What ELA Teachers can learn from Scandinavian Playgrounds

When my son was tiny, I tried to convince the boarding school where we were working to install a children’s playground for all the little kids in the area. I researched all kinds of amazing playscapes, but as I combed through photos and articles, one name stood out in particular.

Monstrum.

Sounds kind of scary, doesn’t it? Don’t be fooled.

Monstrum is an incredible Danish design company that creates playgrounds based on stories. For example, they created “The Crooked Houses,” to reflect the history of the neighborhood Brumleby in Copenhagen.

They made the “Playground Cosmos” to represent the experience of being in the Russian Space program. How much do you suddenly wish you were a kid so you could go play there? I, for one, really want to climb up that long silver slide into the top of the rocket.

You might be asking yourself, so what? How can this possibly relate to my English classroom?

Well, here’s the thing. Most playgrounds in the United States today look pretty similar. I have taken my tiny tots to playgrounds from California to Pennsylvania, and the colors, structures, and feel of the playgrounds are generally the same. They are brightly colored, relatively safe, and story-free. In a word, unoriginal.

Which brings me to the topic of today’s post and podcast, Creative Assessment.

What are we really looking for in our assessments these days, to be relatively safe and blend in, or to build on the stories of our own communities? To extend the comparison, are we going to make our classrooms safe and story-free, or embrace the ideals of Monstrum?

I vote Monstrum all the way. We need classroom activities that students can dive deeply into, assessments that engage students’ imaginations and inspire their dreams, not just prove that they read from page one to page seven. A reading quiz doesn’t have to be ten multiple choice questions that don’t require any critical thinking or creativity. A final project doesn’t to be a standard literary analysis paper.

There are lots of other ways to find out if students are reading, thinking deeply, and learning to communicate what they know.

Today’s Podcast (number ten!) is about finding ways to let students show what they have learned that matter to them. That engage them in creative, fresh ways that relate to their own lives.

Listen here or on iTunes for dozens of ideas on how to keep your activities, quizzes, and final projects creative and relevant in a world that values creativity and innovation far above the ability to memorize and color inside the lines.

When it comes to creative assessment, it’s easy to get intimidated. You may feel like your colleagues will look at you funny if you deviate from the norm, that you are too tied to certain standards and types of writing to try something new, or that you can’t afford the technology or materials to be creative in the way you want. Well, this episode is for you.

I’ll be sharing ideas for creative quizzes, daily activities, and final projects that you can be proud of. There’s no reason students can’t show the same skills in rigorous creative work as they do in whatever assessments you are feeling pressure to conform to.  Inmy first two years of teaching I had students enmeshed in creative projects every month and I won my school’s new faculty award at the end of my second year.

 

Classroom Activities can also easily fall into a rut. You want to assess student work in class, but how can you do it creatively, in a way that will matter to them? One great way is to talk to them about their interests in your discipline, and work toward those interests in your daily assessments. For example, here are three student interest threads and three activities for each.

Did you know you can learn about all your wish list ELA strategies on your daily commute or walk with The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast? Explore one-pagers, escape rooms, sketchnotes, creative annotation options, research projects, poetry workshops, and much more through over a hundred quick episodes waiting for you on your favorite podcast player!