Day 8: Creating in Reading

This week we have been learning about creating in reading. I really enjoyed the hands-on and practical nature of this week's focus. Dorothy had some good reminders about the purpose of create within our programmes for engagement and also developing skills such as collaboration. Dorothy's comment about how we want our students to be creators of content rather than just consumers of it really made me think about how we are setting our students up with these skills through the create opportunities we provide.

The poem activity where we illustrated a poem was a really simple but effective activity. I had a go at using Canva for the illustration with the app Moji AI. It was interesting to see what image was created for the verse of the poem. I thought the learner reflection template was a good scaffold to reflect on the comparison between the original illustration and the one that was created. I could see how this could be used in other ways like with characters or settings. Earlier in the year I had done a similar thing with descriptive writing where learners used keywords to describe a planet, then used Craiyon to create the planet before writing a description of their planet. I liked how today's activity showed how it can link to reading and writing.

Create is such an important aspect of the learning process it helps to support deeper learning and brings in higher-order thinking. I did think the point about not underestimating the power of Google tools for create was important. Sometimes I think our students being able to use a few tools well and understanding what tools are useful for different tasks is more useful for giving students choice in their create tasks than having a huge range that they don't really understand. It was also helpful to bring the SAMR model back to the forefront to think about what the task is actually doing for our learners.

The examples of shorter responses to text tasks were also helpful as sometimes it feels overwhelming trying to fit create tasks in, especially tasks that also allow for collaboration and reflection. It was good to have some options for 'tighter' create tasks, which still gave students opportunities to think and create but were easier to fit into the reading programme.

A goal for me is to plan for more collaborative create tasks. I feel that pictures, videos or podcasts may be a good place to start. I liked the idea of the one-shot film, as it was a quick way for students to record and share their create tasks while also developing the skills involved in working with others.