1. Assessment 2
Context:
I planned to offer children opportunities to learn creatively in English during our newspaper report topic. I teach a year 4 class and work collaboratively with three other colleagues to plan the sessions. The three classes in the year group followed the plan. The children work in mixed ability classes.
English is taught using Pie Corbett’s ‘Talk for Writing ‘ method (2016). Each unit is taught for three weeks. During the first week the children learn a text using symbols and actions. At the end of the week, they rewrite the text. During the second week, the children change aspects of the text and at the end of the week write a new text based on the original model. During the third week, the children use all they have learnt to write their own text.
The weeks are labelled:
Week 1: Imitate
Week 2: Innovate
Week 3: Invent
I will be concentrating on the planning which took place in week 3.

2. Assessment 2
Initially (week 1) the children were introduced to newspaper reports by reading and activities based on:
The children enjoyed the story and learned the structure and expected contents of a newspaper report during the first two weeks by copying and adapting a newspaper report written by the teacher. During these weeks, the children were also exposed to other newspaper reports, both real and fictitious.

3. Assessment 2
I decided to concentrate on the features of creative teaching suggested by Woods (1990):
-innovation
-ownership
-control
-relevance
I began with the idea of relevance.
Cremin suggests that the most effective pedagogic practice used by creative teachers takes place when the work is relevant to the children and when they make emotional and personal connections to it (2009).
In order to make the lesson relevant to all pupils in the class, I decided to use the school context as a starting point for my activity. All the children would be familiar with the setting of the problem and would be excited and engaged by the possibility of solving a problem in their community.

4. Assessment 2
We used this photograph of an incident in the head teacher’s office as a starting point.
This is where we had begun to teach creatively; using an imaginative ‘hook’ to capture the children’s interests.
We then asked the children to work collaboratively to decide what had taken place in the office. Jeffrey and Craft suggest that teaching for creativity allows children to pose questions, debate and discuss their thinking and decide what needs to be investigated and how. The children become co-participants in the learning process (2004).

5. Assessment 2
We already had in our minds what we thought the children would suggest, however we did remain open to the possibility that the lesson may take a different course than we intended. Cremin suggests that flexibility is a characteristic of creative pedagogy (2009).
The children agreed that someone had broken into the head teacher’s office and had stolen his porridge. We told the children that we would be writing a newspaper report about the crime with an appeal for information.
We initially asked the children to pretend to be reporters and make a plan about how they would research and report on this mystery. We wanted to give the children ownership and control over the activity. We wanted to give them autonomy over their learning, to have opportunities to pose questions, to make them curious and intrinsically motivated in their learning. Joubert suggests that children must be taught to develop intrinsic forms of motivation, such as curiosity (2001).

6. Assessment 2
However, as suggested in the NACCCE report, although creativity carries the idea of action and purpose sometimes creative insights occur unexpectedly and so the purpose of the activity might change (1999).
The children were so excited by the crime that they became obsessed with solving it. This had never been our intention for the activity, however after several SLT members said that they had been stopped in the corridor and questioned by the children we decided to change the purpose of our activities that week.
We had to be flexible and allow the learners to take the lead, at the same time as guiding them to meet the standards which had to be covered that week.

7. Assessment 2
Jeffrey and Craft suggest that: teaching creatively leads to teaching for creativity( 2004).
Joubert agrees that teaching for creativity cannot be achieved without teaching creatively (2001).
I found, during this week, that it actually ran in a cycle.
Teaching creatively
Teaching for creativity
The more questions we allowed the children to ask and the more ownership and control we gave them, the more creatively we had to teach.
Soon we found that we had become so engaged by the activity, that we were planning more and more engaging activities for the children to participate in. We had become just as excited about the activity as the children!

8. Assessment 2
It was important , however, that we did not get too distracted by enthusiasm as many authors agree that creative learning must used ‘applied imagination’ which aims to realise a goal. (NACCCE, 1999, Joubert, 2001, Jeffrey & Craft, 2004, Cremin, 2009)
We still intended for the children to write a newspaper report at the end of the week.
During the activities the class teacher was able to model creative thinking and problem solving, which Cremin suggests is an important part of creative pedagogical practice (2009).
By the end of the week the teachers had set up crime scenes, planted clues around the school and filmed suspect interviews.

9. Assessment 2
The children had gone on clue ‘treasure hunts’ around the school, analysed video tapes and written in police notebooks.
Other areas of the curriculum were brought into the writing activities. The children practised inference and deduction skills whilst watching the video interviews. One child suggested “She must be lying because she keeps turning the pen around in her hand. That shows that she is nervous!”
RRS (Rights Respecting Schools) lessons were used to discuss the value of honesty and reasons people might lie.
The creative activities, discussions, debates and speculations all took place in a safe and non-judgemental environment. The children understood that their ideas were neither right not wrong at this stage as they were all guessing what might have happened in the head teacher’s office. However, they also knew that all of their ideas could not be right. Many authors agree that for learning to take place mistakes must be made and learned from and not feared. This is particularly the case in a creative classroom, where students and adults are expected to ‘take risks’. (Dweck, 2006, Joubert, 2001, Cremin, 2009)

10. A ‘mug’ shot was even prepared to inspire the children further!
Assessment 2
In the end the teachers had to decide who had committed the crime and they used the ideas expressed by the children.
It was decided that a dramatic resolution to the case would lead to the best engagement in the children’s writing and so mock CCTV footage was filmed and played during the whole school assembly. The perpetrator (the deputy head teacher) was then led away and imprisoned in his office, where paper bars had already been secured to his window.
A ‘mug’ shot was even prepared to inspire the children further!

11. Assessment 2

12. Assessment 2
As the NACCCE report suggests creative learning is not limited to the arts. During this English activity the children took part in:
-imaginative thinking
-activity which was purposeful
-they created something original
-they met their standards and so the outcome was of value in relation to the objective of the task.
These 4 areas form the characteristics of a creative process, according to the NACCCE report (1999).
As well as teaching for creativity, the teachers were able to challenge themselves to teach as creatively as possible. Young people’s creative abilities are “most likely to be developed in an atmosphere in which the teacher’s creative abilities are properly engaged (NACCCE, 1999:90).”

13. Assessment 2 Bibliography
Corbet, P. (2016) Talk 4 Writing. Available at: (Accessed: )
Cremin, T. (2009) Creative teachers and creative teaching.  In: Wilson, A. (ed.) Creativity in Primary Education.  Exeter: Learning Matters, pp. 36–46.
Dweck, C. (2006) Mindset. London: Robinson.
Jeffrey, B. & Craft, A. (2004) Teaching creatively and teaching for creativity: distinctions and relationships. Educational Studies. 33(2) pp
Joubert (2001) The art of creative teaching: NACCCE and beyond.  In: Craft, A., Jeffrey, B. and Liebling, M. (eds) Creativity in Education.  London: Continuum.
National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education (1999) All our futures: Creativity, culture and education. London: HMSO.
Woods, P. (1995) Creative Teachers in Primary Schools. Buckingham: Open University Press.