C4T Summary Teacher # 3

I was assigned the 21st Century Classroom: The Amaryllis blog for my third C4C. I thoroughly enjoyed the ideas presented in this blog; although, the teacher Mrs. Heidi Siwak is a seventh grade teacher, there are activities that could be adjusted to fit any grade level. The first post I commented on was an Oreo-type cookie writing activity. Everyone is partnered up and handed a cookie. The partners are then challenged to come up with as many different/unique ways to eat the Oreo-type cookie. This is Mrs. Siwak's follow up to the writing activity:

“I then asked students to eat their oreo cookies without hands which causes a great deal of laughter!

Finally we debriefed.

1. We tend to fall into patterns of behaviour that we don't really think about.

2. We stop finding new ways to do things because of habit.

3. To spark creativity and get new ideas we need to break our patterns of thinking and doing, and then deliberately try to think of new ideas.

4. We discussed how it felt to not be able to eat the cookie the way they had planned to. For some it was slightly stressful.

Finally I asked students to think of something they do in a habitual way and to come up with three new ways to do that task. These they shared with other students. It was a fun 40 minutes of learning. When we meet again, we'll revisit the activity to consider our ideas about the right way to do things.”

This was my comment: What a fun idea. I love an activity that includes the use of food. I think if you want to spark creativity, definitely use the sense of taste. I don’t know of anyone who hasn’t eaten an Oreo-type cookie before, breaking the “but I never…..” cycles sometimes children get on, who are not very confident writers. I may borrow this idea for my second graders, any tips? Thanks so much for the interesting post!



The second post I commented on was a very well done video reflection by seventh graders who used causal modeling. The technique looks similar to a brainstorming sheet and links ideas in an interconnected loop. The example shows the ways we are able to define very complex ideas or thoughts in a story or as a pre-writing activity. I enjoyed the reflection video because it showed how much we can learn when things are examined starting at the root. The question or main idea is posed to start off the chain of events that explain the concept or question. This map of reasons and causes can help break down the learning to the fundamental or basic elements. This was my comment to the causal model reflection video: I think this tool is one that could be used across all grade levels, thanks so much for sharing it. So frequently children are so bored at the thought of being asked repeatedly to find main idea and details of a story. This tool could also be used for writing or group projects. I am going to try using this technique in the future when we examine fairy tales which almost always have a deeper message embedded within the story and characters. Thanks again for illustrating examples about how to use such an interesting tool for thinking and learning.