“Encouraging
creativity by project activities"
Our school is
located in Królówka village in southern Poland, which is famous for growing and
maintaining local folk traditions. The location of our village, far from the
cultural centers sometimes causes some difficulties in the organization of
various forms of activities to develop creativity in our pupils. The participation in two international Comenius
projects is for our students and
teachers a window to the world
where through the appropriate actions
they can develop their creativity
and gain a positive incentive to acquire knowledge about the world.
In
the years 2011 - 2013, our school implemented a project
"Multiculturalism in Europe"
with partner schools from Wales, Ireland and Latvia. Currently we
participate in the another Comenius
project "Peace in the heart, peace in the
playground – we are Europeans " with the seven European countries. In carrying out
the project activities we noticed that being
involved in creative activities is fun and absorbing for children. We observed that participation in projects contributed to the development of creativity
through the progress of other skills:
Appreciation of different ways of looking at the world – the children
gained the knowledge about new cultures, customs, they studied
the cultural differences in Europe, the history of individual countries. They
prepared quizzes about partners countries, they watched films and presentations that were
prepared by their foreign friends.
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Collaboration – the pupils of our school were meeting in groups to make
project tasks and produced project products such as Power Point
presentations, prospects, leaflets, posters, pictures and ebooks with the most
popular Polish legends. Each group had a leader who divided
the tasks and checked the progress of work. When the students were
working together – they also developed good relationships.
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Communication – the children
developed better communication through talking, listening and writing in
English language. The pupils regularly corresponded with foreign colleagues using e-mail, they wrote occasional letters and cards. They also communicated
by Smiley Talk,
the website where every child designed own profile in English.
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Imagination – Children certainly developed their imagination and creativity by designing
logo of the projects, by creating
toys from recycling, conducting
interviews with her grandparents, making presentations in
various computer programs. A group of students wrote the screenplay for the fairy Wawel Dragon, which
was presented to foreign
guests during their visit to our
school.
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Motivation – We know from the
experience that children are keen to take part in the project when the classes
are inspiring, give the possibility to introduce new ideas. With good
facilities in our schools with computer equipment children can create
interesting projects and compete in various competitions, which contributed
to the development of motivation. Of course, the biggest motivation for
children to work in the project is the opportunity to take a part in mobility
to foreign country.
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Language – increasing vocabulary, reading and writing skills. Pupils made
films with useful phrases in English and Polish, they produced small
dictionaries and created three fictional stories in English. The children
developed their English through
reading and writing letters, making Power Point presentations.
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Creativity is
about expressing ourselves and involves
being imaginative and original. Children to develop their own creativity,
they also need proper motivation, they need to see the proper sense of their actions.
One of the most important issues in the development of children's creativity is a creative teacher. The teacher is for the
child a window to the world, which is able to arouse
the curiosity and inspire motivation. In our small Polish school are such teachers and thanks them the Comenius projects give for children the opportunity to develop and succeed.
