Blog #4 - In the Middle

Hello again, Everyone!

I would like to touch briefly this morning on a point that Atwell brings up in chapter 6: Minilessons. Atwell begins by talking about third graders and how they begin to become aware of their audience when they are completing creative works and how instead of creating work that is based in their creativity and spontaneity, they begin to create works that they believe are acceptable to their audience (i.e. teachers, peers, parents, etc.). Piaget refers to this phase of a child's development as sociocentricity. Whereas when they were second graders- free to express themselves with creativity and little fear of judgment- by the time they hit this state of sociocentricity they cater their work to the criteria they expect their work to be judged by.

Now, skipping ahead ten years. How do we get students to re-capture that creative flair they had in their youth and undo years of writing to please the teacher. Well, the anwser is: We don't. You see, there is no way to go back and change ten years worth of influence and adjustment. YET, there is still something that can be done as a high school teacher to undo some of the damage. We can create assignments with rubrics that are clearly understood by the students that call for a recapturing of that creative spark of the students' youth.

I understand that not every assignment can be a creative assignment. There is still the need to teach and assess students' understanding of formal writing styles such as book reports. But when we do assign a creative project or writing piece, we can establish clear expectations in the rubric that creativity and spontaneity of thought are important elements of the grading system for that assignment. If a teacher is able to show the students that these sorts of assignments are not just a trick to give them a bad grade, but a chance to really let their creativity flow unhampered, I believe that we may see more success when trying to get students to show some of their creative flair in their assignments. Once again, the key to this, I believe, is giving the students a rubric that shows how heavily stressed creativity is and then reiterating in class the large degree of creative freedom they have to write/present creative works. This may give them the confidence and security they need to relax a little and let their creativity flow.

These are my thoughts. Tell me what you think. And, as always, Keep it classy Kent State.

-Sam