The Silent Artist : Creativity, artistic intelligence, making decisions and reflection

Master Teacher Alice Poh shared this activity with us yesterday during our network meeting. I found this activity very creative and meaningful.

Activity 1:

Draw a house. Draw a garden round the house. Include some trees. There is a playground near the house.

We were given 5 minutes to draw the items as mentioned in the instructions. No further instructions were given and no questions were to be asked. At the end of the activity, we were asked to peer-mark based on the marking scheme as such:

• 1 mark for a single storey house.
• 2 marks for a double storey house.
• 3 marks for a triple storey house.
• 1 mark for a fence round the garden/house.
• 1 mark for 2 trees.
• 2 for more than 2 trees.
• 1 mark for 1 playground item.

This was what I drew and I was given 3 marks by my partner. There is no limit to the number of marks given. However, I felt indignant with the marks I received because I didn't know that drawing a double-storeyed house would give me 2 marks. If I knew, I would draw a HDB flat! So the effort of me creatively trying to draw a kampong house did not give me extra marks.

Activity 2:

Mr and Mrs Tan live in a double storey bungalow with their two young school going kids. They have two cars. Mr Tan is a man who loves nature. The family spends a lot of their time in their well-shaded garden. Mrs Tan loves swimming and spends a lot of time by the poolside with the kids. Because of this, Mr Tan is very concerned about security and safety of the children.

At the end of the 5-minute activity, we were told to exchanged papers and then peer-mark based on the marking scheme as such:

House:

• 1 mark for a double storey bungalow.
• 2 marks for the two cars parked either inside or outside the house

Garden:

• 1 mark for each tree or shrub planted.
• 1 mark for the swimming pool.
• 2 marks for furniture at the poolside.
• 1 mark for fence round the pool
• 1 mark for fence round the house with a gate.

I was awarded 11 marks for the second activity and was happy with myself for it! Again, there is no limit to the toal number of marks.

What strikes me as interesting is that in Activity 1, there was no context set for the drawing of the pictures. I was clueless of what to draw as there were no particular rubrics given. In the second activity, the context of the Tan family is more extablished and the ideas can be deduced from the instruction. Also, the key words assist us in the drawing and we were more aware of the rubrics of the marker as we had gone through those in the first activity.

To sum up, performance of students would definitely be better if they have a clearer idea of the deliverables (rubrics) and what to do (instructions). Performance of students would also be better if the goals are clear and the task at hand is more focused. How do we translate that to our daily teaching?