Last week, as part of their Sci-Fi unit, my Grade 8 English class used their creativity and imagination to make futuristic technology. What has this got to do with learning English? They had to follow a design brief to make them and these models are being used to ignite ideas for their final English summative, writing a Science Fiction text.
The students had to describe what their devices do to the rest of the group and while they were doing this, we saw sparks of ideas crackling from their brains as they thought of ideas for their narrative pieces.
During the process they collaborated and helped each other with build technicalities, but they also went very quiet and I felt redundant because they were so engrossed in what they were doing.
Watch this space for some amazing creative writing to come from this!!