Essay, EDUC 598U Integrating Creativity in Learning and Working

Marsha Moseley
3 December 2014
Why Cant These Lessons Be More Creative?
To create is to make. Creativity involves either spawning new ideas or products,
or reworking existing ones into something different. It comes naturally to most children,
and it is something that most children enjoy.
Of course, creativity is essential for the arts. Several studies have shown that
integrating the arts with curriculum content can help students retain what they have
been taught. Luke Rinne at Johns Hopkins University, among others, has described the
positive effects that arts integration can have on long-term memory (Luke Rinne et al.,
Why Arts Integration Improves Long-Term Retention of Content, Mind, Brain, and
Education, 2011, volume 5, no. 2, pp .89-96).
Why, then, are the arts so often absent from school assignments? As an itinerant
elementary school librarian with Chesterfield County (VA) Public Schools, I work at four
schools each week. I teach four different sets of lesson plans the respective librarians
have produced. I wonder if many of these lessons would be more effective if they were,
quite simply, more creative.
For example, while studying poetry, third grade students learn to identify
metaphors and similes. In addition to learning to pick out figurative expressions in
existing poems, why not ask the children to write some of their own? Why not let them
make a model or a picture of one of their favorites? Adding these elements would trigger
the effect of elaboration. Rinne states that the act of creating a story, poem, song, or
work of visual art will often make students create background context that contributes
to the establishment of a more elaborate memory trace (p. 91).
Fourth graders in Virginia public schools focus on Virginia history in social
studies, as much of that history is also the nations history. When studying the hardships
of the Jamestown settlers and the reactions of their Powhatan neighbors, students fill
out worksheets with details about what happened. Why not let students make a drawing
or write a poem or story about how people in these groups felt? The effect of emotional
arousal can help students recall the events and their consequences. By supplanting
some conventional activities with artful work that promotes expression of emotional
content, teachers can readily leverage what is known about emotional enhancement of
memory (p. 94).
Enactment is another effect in Rinnes article, referring to the finding that
physically acting out material leads to improved recall relative to simply reading or

hearing material (p. 92). Many teachers use enactment in the form of readers theater,
where students read aloud with expression and gestures. Usually this is done in the
context of language arts instruction; however, it would be useful and enjoyable in other
curriculum areas, as well. For example, when students in third grade learn about simple
machines, the water cycle, or plant and animal life cycles, why couldnt they act out the
component parts in addition to or instead of filling in the blanks or circling the correct
choice on a worksheet? Wouldnt the information they enact stay with them longer, and
be a lot more fun to learn?
Public school teachers everywhere are under a lot of pressure. Between high
stakes standardized tests and shrinking school budgets, many teachers feel pinched
and stressed. However, adding the arts to lessons need not add one more chore to the
pile. By substituting arts-driven creativity for some conventional assignments, teachers
can help ensure that their students will not only remember the curriculum they
encounter in the classroom, but also view the classroom as a place of growth and joy.