Category: Creative Thinking

Creative Thinking, K-12, Teaching Tools

May I Help You With Some Resources for This Month?

Terri Eichholz

Well, it happened. May snuck up on me and here we are. It was amusing to wake up to some Twitter drama about Teacher Appreciation Week, which is generally the first week of May, but Google has deemed that it doesn’t start until next week. Supposedly, whoever actually decides these things decided TAW needs to be during the first full week of May, and when the month starts on a Monday instead of a Sunday that doesn’t count. I don’t really know who is in charge of these seemingly arbitrary calendar declarations, but I do think the cherry on top is that it’s actually Principals’ Day. So, Happy Principals’ Day to those of you who are one or are aspiring to be one. And for goodness sake, just appreciate teachers every day and that dilemma will disappear once and for all.

May Wakelet

I do have some Teacher Appreciation links in this month’s Wakelet if you are so inclined. I also have May the 4th (Star Wars Day), Cinco de Mayo, and Mother’s Day resources. And — I know some of you are going to grit your teeth in frustration, but remember some schools actually started their years in late July, early August last year — the link to my End of the School Year Wakelet.

Other Wakelets

If you haven’t checked out my collection of Wakelets, you may find some other desperately needed resources here. From Brainteasers and Puzzles to Fun Stuff, if you are trying to survive testing or just the sheer exhaustion of making it through this many months of the school year, there are plenty of options to help you keep putting some “zing” into your lessons even if you feel like you’ve used them all.

Celebrate with a Pool Party

And, if worse comes to worse you can always download my Summer Pool Party Creative Thinking Packet. It’s free and I’ve used it with all ages to give students the opportunity to practice their S.C.A.M.P.E.R. skills.

from my Summer Pool Party packet
Poem based on Fasano Prompts
3-12, Creative Thinking, Language Arts, Writing

Crowd-Sourced Poetry from Joseph Fasano

Terri Eichholz

Weirdly, it was a collection of Joseph Fasano (@Joseph_Fasano_) quotes — compiled and presented to him by his students — not his poetry, that first brought him to my attention on Twitter. They compiled a notebook of the “craziest things” he said in class throughout one semester and gifted him the 152 page book at the end. Below is one example, which I think most teachers have either said or wanted to say at numerous points in their careers:

You can read the rest of his pinned thread of hilarious quotes here.

The Teacher/Poet

It turns out Fasano is not just a teacher with a sense of humor, but also a gifted poet. He began his academic career studying mathematics and astrophysics at Harvard, switched to philosophy, and then did his graduate studies on poetry at Columbia University. He has published several books and won numerous awards. Find out more about his biography and publications on his website.

Daily Poetry Themes on Twitter

Each day, Fasano suggests a new poetry theme on Twitter and offers an example. Responses pour in as readers share their favorite poems that center around that theme. For example, today’s theme was, “Wildness,” and he included this poem by Ada Limon to illustrate the topic:

The Poem That Made Me Cry

While I enjoy reading Fasano’s threads each day, and I am often moved by the beautiful pieces offered by people around the world, I wasn’t prepared to read the following Tweet, which includes a poem written by a woman with dementia based on one of his prompts:

A flood of people responded to this poignant Tweet, and Fasano was kind enough to Tweet the prompt so more people could try it out. You can read the thread to see examples from poets of all ages submitted in the thread.

The Prompt

Fasano Tweeted recently that he is working on a book of poetry prompts that teachers can use, and hopes to have it available soon. In the meantime, here is the prompt for the above poem. Other prompts and the creative responses to them can be found in his Twitter stream.

More Resources

While it’s almost the end of National Poetry Month in the United States, I think that we all know that our lives deserve to be enriched by beautiful writing and moving verses year round. Consider doing the above exercise with your students as the year comes to a close, or maybe to open next school year. You can find more poetry lesson ideas here.

Canva Choice Board made with Bingo Card app
3-12, Creative Thinking, Critical Thinking, Teaching Tools

Make a Canva Bingo Card/Choice Board

Terri Eichholz

Canva for Education has many bingo card templates, but did you know that it also has a Bingo generator app? This means you can not only make Bingo cards, but also even create choice boards that look engaging. I’ll go through the steps that I used to make a choice board in a few minutes.

Get Your Words

What do you want to put on your Bingo Card? Maybe it’s vocabulary or famous people for a bingo game, or maybe it’s tasks for a choice card. Maybe you don’t know. If you don’t already have a list, you can open a Canva Doc and use the Magic Write feature to generate some ideas. (There will also be a limited amount of pre-formatted lists in the Bingo Generator app.) I went ahead and gave Magic Write the following prompt, “9 tasks for 3rd graders to do to demonstrate their understanding of metamorphosis. Each task should be 4 words or less. You will want the prompt to specify the number of words if it’s generating tasks or the sentences will be too long for the generator to fit properly in each cell.

Get Your Template

Once you have the words/short phrases you want on the card listed, highlight and copy them. Then, it’s time to find your Bingo Card template. Do a search on Canva’s home page for “Bingo Card” and choose the one that looks close enough to what you’d like in design and number of cells. Open the template. Delete anything that’s already in the cells, and design your card. If you think you are going to want multiple cards that have the cells randomly rearranged, make that many duplicates of your card when it’s design is ready.

Find the App and Paste in Your List

Since I have been using the app, it appears in my left menu as “Bingo Cards.” I can click on it, and the generator menu that you see above appears. However, you may have to locate the app the first time by clicking on “Apps” in the menu and searching for it. Note that if “Bingo Cards” does not appear in your search, you may be using a design in which that app doesn’t work. For example, you can’t find it when you are making a Doc.

