Blog Post 6: The Art of it all

I believe everyone from our group enjoyed the activity of “Treasure Hunt” which Victoria designed in the past two weeks. Not only the children, but also us student-teachers like the idea of creativity from this activity. It was interested for children, because they had a task to finish and it was playful.  We student-teachers like it because we were able to embed our goals in the activity. For instance, following directions and staying focuses are two main goals for L. We had some chances to practice some of these skills for L through the activity. Comparing the last lab to others in the past few weeks, surely, the “Treasure Hunt” was a better experience for both students and teachers. Our goals are still the same, but its creative form brings more entertainment and engagement for students acquiring new skills.

I feel my CAPES! experience reflects the theory of Play often. Play is in children’s nature. Either a child is gifted or needs extra support; children like playing and want to play when they are allowed. I was assigned to work with KE for this lab. He talked very little to his peers or teachers. He was not interested with activities their team set up. Instead, he held three stuff toys and kept himself in the corner. But guess what he was doing? He was playing with those stuff toys! I sat closely to him so I could hear what he was mumbling. I found out he was role-acting three animals’ running and tracing in the wild. His words were full of imaginations. How creative he was! I asked to have one of the stuff animals, and joined his play. At the beginning, he just ignored me, and even got up and ran to the other side of the room. All I could do was being patient and wait for him to come back. Whenever he came back and tried to grab the stuff animal from my hand, I pretended as the rabbit (the stuff toy) and asked him different questions: where did you go? Did you see the big bear? Can we play hide-and-seek? And towards the end, he was feeling comfortable enough to sit down and play with me for a little while. And I think at that point, we practiced few social interaction skills. For this lab experience, I wasn’t the one being creativity but the child was.   

Creativity is an important element in teaching for it establishes meaningful and engaged learning experiences. Creativity can be a thoughtful planning from teachers as well as inspiration from the children.

Maybe my past learning experience impacts my teaching style leaning towards more structuralized. Creativity is something I need to work on more to become a better elementary teacher. For young children and students in grade schools, I think they would like to have a teacher that is more artsy. My reason will go back to the Play theory. Children construct knowledge and develop skills when they are engaged in play. A teacher who is full of fun learning activities will be able to draw more attentions from students, and eventually develops more learning opportunities for them.