Creativity

Teaching and Assessing Creativity in the Classroom: Design a New Curriculum for Teaching English as a Second Language

 In the process of analysis of the new curriculum, we just divide the topic into three parts, assessing, learning and teaching. So if we focus this topic, we can not

 find the innovation and creation seems quite important in the teaching of English as the second language in our educational system. The following is as follows:

 

Assessment

Although assessment is just a tool for study, but it is also indispensable in education domain. Educational assessment can determine how well students are learning and an integral part of the quest for improved education. It provides feedback of students’ performance to students, parents, educators, policy makers and the public. 

In order to create a new assessment method, we should rethink the foundations of assessment firstly. Any assessment is based on three interconnected elements or foundations: the aspects of achievement that are to be assessed, the tasks used to collect evidence about students’ achievement and the methods used to analyze the evidence resulting from the tasks.

Assessment is often divided into initial, formative, and summative categories for the purpose of considering different objectives for assessment practices.

1.Initial assessment - Also referred to as pre-assessment or diagnostic assessment, initial assessments are conducted prior to instruction or intervention to establish a baseline from which individual student growth can be measured.

2.Formative assessment - Formative assessment is generally carried out throughout a course or project. Formative assessment, also referred to as "educative assessment," is used to aid learning. In an educational setting, formative assessment might be a teacher (or peer) or the learner, providing feedback on a student's work, and would not necessarily be used for grading purposes. Formative assessments can take the form of diagnostic, standardized tests.

3.Summative assessment - Summative assessment is generally carried out at the end of a course or project. In an educational setting, summative assessments are typically used to assign students a course grade. Summative assessments are evaluative.

Various methods are used to assess student performance. We need to identify each of these methods, examine their strength and short comings and get some practice in using them. I heard that a lot of students in HongKong like to learn by rote nowdays . 
As we all know that grading is the most important part in assessment which makes students and parents pay more attention on the final examination or the result. Sometimes it can lead students study in a cram way. It may cause opposite effect to quality and purpose of teaching. So, in order to seek for a new creative method on educational assessment, I think the most important thing is pay more attention on the part of coursework.

In our case, for planning a new curriculum about teaching English as second language, we should dig out the primary purpose of English teaching. We all know that English study is divided into 4 parts, listening, speaking, reading, writing. Most of the time we put the listening, reading and writing parts into the mid-test or final exam.  So, we should pay more attention on speaking during coursework in daily teaching.

We have several advices on educational assessment of new English curriculum :

1. Everyone ‘s participation.

During the coursework assessment, we can let students make a self-assessment and peer-assessment on their homework or individual/group project. Then, it can make them have a better understanding about their own performance and other students’ advantages and disadvantages. It is also a fair way on grading.

2.Change the style of exam questions.

The questions can not be a lot of multiple choice. It require students to perform, to create, to produce or to do something else. So ,I think it’s necessary to add some short answer questions, interactive questions properly to help the students know how to utilize the knowledge.

3. Incentive grading

We know that everyone must have a profound understanding about their own experience and background. Let the student define their level or ability before the course. If they can achieve their goals assigned by professor or make great progress after the course, they can get some relevant bonus or extra score. The extra score is proportional to the how much progress they can achieve.

4. Average assessment

We should divided the total assessment into every parts of the teaching links. It can make students shift their focus on every teaching process instead of cramming on final exam. It can also give them a opportunity to balance their performance in different way.

principles of learning assessment in a creative way.

   Assessment is an integral part of teaching-learning process. Assessment tool should match with the performance objective. The results of assessment must be fed back to the learner. Teachers must consider learners’ learning style and multiple intelligences and so must come up with a variety of ways of assessment learning. Give some positive feedback along with not so good ones. Emphasis on self-assessment is a pretty good way. I think assessment should never be used as punishment nor disciplinary measure.

Teaching

The relationship between the Creativity and Teaching.

From the very beginning, I want to talk about the learning when I was in the New Oriental School which is a private educational organization using a totally different way to teach English. Under the huge demand of the English Education in China, why is the NOS can successful? The answer is obvious. They turn the boring English Class into a vivid activity with jokes and stories.

Why have the students in China studies English since the 5 or 6 average ages? While after they come to the college, they still cann’t open their month and communicate with others neither orally nor in written form. Regarding the unique special system, we notice some specific details about the way teachers instructed in high schools or secondary schools as follows:

1. English is not the language but the purpose.

   There is something wrong with the evaluation system.  Over the past decades, China has witnessed a spurt of interests in English learning. Preschool children are learning English for fun; primary schools are managing to offer English courses for enhancing the teaching prestige; middle schools and high schools are crazy about the quality of their English education; universities are vying with each other to open an English department and college students are struggling with their graduate Certificates so that they can find better jobs.

