Can your students eat in the classroom?

A review of Creative Resources
Bonnie Tsai and Judit Feher, International Alliance for Learning, 2005
www.IALearn.org
office@1alearn.org

Reviewer: Agota Scharle, Budapest, Hungary

These two authors show you that your students can eat in the classroom and may even convince you that they should!

Both practising teachers and teacher trainers, Bonnie and Judit wrote a resource book for teachers on how to encourage creativity in classroom work. I read the book with great expectations as I had seen them both in action and had been inspired at their workshops - so I was keen to find out how their magic works.
Each main chapter of the book covers a source to inspire creativity:
the individual,
the group,
literary work,
art work,
and sensual experience.

Each chapter offers a wide range of activities, catering for various age groups, levels, and group sizes. It is a very fresh, and very rich collection, diving into resources rarely used in language classrooms. I am very kinesthetic and visual - no wonder that I especially liked the sensual activities. A favourite was the one about picking and eating an imaginary fruit. First you need to reach for it (maybe up high, maybe down low) and pick it and turn it upside down and feel the skin. Look at the shades of colour, and smell it, too, and then you can have a bite and savour the taste. A wonderful way to bring real-life experiences into the classroom!

The activities are explained clearly, and in sufficient detail. Some are followed by suggestions for variations using the same idea, or options for follow-up activities. And, very thoughtfully, there are always some concrete suggestions for which song, or poem, or painting may work well, if that is required by the activity.

I liked the general styIe of the book: friendly and straightforward, as if just passing on an idea in the teachers' room during the lunch break. Some of the activities come with an explanation of how they help develop creativity, or in what other ways they foster learning. I found these very useful, and would encourage the authors to add them to all the activities if there is a second edition. And, it would be useful to include suggestions for how to re-use the activities with some variations, especially for those that require considerable preparation.

In short, this is a wonderful source of inspiration for the practising teacher in search of fresh ideas. It may not be very easy to use as a quick reference as there is no organising theme within the chapters (or at least I couldn't find any), and no index.

Even so, teachers who would like to do something different, but do not know how, or others who wish to plan and prepare for a semester or a course, will definitely find it a much valued resource.

Please check the Creative methodology for the class room course at Pilgrims website.