Teach Secondary -Issue 15.1

• YellowHat: Expresses the positive aspects and opportunities of an idea • Green Hat: Generates creative and unconventional ideas and solutions • Blue Hat: The chairperson – sets the agenda, resolves disputes and ensures the discussion stays on track To illustrate what this method looks like, let’s use the example of a geography teacher. This teacher has set their students the task of coming up with presentations about the planning of a new housing development. Having formed groups of six, the students might come up with a basic plan and then be asked to each ‘wear’ a different hat. The white hats might focus on the facts regarding what a good housing development should contain, in a fairly utilitarian way. The red hats might consider how people would feel living there and how the development could be made to look beautiful. The black hats would look for flaws in the basic plan. The yellow hats would focus on the benefits of the plan. The green hats would look to improve the plan using unconventional and creative ideas. The blue hats would meanwhile manage the project, and make sure everyone was contributing. This approach could similarly work when set the task of designing an event or restaurant in food technology, product ABOUT THE AUTHOR Alice Guile is a secondary school art teacher Example of a ‘Surrealist Dreamscape’ piece by a Y10 student Completed ‘Exquisite Corpse’ exercise from a Y9 class End result of a ‘30 Circles’ activity undertaken by Y10 GCSE art students Several ‘Cubomania’ pieces produced by a Y10 GCSE photography class EXQUISITE CORPSE Perhaps the most well- known Surrealist exercise, this involves giving several participants a single sheet of paper. Each participant then draws a head on their sheet, before folding the paper over and passing it to the next person, repeating the process until a full figure is drawn on every sheet. 30 CIRCLES Give each student a sheet on which are displayed 30 circles. In each one they should write the name of any random item that comes into their head. This activity is inspired by the surrealists’ use of automatic writing – writing without thinking – which they believed helped them to access the subconscious. Having written their items, the students close their eyes and randomly point to a circle without looking. They then do this twice more, and proceed to draw a surreal image that combines all three of the words. If done as part of a surrealist GCSE art topic (as opposed to a one-off workshop), students could complete the activity multiple times to create a double page spread containing several distinct surreal images created in different media. CUBOMANIA Pupils cut a photo up into small squares and rectangles then reconstruct the pieces in a completely novel and unexpected way. PHOTOMONTAGE Pupils cut out a variety of visually recognisable images and passages of text from different magazines and newspapers, and proceed to re-assemble their cut-out visual elements in new and surprising combinations. FROTTAGE A technique developed by Surrealist artist Max Ernst, this involves putting paper over textured surfaces and rubbing pencils, wax crayons or charcoal over them. He would use the random patterns this created to form unique images. DREAMSCAPES Pupils use their dreams – or someone else’s, if they can’t remember their own – as direct visual inspiration for the creation of a Salvador Dalí-style dreamscape. DECALCOMANIA This describes the process of applying various materials to freshly painted surfaces while they’re still wet, and removing them to create unique patterns that can inspire unusual drawings. I’ve done this myself using watercolours and cling film. You can twist the film and even add salt, which will absorb the surrounding watercolour residue and produce some particularly unusual textures. TRY ITYOURSELF development in D&T, or when launching a new startup in business studies. In history, you could ask pupils to apply this method when evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the treaty of Versailles – how it made the German people feel, and how it could have been done better. Howdo pupils benefit? Encouraging students to think more creatively (or critically, in the case of the ‘Thinking Hats’ exercise) has huge benefits. As previously discussed, creativity utilises multiple areas of the brain at once; pupils practising these methods are therefore likely to improve their ability to generate novel ideas over time. Moreover, we’re currently preparing our young people for a volatile and rapidly changing world – one in which flexible thinking and the ability to solve problems are set to become ever more vital life skills. By teaching students thinking skills now, we’ll be setting themup to become adaptable and creative adults who are able to take on big challenges and thrive. 63 teachwire.net/secondary T H E A R T S