100 Tips for Artful Educators
To celebrate the publication of my latest book, The Artful Educator, I'm tweeting 100 tips for creative, imaginative and innovative approaches to teaching and learning. Follow the #ArtfulEducator hashtag on Twitter to see the tips as I tweet them.
1. In order to be artful, you’ve got to be playful. Stay in touch with your inner child.
2. Games are a great way to be playful, so use lots of games to support learning: “What’s the time, Mr Wolf?” for maths.
3. To build creativity, you have to experiment. When you experiment you inevitably make mistakes – this is not a problem.
4. When you make a mistake, be open about it with your children. Model a brave approach to failure.
5. We connect with the world via our senses. Give your lessons multi-sensory layers to boost learning and engagement.
6. Artful learning is in attempts and rough sketches, as much as in an end result. Celebrate process as well as product.
7. Explore links and cross connections between subject areas to deepen and widen your children’s understanding.
8. To be creative, we need space to daydream, wonder, ponder and pause. Try your very hardest to make time for this.
9. Create unusual combinations and connections to spark imaginative thinking. What does silence taste of?
10. Share examples of your own creativity with your children – model what an ‘artful attitude’ looks like.
11. Fear of being creative is a fear of what others will say. Insist that children treat each other’s ideas with respect.
12. Being inventive and creative gives us a powerful sense of agency – it lets us to feel that “I made this!”
13. Even in a system that seems to prize test results over creativity, small acts of artful rebellion are still possible.
14. Perhaps the true measure of whether a lesson has ‘worked’ is whether it gets a child to feel joyful about learning.
15. Our thinking tends to go in straight lines – create activities that depend on lateral thinking to succeed.
16. Perfectionism can act against creativity; a fear of making mistakes can freeze you up.
17. To break the urge for perfection, sometimes get your children to work quickly and then throw the results away.
18. Think sideways about the materials you use with your children – scour the everyday world for interesting objects.
19. When you’re doing something creative, leave twice as much time as you think you might need for tidying up.
20. Give your children access to varied art forms – Banksy as well as Rembrandt, Kate Tempest as well as Shakespeare.
21. Throw in some ironic references to the culture of your own childhood during lessons to make yourself smile.
To celebrate the publication of my latest book, The Artful Educator, I'm tweeting 100 tips for creative, imaginative and innovative approaches to teaching and learning. Follow the #ArtfulEducator hashtag on Twitter to see the tips as I tweet them.
1. In order to be artful, you’ve got to be playful. Stay in touch with your inner child.
2. Games are a great way to be playful, so use lots of games to support learning: “What’s the time, Mr Wolf?” for maths.
3. To build creativity, you have to experiment. When you experiment you inevitably make mistakes – this is not a problem.
4. When you make a mistake, be open about it with your children. Model a brave approach to failure.
5. We connect with the world via our senses. Give your lessons multi-sensory layers to boost learning and engagement.
6. Artful learning is in attempts and rough sketches, as much as in an end result. Celebrate process as well as product.
7. Explore links and cross connections between subject areas to deepen and widen your children’s understanding.
8. To be creative, we need space to daydream, wonder, ponder and pause. Try your very hardest to make time for this.
9. Create unusual combinations and connections to spark imaginative thinking. What does silence taste of?
10. Share examples of your own creativity with your children – model what an ‘artful attitude’ looks like.
11. Fear of being creative is a fear of what others will say. Insist that children treat each other’s ideas with respect.
12. Being inventive and creative gives us a powerful sense of agency – it lets us to feel that “I made this!”
13. Even in a system that seems to prize test results over creativity, small acts of artful rebellion are still possible.
14. Perhaps the true measure of whether a lesson has ‘worked’ is whether it gets a child to feel joyful about learning.
15. Our thinking tends to go in straight lines – create activities that depend on lateral thinking to succeed.
16. Perfectionism can act against creativity; a fear of making mistakes can freeze you up.
17. To break the urge for perfection, sometimes get your children to work quickly and then throw the results away.
18. Think sideways about the materials you use with your children – scour the everyday world for interesting objects.
19. When you’re doing something creative, leave twice as much time as you think you might need for tidying up.
20. Give your children access to varied art forms – Banksy as well as Rembrandt, Kate Tempest as well as Shakespeare.
21. Throw in some ironic references to the culture of your own childhood during lessons to make yourself smile.