Today’s mahi has all been about deliberately designing opportunities for learners to respond creatively to the texts they are reading.
I think this is something that I am very closely drawn to. Both for the fact that I love being creative myself, but also for the fact that it is in this stage that our tamariki can fully express themselves in a way that suits their strengths and also allows them to work in a way that they are most comfortable.
I really like the quote used –
You don’t empower people by just being consumers. Teaching people to read and not write, teaching people to play and not design is the way to make customers and consumers and not producers and creative thinkers”
It is a great reminder to me that the tamariki we work with are not just there to regurgitate information for us, rather the most impactful thing they can do is create and design in their own way, shape and form.
It’s no surprise as well that, obviously those that are strong in their ability to create, are also those that achieve the highest. And also the fact that our more creative students are also those that demonstrate a higher creative thinking ability as well (if creative thinking ability is even the right term 
).
A few different AI tools were covered. Some of which are familiar with, and others which I was not. I’ll try and set some time aside to explore these.
One of the first activities we did was to create a AI image that reflected a poem, and the meaning behind said poem. I really enjoyed the activity for how I could see it being easily used within my class. Taking it one step further though I think it would be even better without the AI side of things and just have students draw their own. But I also understand that for some student students this isn’t a strong side and so having it there as a resource for something to use could be really beneficial.
There were some great reminders about the variety of different ways to be creative. And also how these support the reading pillars of practice. I think the side of it that I struggle with is now we have so much choice in terms of different programs or tools that are available to students that finding suitable ones or trusting them to find something that is suitable and will show their learning in an effective way sometimes becomes the thing that takes up the most time. Because of this I think I need to be very careful in the way that I structure my learning activities and also with the learning intention intentions that I set for my kids so they don’t end up going down a infinite rabbit hole before even attempting the task.
The highlight of my day was definitely doing the example activity of a one minute book trailer. I have linked that here. Come at me Fox and socks!
I think this activity is something that would be really cool to work with our school librarian and collaborate on. It could be a great way of advertising to kids any new materials that are coming into the library and also to highlight good texts across a range of different genres in a medium which they engage with very easily. So there is some more homework for me right there!
Overall I enjoyed the day and thought it was very positively challenging. It’s given me a few ideas on potential creative pathways I can hopefully try heading into the end of term.
TLDR – make kids create more stuff = better achievers and better readers. + Sam keeps making more work for himself.