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You may be very familiar with 'summer learning loss' when your students return to school after the holidays at a lower academic level than at the end of the previous academic year. Sometimes it can feel like you are starting all over again, which can be frustrating. The question is, what can we do to help our students stay on track?
Since 2018, our goal has been to improve educational outcomes for pupils all across the UK, and we’ve been able to do this through our fully adaptive Key Stage 2 online learning platform, Atom School, which is entirely free of charge for teachers!
Now, as part of our mission to foster creativity and nurture a love for writing in pupils, we’re launching our inaugural creative writing competition: The Atom Learning Young Author Award!
Why are creativity skills in education important?
They can:
Be used to motivate students to learn
Engage hard-to-reach students
Provide essential job skills for the future
Spur emotional development
What does creativity in the classroom mean to teachers?
Creating lessons that allow students to play to their strengths by giving meaningful assignments
Including children in the decision-making, and experimenting with new things when lesson planning
Providing opportunities for children to think, plan, and learn from each other
Encouraging curiosity into learning by fostering a desire to learn new things
Creating lessons that allow students to use their imagination, therefore, increasing engagement
Creative work helps students connect new information to their prior knowledge, which comes in all shapes and forms. We launched our creative writing competition to engage with precisely that! What better way to connect information to prior knowledge than to use the imagination, form original ideas, and take everything the student has learned, in and out of school, and shape it into a story?
Does creativity affect pupil achievement?
The short answer is yes! There are plenty of studies to substantiate this - maybe a little light reading for the teachers over the summer holidays!
It allows children to practise using the vocabulary they've learned as well as learning new words, and put punctuation into practice. And what better way to stretch the imagination over the summer holidays than to pick up our creative writing competition theme of 'A Day That Changed the World'?
How can you boost your pupils' creativity over the summer break with writing?
Keeping your pupils creative over summer is a great way to avoid summer brain drain.
Knowledge builds creativity, so keep them reading. You can browse Atom’s reading lists here: Year 3 | Year 4 | Year 5 | Year 6
Book journaling is a fab summer activity – scrapbooking, diary writing, whatever you want to call it, can change how children experience reading.
Creating a character – creating a character for a story is an extension of the popular game of make-believe, and a sure-fire way to build up the imagination.
Building a fantastical world – the theme of Atom’s creative writing competition is 'A Day That Changed the World', giving plenty of scope to build a whole new fantastical world!
We’re sure you have plenty of ideas to stimulate creativity in the classroom, and we hope that our creative writing competition, and free downloadable activity pack, can also contribute to getting your pupils' creative juices flowing over summer – and avoid that new term ‘brain drain’ feeling!
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