Paste your list in where it prompts you to “Enter some words.” Then select the grid size and number of cards you would like to generate as well as the font. I turned off gridlines because I already have a pretty template and don’t want the lines.

Create Bingo Cards

When you hit the purple button, cards will be generated on the side as you can see below. These are actually transparent images that you can drag over to your template, resize, and fit them as you like.

The generator went a bit wonky with the font sizes, I’m guessing because I went with phrases of different lengths instead of single words. I’m okay with that because it still save me a ton of time, the words are legible, and the template makes it less stark.

Conclusion

Once you do this process one or two times, it gets even faster. You can probably even have older students make their own Bingo Cards or Choice Boards, and they will enjoy the magic. Let me know if you think of any other ways to utilize this Canva App! Check out this post if you want to learn more about how I combined AI with Canva to make differentiated Choice Menus.

person playing string instruments
Creative Thinking, Music

Teach Rock for National Poetry Month

Terri Eichholz

April is National Poetry Month in the United States, and what better way is there to teach poetry than with music that was inspired by it? Teach Rock has just the lesson for you, with tons of media to accompany it.

What is Teach Rock?

Teach Rock is a website that has standards-aligned, arts-integrated lessons for students of all levels. These are all free to access, but you will need to register for free. To get an idea of the quality of this site, take a look at the Founding Board of Directors:

You can visit the Lesson Plan Collections page if you want to filter by grade level, subject, genre, activities, or topics. Since you are registered, you can “favorite” any that appeal to you and they will be saved to a Favorites page. The same can be done with Unit Plans, or the Student Edition Slide Decks.

Trace it Back

Trace it Back is a bit different than the other activities. On this page, students are encouraged to learn about what may have influenced one of their favorite musical artists. The page contains links to contemporary artists like Chance the Rapper and more classic ones like Nina Simone. Many of these are directed toward middle and high school age students, but there are a couple that could be used with elementary such as this one on the Beatles.

Where’s the Poetry?

As I mentioned at the top music is, of course, poetic. But if you want to examine some literal poems and relate them to music and history at the same time, the lesson on “Dolores Huerta and the United Farm Workers’ Movement.” Designed as a civics lesson for elementary students, this plan begins by showing students different photographs and a clip from a PBS where they learn about Huerta and the UFW. Then they hear a few songs related to the movement, including one performed by Alice Bag, “A Street Called Dolores Huerta,” which was based on a poem by Nikki Darling. Students are then given a handout to read that contains the poem, “Huelga” by Diana Garcia and asked to compare the message in the poem to that of Darling’s and Bag’s. They can then write their own haikus about Huerta. (Huerta, by the way, is 93 years old at the time of this writing.)

Montclair Film, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

What Else Can I Do with Teach Rock?

You can find lessons for every subject, including physical education, math, and SEL on this site. And the range of activities is anywhere from stations to performances and solving equations. We all know the significant part that music plays in the lives of our students, so Teach Rock is a wonderful resource to help you leverage that for learning.

question marks on paper crafts
Creative Thinking, Critical Thinking, K-12, Philosophy, Problem Solving

Conundrums from Class Dojo

Terri Eichholz

Conundrums from Class Dojo are short animated videos (less than 2 minutes) that pose ethical and philosophical questions to students. Each one has a video, a question to discuss along with an activity sheet for recording responses, and the option to share the idea with parents.

How to Access Conundrums

You can access Conundrums even if you don’t have a Class Dojo account. The series is part of their Social Emotional Learning collection, which you can find here. The Conundrums set is the largest of the ten categories by far with 27 videos. You may remember that in the past I’ve also recommended their Growth Mindset videos.

An Example of a Conundrum

One example of a Conundrum from Class Dojo is “The Tree Conundrum.” Students are given a hypothetical situation where a tree that is located on private land has been found to provide the best-tasting fruit in the world — and it’s the only one. The family who owns the property is not interested in sharing their tree, but has offered to sell one seed from the tree for a billion dollars.

Your conundrum is to decide whether someone should pay for the seed, the government should take over the property, no action should be taken, or solve the problem a different way.

Why Use Conundrums with Students?

Students love to debate topics (think about the popularity of “Would You Rather”), and these types of discussions are always opportunities for them to see things from multiple perspectives and learn how to justify their responses. They can practice their creative problem solving skills and critical thinking while feeling safe in participating because there is not one right answer. These are also quick activities that can be done after a long test or other moments when you don’t have quite enough time to start a brand new lesson. Or, you can extend them into a longer lesson using a Socratic Smackdown.

More Ideas

If you like these, and your students want more, you can also try:

You can find these and more ideas in my Philosophy for Kids Wakelet.

Clint Smith quote about joy
3-12, Creative Thinking, Language Arts, Writing

Clint Smith to Stephen Colbert: Poetry is the Act of Paying Attention

Terri Eichholz

In a recent appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Clint Smith told the host that, “Poetry is the act of paying attention.” The author of the award-winning book, How the Word is Passed and Counting Descent, has just released a new collection of his poetry called, Above Ground. In the 7 minute interview, Smith and Colbert discuss the relationship between love and paying attention as well as the human experience of often feeling conflicting emotions simultaneously. Smith reads one of his poems from his new book, “All at Once,” and I think everyone can identify with what a struggle it can be to bear the knowledge of joy and tragedy concurrently.

April is National Poetry Month in the United States, so I’ll be adding this to my other poetry resources. But I’ll also be bookmarking in my Pinterest collection of Inspirational Videos for Teachers because Smith talks about one of the first poems he remembers writing in school and the encouragement from his teacher that he will never forget.

You can view Colbert’s interview with Smith below, or at this link. If you’d like to listen to a 37 minute interview Smith did recently with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, you can access it here.