I came across Teacher Tap when I was looking for more articles on creativity.  If you want to review Bloom’s Taxonomy without digging out your old textbook, this is the place for you.  I like the easy-to-use list of verbs that go with the six levels of the cognitive domain.  The Teacher Tap is an excellent source of professional development resources for teachers and librarians.  There are four focus areas: tech and learning, internet resources, libraries and literacy and tech tools.  I will try to test out some of the links and pass on ones I think are particularly interesting.

Today’s tip is that the online courses are well-organized and free.  The courses are actually offered online by Indiana University and you have to pay to get credit. However, if you just want to learn more about audio and video collections, electronic materials, high tech learning or web development, the free course guide will give you a ton of information and valuable links.  Just a note – there is a lot of information in these courses so this is not the place to go if you want quick summaries.

Hugging the Rock by Susan Taylor Brown is an insightful well-written young adult book that deals with the emotional upheaval of having a bipolar parent.  It is both very sad and very uplifting, giving a very real picture of a young girl whose bipolar mother leaves, forcing the daughter and father to recreate their own relationship.  It’s another book that can give teachers insight into the thinking of students who have to deal with situations most of us can barely imagine.  It might also be a book to use to open conversation with a student who has an absent parent for whatever reason.

Hugging the Rock is a verse book, which is another reason to read it.  In the online teacher’s guide, Brown talks about why she wrote the book in verse.  I think students might respond well to writing verse books of their own.  The teacher’s guide also offers questions that can be used for discussion as well as suggested projects for students.

New York Giants wide receiver Sinorice Moss wants high school students to set goals and achieve them.  His program Dare to Dream encourages goal-setting by inviting students to write letters to him expressing their goals.  The idea is that he will then work with classes to provide support in accomplishing the goals.  Students will receive a certificate from Moss when they achieve their goals and their names will be added to an honor roll on the website.  The program is in its infancy, but will be an interesting one to watch to get insight into whether such a simple reward system can effectively change behavior.

I have creativity on the mind so I googled art appreciation for kids, which linked me to an excellent website.  The Incredible Art Department is sponsored by Princeton and moderated by Ken Rohrer, an elementary school art teacher from Indianapolis.  It would take me way too long to describe everything on this site, so I’ll just say that if you want ideas, lesson plans, links, online games and activities, forums, research, cartoons and more … you must check out this site.  I tested a couple of links in Online Art Activities for Kids and loved them.  I learned about the Indian art of Rangoli and the art of Andy Warhol.  I tested fun and unusual fonts in Grafitti Creator and played around with tessellations.  I have to stop playing or I’ll be up all night trying different things.   I’ll let you know when I find anything else I really love.

I just read a book that is both inspiring, disturbing and a challenge to my thinking.  The Glass Castle is Jeannette Walls memoir of being raised by two parents most of us would consider disfunctional.  The parents starved their kids while they spent money on chocolate and alcohol, they refused help from anyone, the family went without showers or baths for months, they taught them to survive by stealing and shoplifting, and the story goes on.  Yet Jeannette Walls thanks her mother for believing in art and truth and for supporting the idea of the book.  She thanks her father for dreaming all those big dreams.  Most impressive of all, she survives what most would call a devastating childhood to become a topnotch author.  You can’t help but marvel at the way she and her siblings stick together and overcome everything thrown their way.  More than that you can’t help wonder why they were able to do it when so many others can’t.  What was the secret to their survival?

This is not a fun read, but it is still a book I think most teachers should read.  I would hope that schools today are more equipped to help students in dire need, but I’m sure there are still many who fall below the radar.  This book made me realize that I need to keep my eyes open for children who are suffering (in all different ways) but don’t show it.  I need to look for ways to help without being obvious.  I must never ignore the value of empathy and respect or forget the importance of love and family.  I recommend you make this part of your summer reading.

TGIF and just for fun, here are some creativity cartoons. Don’t overanalyze them.  Just enjoy them!

My gut feeling for the past few years has been that the negative side of testing in schools is a loss of creativity.  Now there is research that turns that gut feeling into reality.  According to a Newsweek article, American creativity is on the decline.  In 1958, Professor E. Paul Torrance designed a test to measure children’s creativity.  Torrance’s test has been amazingly accurate in predicting kids’ creative accomplishments as adults.  Until 1990 creativity scores were on the rise, but since then they have been steadily declining.  Clearly there are many factors that might lead to this decline, but scientists believe that the lack of creativity development in our schools is clearly part of the problem.  There are few programs designed to specifically develop creative thinking and little time to do it, given all the time devoted to testing preparation.  Ironically, China and Britain, old champions of drill and practice, are putting more emphasis on creativity as we turn more to rote learning and memorization.

If you’re reading this blog, I’m probably preaching to the choir.  But I really hope this research gets to as many politicians, policy makers, parents and school administrators as possible.  Maybe it will help them see that success in education cannot be defined solely by test scores.  Hopefully, research like this will encourage teachers to spend a little less time on test preparation and a little more time on creative activities.

This article is worth reading because it will give you a better scientific understanding of why your creative lessons are so important.

For those of you interested in reading about technology and language learning, eSchool News has assembled a small collection of articles and links.  I don’t particularly like all the commercial links, but I do like the attached research.  There’s a very interesting article on the importance of vocabulary chunks in language learning.

I loved summer camp, and I really loved camp songs.  You can find the lyrics to 541 camp songs and chants on the Scoutorama website.  Look at the list and see how many you remember.  You might find a song to use in a lesson.  You could use the Quartermaster’s Store song for a lesson on writing descriptive sentences.  Or use Found a Peanut to reinforce the past tense and then have students write their own variations on the song, e.g. Found some French fries/pizza/gummy bears/bagels …

I know there are many more good ideas out there.  Share yours!

As soon as I published my last post, I remembered another summer activity that I always thought was cool – making ice cream in a bag or coffee can.  What flavor are you going to try?  Yum!