Evaluating lesson plans in preschool

wrote By Deborah J. Stewart, M.Ed.

I write a lot of lesson plans and I never know how well something will turn out until I see it in action.

 One of the best ways to evaluate lesson plans is to observe children in action. When evaluating lesson plans, some questions to ask yourself might include…

Were the children interested in the activity?

Did the stay engaged in the activity for an age appropriate length of time?

Did the activity give children opportunity to be creative, explore, discover, or work independently?

What learning objectives or experiences did you hope to offer through this activity?

What learning objectives or experiences do you feel were actually met through this activity?

If you provide this activity again with the children, what will you do differently? Why?

Sometimes the children will surprise you with their own ideas or twist to the activity. Sometimes what you think will be fun and engaging will end up being a flop. And sometimes what you planned to do will change at the last minute. On paper, an activity may look good but once you start working with the children the idea may need some quick adapting or adjustments in order for it to work well.

 Writing lesson plans always requires constant evaluation and a readiness to adapt to the needs of the children. If what you propose to do isn’t working then change it, adapt it, or scrap it and move on!

 Use each experience as an opportunity to reflect on what your students love, what your students can do, what your students are ready to do, and then build on this knowledge for future planning.

 And keep in mind – process, process, process – ultimately, you want to consider how much of the process was child centered.

http://www.teachpreschool.org/2010/11/evaluating-lesson-plans-in-preschool/

A lot of things in the culture naturalize our activities, thinking and ideas. I believe that when a children is able to change the "normal things" that society said it become a point important that talk about his creativity. For example: What can we do with a pencil? the normal answer could be to write, paint but a pencil also may be a airplane or it can build a world of imagination. Here we can observe the metaphor in the process that is someting important in the creativity , also new feeling and ideas. The abductive thinking also is an example about the form that the children resolve problems. The abductive is the thinking that permits that the science could be biggest. 

I find your question intriguing, particularly the reference to intervention.  Creativity is build on an ability to allow "possibility".  People who are creative are problem-solvers who often think outside the box.  Therefore, to foster creativity, an inquiry model needs to be embraced, where children become problem-solvers, inventors, and "Picasso(s)." Some children innately inherit an ability to be creative, others grow to embrace this skill by the opportunities.  If we want to foster creativity, leave the tests alone and focus on the opportunities, giving children as they progress in the education systems learning experiences that are open-ended, meaningful and full of possibility.  I personally, do not come from the perspective that students come from a deficiency in creativity, as much as from a lack of opportunity to be creative and these opportunities can enter a child's life at anytime.  So, instead of looking at deficiency...look at how we build opportunity to be creative and support others in the endeavor to open up what education can be.

What Is Creativity?

Creativity has been considered in terms of process, product or person (Barron and Harrington, 1981) and has been defined as the interpersonal and intrapersonal process by means of which original, high quality, and genuinely significant products are developed. In dealing with young children, the focus should be on the process, i.e., developing and generating original ideas, which is seen as the basis of creative potential. When trying to understand this process, it is helpful to consider Guilford's (1956) differentiation between convergent and divergent thought. Problems associated with convergent thought often have one correct solution. But problems associated with divergent thought require the problem-solver to generate many solutions, a few of which will be novel, of high quality, and workable--hence creative.

For a proper understanding of children's creativity, one must distinguish creativity from intelligence and talent. Ward (1974) expressed concern about whether creativity in young children could be differentiated from other cognitive abilities. More recent studies (for example, Moran and others, 1983) have shown that components of creative potential can indeed be distinguished from intelligence. The term "gifted" is often used to imply high intelligence. But Wallach (1970) has argued that intelligence and creativity are independent of each other, and a highly creative child may or may not be highly intelligent.

Creativity goes beyond possession and use of artistic or musical talent. In this context, talent refers to the possession of a high degree of technical skill in a specialized area. Thus an artist may have wonderful technical skills, but may not succeed in evoking the emotional response that makes the viewer feel that a painting, for example, is unique. It is important to keep in mind that creativity is evidenced not only in music, art, or writing, but throughout the curriculum, in science, social studies and other areas.

Most measures of children's creativity have focused on ideational fluency. Ideational fluency tasks require children to generate as many responses as they can to a particular stimulus, as is done in brainstorming. Ideational fluency is generally considered to be a critical feature of the creative process. Children's responses may be either popular or original, with the latter considered evidence of creative potential. Thus when we ask four-year-olds to tell us "all the things they can think of that are red," we find that children not only list wagons, apples and cardinals, but also chicken pox and cold hands.

For young children, the focus of creativity should remain on process: the generation of ideas. Adult acceptance of multiple ideas in a non-evaluative atmosphere will help children generate more ideas or move to the next stage of self-evaluation. As children develop the ability for self-evaluation, issues of quality and the generation of products become more important. The emphasis at this age should be on self-evaluation, for these children are exploring their abilities to generate and evaluate hypotheses, and revise their ideas based on that evaluation. Evaluation by others and criteria for genuinely significant products should be used only with older adolescents or adults.

http://www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content2/Creativity_in_kids.html

Creativity among preschool children may evaluated best through free play and observation.