Arts and creativity are two inevitable elements of a comprehensive education strategy. Rather than just studying what is in the lesson through typical lectures and exams, bringing in some arts can help students to be more creative in classrooms. In fact, this way of learning is going to help them to grasp the lessons better, memorize it for long and apply what is learnt in real life in a more tactical way. A creative classroom is a good platform for students to stimulate their extracurricular talents and grow up as creative persons. A good teacher can utilize different strategies to teach difficult subjects by integrating it with arts. This is a better way of enhancing their interest for learning and makes them more alive in classrooms.
Students love to learn with play and arts. This is the right phase to mould them into better creative persons and open them a world of artistry. Here let us have a look at different ways to bring arts and creativity in classrooms and learn how this strategy is going to help them learn better.
- Mosaics: Learning about new shapes is more fun with mosaics. This is an indirect way of bringing arts to classrooms and students find it really interesting to study about shapes with a deeper understanding. The young minds can use mosaics method to get introduced to new shapes with hands on experience. Whether it is paper, cellophane or glass, students can have some creative time in framing new patterns.
- Script writing: This is an awesome way of introducing creativity in classrooms. Students can be given the task of writing a script for the given subject. Whether it is re-creating a historical event, or a simple short story in English or cute dialogue conversations between chemicals or animals, it can be real fun. This activity helps them to think critically and organize events to present better.
- Folk Art: Teaching history in classroom can be fun and creative when including folk art as an assignment. When teaching about different ancient periods or old rulers, kids can be asked to represent the era with folk art. They can dress up like the people of that period and represent facts and information in a creative way. This type of active role plays gives them a better understanding of history.
- Science labs: Learning about science is not always theory but giving chances for students to have a practical experience of the subject. Science labs should be given more importance than just lectures where students should be given the freedom to experiment what they have learnt in class. Whether it is chemistry reactions, circuits in physics or biology experiments, students will have a good time of self analysis and creativity.
- Advertising: This is a fun and creative way of improving their language. Give them chances to create advertisements for selling their product. It can be a single page advertisement where they can bring in their creativity. Criteria can be set about the type of words to be used or word limits and this gives them a chance to show the power of their language even with restrictions. Teachers can even connect it with something they have already learnt in class for a better learning experience.
- Wire sculptures: Kids would love to have hands on experience with elements that are playful and colourful and that is the reason why they love wire sculptures. This is an easy but quality art project for lower level class students. This is a better way to introduce and help them understand the line and space concepts. With this activity, they are inspired to learn, discover and dream more.
- Draw a topic: Students can also bring out their creativity through drawing art. They can represent a topic by drawing it. It could be a novel theme, a country culture or even biology species. For higher level classes, they can even try out drawing cartoons for a sports event or a political scenario and print in student newspapers. Collage works are also another way to bring drawing into their assignments.
- Map Art: This is a serious yet adventurous exercise for studying social studies with hands on experience. The map art is an interesting way for letting students to combine art and history for a deeper level understanding of the lesson. Rather than hanging maps in classrooms which have printed materials, letting kids to do the job makes them very close to the subject. This kind of arts in classrooms makes their learning process ignited and they would crave for more chances for creativity.
- Documentaries: Mimicking documentaries is another way of bringing arts into classrooms. This activity includes making a small documentary of the subject taught in groups or as single. This gives them a chance to teach the subject to the rest of the student audience in their own way. When you give students the freedom over their learning, they would be pleased than ever before.
- Math Journals: Studying mathematics with art would improve student’s love for the subject. Teachers use it to give students a math adventure and the difficulty levels can be varied with class. Bridges method is another way to learn maths that comes with basic word problems. To reach a conclusion, students will have to write or draw out the problem. For higher level classes, Cinderella software can be really helpful that includes virtual laboratories and geometry.
Schools that have tried experimenting arts with curriculum are seeing improvement in the way students have received the learning. It was evident from the voice of expression and creative confidence of the students. In fact, schools should not consider arts as something extra out of the classroom but as an integral element that should be treated with equal importance along with academics. Learning through creativity and hands on experience are a good assistance for students to gain a deeper level of understanding of the lessons. Let it be theatre, music, visual art forms or dance, including such elements in the learning sessions can really work wonders in their learning experience.
