"The principal goal of education is to create people who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done - people who are creative, inventive, discoverers"
Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget
We all want learners who can do new things and who can discover new learning for themselves, having been given the requisite skills by their teacher to set them on the right path.
But when we say “creative”, what do we actually mean? What does the word mean in the context of the languages classroom?
Why are we talking about creativity? There have been a number of recent headlines about "creative subjects being squeezed" (BBC) in the curriculum, and worries that STEM subjects are pushing out anything artistic. What do the headlines mean by “creativity” and “creative subjects”? Do they mean artistic creativity such as art, music and drama, or is it something deeper? Are languages included?
The more I have read about this, the more I am convinced that there is no one simple answer to this question. I believe that there are four types of creativity at play in the languages classroom:
Creativity in the curriculum
Creativity in education, generally speaking, is about letting children be inventive and be discoverers. It’s about imaginative thinking and behaving which is purposeful and directed towards achieving an objective. When children are creative in this sense, they question and challenge, they explore ideas, they make connections and they reflect critically on ideas, actions and outcomes. This kind of creativity can improve children’s self-esteem, motivation and achievement while developing the talent of the individual and developing skills for their adult lives. This kind of creativity is perhaps not always possible in language lessons because of time constraints and the necessary amount of teacher input.
If we are to enable our pupils to ultimately be creative with their language, we need to have in place a curriculum which will facilitate this. We need to have contexts which will motivate us to teach and the children to learn, while at the same time covering the vocabulary, grammar and phonics, revisiting and recapping prior learning, for that place in the curriculum. Some contexts are more inherently interesting and motivating to primary children than others. One that is always bandied about by secondary teachers is “Pencil case”, thought of as banal and boring in KS3, but of great interest to Year 3 children, for whom pencil cases and their contents are of great importance. We are lucky that in KS2 we are not bound by any word lists or other restrictions, and that due to the vagueness of the national curriculum we have a lot more freedom to decide for ourselves what to include.
Anyone who has put together their own scheme of work will know that it is tricky – ensuring that the language is gradually and systematically built up over the four years, finding appropriate vocabulary, ensuring that prior learning is revisited and built upon, all the while finding these interesting and motivating contexts.
One place to look is the school’s wider curriculum, and the topics that children will be covering in other subjects. Some of these topics, such as Space, lend themselves very well to language learning, and can occupy a place in our scheme of work, whether or not it remains in the science curriculum – it is an enjoyable topic to teach and many of the children like it and are interested in it.
There are other topics, however, that are harder to fit into languages. It’s nice to cross the curriculum in this way, but it isn’t always possible, and we can’t guarantee that, once we have put time and effort into planning, the history/geography etc. topic will remain in the general curriculum, and we will have to start again. Thinking rationally, long term and short term planning is time intensive and not something that teachers have the time or desire to repeat each year.
Another place to look for contexts is special dates and events from the countries where the language is spoken. A unit of work can be built around, for example, Día de los Muertos in Mexico, the Tour de France or the Windhoek Carnival in Namibia for the Germanists. Learning a language is more than just words and sentences, and anything cultural that we can incorporate will only enrich the teaching and the learning. If you are using a bought-in scheme, does it provide interesting and motivating contexts for the learning? Are elements of the cultures of the target language countries included?
Here's an example of how the cultural input might work:
The beginning of Y4 in my primary Spanish scheme of work (Cycle B in my mixed scheme) is an animal park unit. It’s based on a real animal park called Cabárceno which I visited about 10 years ago, and which is on the north coast of Spain near Santander. This means we can look at the geography of Spain and where the park is. There are lots of videos and photos of the animals, who keep having very cute babies, which the children love! The unit is all about numbers to 39, grammatical gender and the plural form, but it is based on a real life animal park which makes the learning more real and captures the interest of the children. I have a parallel French unit which is based on Zoo La Palmyre in the west of France.
Creative teaching methods
There is no one-size-fits-all method for language teaching. Every language teacher is unique. We often adapt our methodology to the children that we have in front of us, to their likes, dislikes and interests, incorporating things that they like to engage and motivate them, to make the learning more relevant. We often devise creative and imaginative ways of presenting the language. These more imaginative approaches are a way of reaching out to the very diverse cognitive and emotional needs of the children in the room.
The way in which languages are commonly taught now may well be significantly different to the way that you learned at school. The internet has opened up the world in our language classroom, and we can see authentic videos, stories and songs that were hard to access before. The increased use of written supports like sentence builders and knowledge organisers means that we can play many different “games with aims” – certainly when I was a secondary language teacher the only game we ever really played was Kim’s Game with the OHP.
Your classes will probably have a small group of games with aims that they really enjoy. They will play them without most of the time realizing that they are in fact practising the language. Most of my classes beg to be able to play Trapdoor, which of course obliges them to say a whole sentence in the language, as well as listen carefully to other people when they are having their turn. They also love “Guess my sentence” and Sue Cave’s “Sit down when yours is different” game.
