Being Creative

Being Creative takes you on a journey that reveals how all teachers have the potential to become creative. Whether you are experienced or new to the classroom, Being Creative allows your teaching to take flight.

It shows that:

• • Creativity, so often overlooked, is crucial to successful teaching

• • The creative potential of teachers can be developed

• • Creativity will almost always bring changes for the better

Being Creative contains three distinctive parts A, B and C which focus in turn on theory, practice and development:

Part A: Looks at how definitions and concepts of creativity have developed in history and demonstrates how this links with current thinking on creative practice. In particular, it looks at Creativity and Teachers and Creativity and the Classroom, leading to a discussion about how creativity can be developed by appropriate strategies.

Part B: Contains highly practical activities which can be added to the repertoire of any busy teacher. They follow the strategies outlined in Part A : simplicity, combinational creativity, playfulness and risk taking, and they all require little or no preparation, while adding excitement to any language classroom. Teachers will find the additional comments that accompany each activity particularly useful, providing rationales and inviting reflection.

Part C: Looks at the challenges of bringing change to the classroom, helping teachers to overcome some of their fears and resistance to creativity. There are exercises to do alone or in teacher development workshops so you can continue your journey towards creativity as part of your continuing professional development.