Some Ways For Teachers To Be More Creative

Make room for visual reflection

Reflective activities provide students with an opportunity to absorb information more deeply—enhancing their creative and contextual understanding of the content. When reflective learning exercises are displayed visually in the classroom, they become of benefit not only to those who share them but to every student in your class.

This board of mindset moments is one example of this principle in action. By encouraging students to pin their learnings or “shifted mindsets” to the board, this provides a great opportunity for guided reflection.

Even outside of the classroom this technique is well as a creative learning technique. Pictured above is the bulletin board from a TEDxSummit.
Try this technique today using the Learn something new today and Learning adventure templates you’ll find below. Adjust them to your liking, pin them on the wall and let us know how it goes.

Integrate more hands-on learning

Benjamin Franklin once said:
Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.
Hands-on learning is a great way to apply a creative twist to traditional course content and engage students on a deeper level.
Try this Black and Green Inspirational Quote Poster template on Canva.

Here are three ideas for inspiration:

• 
  English: Rather than asking students to read class texts at home, incorporate a group reading session into each class. Ensure that every student is selected as the daily reader at least once.
  
• 
  Media/design: If students are learning about a “real world application” wherever possible skip the theory and get them to dive into the real thing. For example, rather than teaching students about the basics of web design in a media class, encourage them to create a site for something they’re passionate about.
  
• 
  Maths: Taken from this list of excellent practical maths ideas, one way to teach velocity is to ask students to build paper airplanes and use calculations to predict their speed. What better way to iterate on their calculations by testing them out in real life?