2. Book is not the knowledge but the misleading.

Many books appear for specific skill training such as oral English, writing, listening, translation, and so on. These books are always written and edited far too quickly but less carefully. Many mistakes appear in such books. The author’s purpose is not the book itself, but to earn some money through book selling. So the innovative elements soon fade. A good book should be very helpful in moving the roadblocks from our path towards success language learning. If not how can we study English successfully?

3. Teacher is not a career but a job.

The lack of qualified English teachers is an other important problem. A qualified English teacher should have take special training courses and have enough knowledge of English. However, in many primary schools and middle schools, teachers who don’t have qualification of English teaching are still giving classes to their students. They even teach their strong accent to the students.

The way to solve:

1. To change the purpose into language itself.

Why is New Oriental School so successful? They often tell the stories behind the words and tries to find the beauty of the language. Like the Roman Mysterious Stories, Achilles Heel is no longer just tedious meaning of vital weakness, but also a war between two wisdom civilization and two faith. Genius and talented figures comes back to live which brings us the story of TROY. The combination of the word and history will make us really easy to recite and spend the rest of life to forget.

2. To turn the book into the element of interest

Why will we restrict the student with the tedious book? Why don’t we use the exciting movies TROY which is played by Brad Pit to tell the story of Achilles Heel and also have some details about how Roman conquered the Greece simultaneously maintaining and respecting the culture and knowledge developed by the Greek. If we know how the mysterious and truth story behind the words, I can’t find the excuse that their imagination won’t fly high.

3. Off the book, off the clock.

What is a book? The book is a history. Then what is the history? History is the word of a guy. Why the Achilles Heel so famous? Why is the main actor Brad Pit? How is the TROY come into the city? Why is the Chanel let the Pit represents the No.5? What is the economics principles behind it? So many questions needs the answer. We can check them if we have the Internet and Google? To establish the interest is more important than to force the student to recite one or two more words. It is also good to let the student know that don’t be pushed by the task, Go after your dream is the only way won’t regret you when you are old.

During the three steps, we find :

1. Many subject is involved during the teaching process.

When we discuss the Achilles Heel, I believe the subject of business, history, advertisement, Roman Mysterious Stories are used in the learning of English. The transfer from one field to the other ones will definitely effect the student to have stronger ability in creativity for the essence of the language is to contact with the culture and specifications.

2. The high-tech technology is involved.

Without the cinema of the TROY and the advertisement of the Brad Pit, we can’t make the student to think and to create. The most vital factor in this part is the video and audio materials which is hard to find even one decade ago. So the reasonable use of the high tech will absolutely add marks to the creativity of the students.

3. Interest is the best teacher.

What we do is to let students know the eternal beauty of the language. After that, they will eager to do research on it considering of they are the undergraduate student. It is easy to find the beauty but to research the beauty you need a curious heart. In that process, the creativity can also be trained quite a lot.

To sum up above mentioned , however, there are still some reflections personally based upon the way we teach and how the creativity can be taught. Firstly, it is still along way to go for HK and Asian teaching reform. Next, colleges students are individuals with souls. We must find something truly educational meaning for them rather than the things can be done at home. The Creativity is hard to perform. In order to finish the target well, we still need other two parts learning and assessing.

Learning

Due to contemporary social conditioning, people's thought processes are confined and restricted. From the day we are born we start being taught what to do, how to live, what is right and what is wrong. We are trained to accept other people telling us what to do. Thus, if we want to be learning creative, we must jump out of our fixed thinking model and believe we can be creative. 

First, we cannot limit the places to learn, which means we can acquire knowledge not only from the classroom, but everywhere, and the pattern of knowledge can be various. Going to the nature we can learn more on biology and understand more of the nature's greatness. 

Find a relax place to think can improve our creativity of learning. This is important so you can let your mind come up with ideas. Write them down as you get them. For me a relaxing place is outside in nature where it is quiet and sunny.

Motivation is essential for learning.Creating learning opportunities that are personally relevant and meaningful is critical to engaging individual learners and sustaining motivation. Learners should play an active, hands-on role in the learning process rather than passively receiving information.Our work is informed by a constructivist pedagogical model where creative educators scaffold meaningful, experiential learning. 

Looking at things from a different pointview can also make a big difference to creativity. Question the way that everyone else is doing something in the same method, see if being different and doing it another way will produce something cool.

Careful observation and more deep thinkings is a key to learn creatively. Many regulations and thoeries are get from simple phenomenma in our daily life. For instance, Newton find the universal gravitation because he look at the apple down to the ground from the tree and think why this phenomenon happened.

Insperation is another key of learning creativity and can get from everywhere. Brain stroming is one of good ways to find out what you want. Giving an example and you can use all the imagines to come up with ideas.

Have a thinking habit when we cannot explain can make our mind more flexible. What's more, people who like thinking can faster think of a question than others because they are custommed to think and they have their own quick thinking model.

However, different people have various appropriate methods to be creative. But the common point is we cannot limited by our common sense or objects we see around us. Learning creativity is what we can learn more efficient and relax, and we can get more than the common study.