It was our third foray into 'TIme to Create' with Year 5 students.  We began as always, with a story connected to the attitudes of resilience and having a growth mindset. Indeed  our favourite quote from the books was "Your brilliant first flop was a raging success!" We talked about facing challenges and having time to refine original ideas or even be prepared to abandon something and restart from scratch. We didn't give the students a set of success criteria or a plan. Some students decided to draw a plan but most got straight into creating.

What did we do?
We divided the class randomly into three groups and set the following activity stations up:
1. Design and make a chair out of cardboard that will support your own body weight. 
2. Design and create a structure of your own choice using popsicle sticks.
3. Design and create something that has an electrical circuit with in it. Materials included some of the Makey Makey Kits,  Arduino electronics kits, and a Hummingbird robotics kit, as well as normal batteries, wires and switches.

What did we notice? (connected to our original "KNOW-DO-BE" outcomes)

• Attitudes of persistence and resilience 

• Students developed their creative designs. Most groups fine tuned their ideas as they progressed. 

• Strong engagement and high interest with most students choosing to work collaboratively.

• Students really grasped the concept of "Challenges = Successes with failures along the way" to help refine and improve. We try to enforce this in all learning but although it was understood today it is not so clear to students and parents in other core subjects.

• From the debrief after session: “If we could work until we finished without stopping for other things it would be great. It gives you time to think things through.”  More food for thought about collapsing timetables to allow extended periods of time on projects...


From Challenges to Successes
I watched as one student repeatedly altered and refined their design for almost an hour, often talking out loud as they thought about what would be the best option to add the improvement. Some students referred back to what they had previously studied with circuits and said, "That was too easy, this is the real challenge." I look back at a typical lesson plan around circuit building and tend to agree.

From Challenges to Failures
The arduino electronics kits needed more front loading with video tutorials or step by step guidance rather than 'free play'. Having said this, I also recognise that only one group really struggled and felt uncomfortable with the new learning without structure. I wonder how often students get chance to experience true failure like this and actually quit. There was no desire to do some independent research to find out what others had done with the kit or to get up and move to another group and try something different.  

From Challenges to Failures to Successes
Several students recognised themselves as falling into this category.  Most experienced a fair amount of challenge but also failed along the way and then refined and adapted until they experienced success.  Most completed a 'final product' but didn't want to end there. During our end discussions the students talked about how important it is to keep improving and adding to a first build.

Welcome to an exciting teacher inquiry that a group of three teachers are undertaking.  Having looked at deep learning and creativity we are investigating what it looks like in the classroom, and how we can best support it within a PYP inquiry based framework and to explore possible links to one of the 21st Century Fluencies , 'solution fluency', as advocated by Lee Crockett. You can explore the others here.


What did we do?

To kick off the two block allocation I introduced the idea of "Time to Create" by sharing a short slideshow that included the video to the book "What Do You Do With An Idea?" Throughout the slideshow students were asked, "If there was one thing that you could change in the world, what would it be?" This was the stimulus to independent inquiry and creativity.

Teachers stepped back and took a supervisory role at this stage to see exactly how far students were independent inquirers and turned each question back on to the students for themselves to answer. 

The only things that we changed was student working partners and workspace  at two points within the time frame of 2 hours to see if the space changed the ambience and ethos of the learning engagement. 

What did I notice?

• Engagement was strong - Smiles and energy visible and tangible
• Excitement about an idea
• Many students stayed focussed on the idea
• A few sought other avenues of information to find out more about their idea
• Students very able to express what their idea was and why or how they wanted to use it to change something
• Some students liked changing the places that they were working in but not their groups/person they were working with
• Widespread independence - a few students came for ‘approval’
• A difference in ways of showing thinking - drawings, plans, lists, icons
  
  

What problems did students have ideas for?

pollution, global warming, deforestation, timetable change, classroom change, political process, adding robotics to make things easier/better

What did students say they liked doing?

• fun, cooperating, liked working outside, drawing, thinking wisely, enjoyment, lots of ideas, time, liked to think, time to expand their thinking, working for two blocks, sharing ideas
  
  

One of the students said..."No-one said to me, 'You need to do this.'”

Session 2
Our second foray into giving students "time to create" started with the reading of "The Most Magnificent Thing". This is a story about developing your idea into a creation and has wonderful exampled of language associated with making something. The main character also shows wonderful character strengths such as perseverance, resilience and has a problem solving ability while working collaboratively alongside her faithful assistant, a pet dog.
With these traits and the story plot so connected with our inquiry it was obvious that students were excited about doing something similar, right from the start of the story. One students said, "I have that tingly feeling again because we are going to make something."

At the end of the reading, we gave one task: Make and create a bridge using newspaper and tape.  Quite a familiar and popular activity but one in which students were able to choose to work alone, with a partner or within a group.

What did we notice?

• Students were inspired by story - not a lot of discussion from this group of students
• Excited and ready to begin
• They want complete freedom to choose what goes on in their school day
• We saw architects; foremen; builders; decorators
• Some worked in a group; others as a group and some individually
• All worked for the whole time- one group planned for the whole time, even discussing what might go wrong and adding it to their plan
• All were sorry to finish
• After completing their bridge, some went back and redesigned, added to etc. Constant refining and improving.
• Some spent a lot of time drawing and thinking before commencing construction and others began immediately, thinking and discussing as they were handling the materials.
• A few students worked alone but most others found themselves in groups of 3-5.
• Some worked in groups but built a bridge each whereas others built one bridge as a group.
• There was a high level of interest and engagement.
• Bridges being added to by dismantling and strengthening parts of the structure
• Planning, discussion and reviewing their progress and ideas.
• Questioning parts of what they built.
• Experimenting and then deciding to go with a decision and in some cases starting from scratch.
• Planning, discussion and reviewing their progress and ideas.                                          

What did students say?

• One student put his photo at the top of the 'blob tree' because "My work today was awesome!"
• "I love being able to manage myself!" 
• "I’ve got another idea!"
•  "I hope we get more time like this to work on our ideas!
• When asked what they were doing by an EA g. Answer: "We're  having fun!"