Which games with aims do your classes like best?
Do they all like the same ones?
Are all the games that you play ones that will move the learning on, do they practice the language , or are they just time fillers?
Do they all like the same ones?
Are all the games that you play ones that will move the learning on, do they practice the language , or are they just time fillers?
If you use a bought in scheme of work, does it give you a bank of activities that you can try out with your classes in order to find out what they like?
Creative use of language
What is linguistic creativity?
"Creativity is 'the generation of novel and useful ideas'" T.M.Amabile 1988
"To create means to produce original and useful ideas by combining elements that have already existed" L.G.Maguire 2017
It’s the creative use of the language by the students. We spend a lot of our time in class on very structured activities, focusing on the building blocks of the learning, providing what Porter et al. refer to as “highly staged encounters with the language and opportunities for language practice”. It’s important, though, that learners then take those experiences and then use them to speak or write independently and to create new meaning.
Julia Hofweber and Suzanne Graham in their paper Linguistic creativity in language learning (2017) have two definitions of creativity – the wide and the narrow. Realistically, the narrow definition is the one that applies best to KS2. Our learners are creative using the vocabulary, grammar and phonics that we have taught them, which they then rearrange to a large extent to create their new meaning. They don’t yet have the linguistic experience to be able to use their language to “create an effect” in the same way that they do in their English lessons, though we do often work on giving opinions, which might address the “expressing emotions” part.
However wide or narrow the linguistic creativity is, it is underpinned by focused effort and the use of metacognitive skills. Cognitively speaking, it is a combination of thinking, imagination and memory. There are also non-cognitive aspects at play, such as motivation, attitude and the character of the creator. This then interlinks with the creative curriculum. If the student is not motivated and has a negative attitude to the task then they are not going to devote their full creative power to it. Motivation and a positive attitude are also, of course, built by thorough preparation and practice by the teacher of the language that they are going to need to manipulate in order to complete it.
Creativity in languages encourages higher order thinking skills, and can also lead to an increased enjoyment of and greater motivation for language learning. In fact it is the creative act itself, rather than the end product, that is the important part of the process. Our learners are taking their pre-learned vocabulary and structures, and adapting them to create something new and original, and often personal. They are transforming their thoughts into language that we can hear or see. Our Programme of Study requires children to “write phrases from memory, and adapt these to create new sentences”. The word “create” suggests something new and original, but it is also a recreation and redefinition. It is this stage that we strive for our learners to reach. We want them to use what they know, and adapt it to say what they want to say.
Art, craft and creativity
There is certainly a place for artistic creativity in the languages classroom. Designing and making things motivates children and often, if we choose the activity carefully, gives them a window onto the culture of the country or countries whose language they are learning. It has to be said that many see this kind of creativity as the “bells and whistles” approach, as time-wasting activities which take up time that could be better spent on listening and reading, for example. We need to strike the right balance of activities.
Of course in the primary context, creativity of this kind is an ideal opportunity for cross-curricular work. The Programme of Study for KS2 Art and Design says:
“A high-quality art and design education should engage, inspire and challenge pupils, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to experiment, invent and create their own works of art, craft and design.”
“The national curriculum for art and design aims to ensure that pupils produce creative work, exploring their ideas and recording their experiences."
“A high-quality art and design education should engage, inspire and challenge pupils, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to experiment, invent and create their own works of art, craft and design.”
“The national curriculum for art and design aims to ensure that pupils produce creative work, exploring their ideas and recording their experiences."
No part of the Programme of Study says that this creative work has to be produced in a dedicated art and design lesson, or that it can’t incorporate aspects of other subjects.
Artistic creativity will motivate children and will inspire linguistic creativity. Artistic and “crafty” creativity like this breeds linguistic creativity, and motivates children to be more creative all round. Artistic creativity also allows an audience for the work. It can be shared with the wider school community and it also makes for great displays, which is an important consideration in primary schools when we want our work to be seen and celebrated.
Art is "a creative activity...resulting in visual representation" OED
Craft is "an activity involving skill in making things by hand" OED
Anything that involves making something promotes children’s fine motor skills, resilience and concentration. In the Languages classroom it also makes the language and its countries more real, more tangible, especially when we can incorporate a cultural element.
Examples of artistic, crafty and creative activities are:
- minibooks
- bookmarks - there are lots of bookmarks for colouring on Light Bulb Languages, but of course pupils can design their own.
- pencil pots - blank for your own design or preprinted to colour in
- modelling with play doh or plasticine
- making greetings cards
- work inspired by artists
- illuminated texts
- calligrams
You might also like to have a look at the Lumen Language Challenges, which include lots of creative and linguistic activities. Lumen also has awards for French, Spanish and German which encourage children to be creative.
Here's what Notebook LM made of it!
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