4 Ways to Foster Creativity in Your Classroom
Are you looking for ways to support your students’ creativity in the classroom?
Working alongside teachers in a variety of contexts (early childhood, elementary, out of school), we’ve learned a lot about what instructional strategies are both easy for teachers and effective in real learning environments. These simple shifts in practice, backed by experience and research will help you bring out the most personal, expressive engagement in your students and honor their ingenuity and unique identities.
To bolster children’s expression of self and imaginative thinking:
1. Simplify material invitations for child-led play
We have found that sometimes the most thoughtful play happens when we offer the most subtle shifts to the room or pared-back materials. One day, we added these beautiful large dice beside the block area. Not knowing where the kids would go with it, we watched three children design elaborate building games with rules, utilize mathematical thinking, and invent challenges for themselves. We didn’t know where the children would go with the dice, which meant the children could become the true inventors and innovators!
2. Invite children to combine materials:
Children have the best ideas for deepening their play! Even though we have clearly organized areas of the room, designed for particular types of play and art-making, children often come to us with their own ideas for novel and innovative combinations. When two children (pictured below) asked to bring some of the kitchen area materials (egg cartons, muffin tins) to the clay table, we said yes! Their play was deep, long, and joyful: they told stories of family recipes and invited other students to “taste” and enjoy together. When children know that their ideas are welcome and that they have choices in the space, they will imagine beyond what is set out on an art table!
3. Provide guidance around the process, not the product.
When we hope for imaginative thinking, we have found it best to provide as little in the form of visual examples at the start of the project as possible. Process art is all about the experience, not the end product. We can easily get in the way of creativity with our own ideas of beauty and completion. If we introduce an unfamiliar material (paint rollers or plasticine, for example) we hold ourselves back from showing any finished products! We demonstrate how the materials work and sit beside students to provide guidance around using it safely (at least for a few minutes!).
We want there to be as many different answers to an invitation as there are children in the classroom!
4. Encourage collaboration!
Even though we don’t create finished products to share with students, we know that encouraging children to look to one another for inspiration and guidance helps deepen engagement and creative thinking. We also know that the right play partners can help each other work through points of frustration, and broaden thinking around the possibilities of any given materials. Sitting in front of a new material all alone can be daunting, especially with a child concerned with “doing it right.” In this play experience, two girls compared and contrasted the colors of play dough they had created with markers. They shared their methods and worked together to create color recipes for other students!
Do you need help reimagining your classroom as a hub of creativity where children share ideas and feel seen, known, and celebrated? Learn more about our Materials Matter course to start your creative practice today.
