, Jessixa Bagley, Tracey Baptiste, Sophie Blackall, Lisa Brown, Peter Brown, Lauren Castillo, Kate DiCamillo, Margarita Engle, Deborah Freedman, Adam Gidwitz, Chris Grabenstein, Jennifer L. Holm, Victoria Jamieson, Travis Jonker, Jess Keating, Laurie Keller, Jarret J. Krosoczka, Kirby Larson, Minh Lê, Grace Lin, Kate Messner, Daniel Nayeri, Naomi Shihab Nye, Debbie Ohi, R.J. Palacio, Linda Sue Park, Dav Pilkey, Andrea Davis Pinkney, Jewell Parker Rhodes, Dan Santat, Gary Schmidt, John Schu, Colby Sharp, Bob Shea, Liesl Shurtliff, Lemony Snicket, Laurel Snyder, Javaka Steptoe, Mariko Tamaki, Linda Urban, Frank Viva, and Kat Yeh.

Examines and responds to the tension educators face while trying to nurture creativity within the curricular constraints of the classroom.

The fourth edition of this well-known text continues the mission of its predecessors âe" to help teachers link creativity research and theory to the everyday activities of classroom teaching. Part I (chs 1-5) includes information on models and theories of creativity, characteristics of creative people, and talent development. Part II (chapters 6-10) includes strategies explicitly designed to teach creative thinking, to weave creative thinking into content area instruction, and to organize basic classroom activities (grouping, lesson planning, assessment, motivation and classroom organization) in ways that support studentsâe(tm) creativity. Changes in this Edition: Improved Organization -- This edition has been reorganized from 8 to 10 chapters allowing the presentation of theoretical material in clearer, more manageable chunks. New Material âe" In addition to general updating, there are more examples involving middle and secondary school teaching, more examples linking creativity to technology, new information on the misdiagnosis of creative students as ADHD, and more material on cross-cultural concepts of creativity, collaborative creativity, and linking creativity to state standards. Pedagogy & Design âe" Chapter-opening vignettes, within-chapter reflection questions and activities, sample lesson ideas from real teachers, and end-of-chapter journaling activities help readers adapt content to their own teaching situations. Also, a larger trim makes the layout more open and appealing and a single end-of-book reference section makes referencing easier. Targeted specifically to educators (but useful to others), this book is suitable for any course that deals wholly or partly with creativity in teaching, teaching the gifted and talented, or teaching thinking and problem solving. Such courses are variously found in departments of special education, early childhood education, curriculum and instruction, or educational psychology.