A 4CTL Case Study from Hunter School of the Performing Arts, 2022

CREATIVE & REFLECTIVE ACTIVITIES TO ENGAGE STUDENTS

As told AT OUR NOV 2022 NETWORK DAYS, by Elly and Clemma from HUNTER SCHOOL OF THE PERFORMING ARTS

Talking to students about mental health can be heavy. Diving right into it can be too “out of nowhere,” so we try to give our students a “warm-up” activity. These activities utilise the 4Cs qualities of creativity, communication & critical reflection.

Continuous Drawing

One such activity is continuous line drawing - drawing a whole picture without taking your pen/pencil off the page. In using this activity in a mental health class, we may use the phrase “mental health” as a stimulus, or ask students how they’re feeling about their own mental health. In the instance from which the above picture came, it was reinforced to students that they might choose to mimic the emotions they’ve felt over the past four weeks, or they may want to draw something that makes them feel good, or something that stresses them out. They were told they only had three minutes to complete the drawing.

The results have informed our teaching - seeing some students drawing positive things, some drawing more chaos, some drew actual situations.

Quick Writes and Snowballs

Another activity that we’re really proud of is timed writing.

Usually these are two-minute, quick writes and students may or may not be given guidance to begin. They’ll be told there’s no right or wrong.

At the end of the two minutes, students are given time to interact with what they’ve written - they count their words, highlight topic words, proof read and edit the text. Then they read it to their ‘elbow buddy’.

Next, they’re asked to scrunch up their writing into a ‘snowball’. After outlining some safety rules, they’re allowed to throw these at each other like a snowball fight. This phase happens for a very limited time - usually a count down from 5 to 1. Once this time ends, they have to pick up a snowball.

It’s true that some students don’t really engage with the snowball fight, but the rule is that everyone has to end up with a snowball, so they will get up at the end of the throwing and pic one up from the floor.

Having selected their snowball, the are now asked to open it, read it, then scrunch it up again. And we repeat this exercise, perhaps several more times.

To bring this activity to a collective end point, we might engage in a Bus Stop reflections time, where students can self-select to give feedback on what they’ve read.

Or we may ask them to add to one of the pieces they’ve read.

Another option is that we collectively create a paragraph of writing to capture the whole essence of what’s been written and what’s been read.

Using Card Decks

A third activity is the use of card decks as stimuli for reflection, which we use particularly with teachers. In a sample deck we’d brought to our Network Days Bazaar Stall, each card had a photograph of something, such as nature, buildings, vehicles, animals and more. At the beginning of a term, or perhaps at a mid-point, we’ll have teacher meetings together and ask teachers to choose a card that represents something they’re feeling at that moment, about the term ahead or where they’re at in the term. This leads to reflection on how they feel, the progress they or the school is making, what we can focus on as we move forward, and so on.

With students, we use cards in mental health and wellbeing classes, sometimes using specialised decks, such as one with a focus on loss and grief, or a focus on eating disorders, etc.

Having these cards as visual aides means people who aren’t confident to speak up and offer their thoughts might be able to identify with a card, and that offers an easier opportunity to open up their potential for greater engagement and reflection.

Another use of these cards with students is asking them to choose one that represents what they want to work on. This can align nicely with the Learning Disposition Wheel. We discuss what the dispositions are, which ones they’d like to work on in themselves, and use the cards to help facilitate reflection on this.

Cards can be chosen to represent where they are now and what might help them realise their strengths.