Mini-projects from short descriptions are in full swing… and I blown away with the possibilities. The initial push was to teach basic skills in a fun way. Now there are ideas for class culture, routines, confidence, metacognitive activities, more. It’s overwhelming… and definitely a glimpse of a bedrock activity in Innovative Arts.

I was working it though my creativity tool tonight and haven’t finishing the harvest of the ideas yet. I have too many already, and the ones that I have are going to take some fundamental unpacking.

The fun, fast class I’ve been imagining is really possible. Finding an analogy for this feeling is tough – everything seems overdramatic. I’m just glad to have cracked the door open.

Here is the first part of the takeaways from the creativity document: (this won’t make a ton of sense but I’m tired and going to bed)

List, celebrate mistakes/failures
Daily Mini-challenges – posted somewhere? Optional?
Start tiny move bigger
List on screen of learning journey, memories
Have students name the techniques
Assign Ss to make the progressions – beginner, int, Advacned
Have boards premade-ish
Students show how to combine them
Have students name them, then auto-generate procedures that use those terms
Case studies – biggest improvements
Have students rank and explain
expand into pop sticks, engineering
Strong shapes too
Name unique moves after students – put in book
Aggregate student projects/ideas
-Benefits:
OK to rush start
Sloppy means more room for improvement
cheap materials
Fun/Fast/Easy start
Gives purpose to learning after first activity
More projects at beginning
More to document/discuss
Lots of options for final project
-Figure out:
How to do project journals/name tags
Name this process?
All at once or spread out?

~ Peter