(Notes to conference sessions at the ATECR and P.A.R.K. conferences, March 2026)
Over two consecutive weekends in March 2026 I gave two similar workshops for teachers of English under the title Getting Serious about Having Fun in the Classroom. The first was for A.T.E.C.R. in Prague, the second was at the P.A.R.K. conference in Brno.
In the end I changed the aim of the sessions slightly and made them about creativity in the classroom rather than just fun. This blog firstly acts as notes for the participants of those two sessions, but then it expands to say more about the benefits of encouraging students to be creative in your lessons. So, I hope it will be interesting for everybody.
The Activities
Here first are links to two mini E-books of activities. Most of the activities that I used in the sessions are in these books (and some others too).
Activities to Bring the Primary Classroom to Life
Activities to Bring the Secondary Classroom to Life.
Here are descriptions of other activities, not mentioned in these books, that featured in the Brno sessions.
Activity – Hand up and shout stop!
This is a listening activity where students have to listen to a text and react when they hear certain words. The text can be read from a book or played from a recording. It can be any kind of text, prose, poem, or song.
In its simplest version the students are prepared with a number words that they have to listen for. They are shown the words that they have to listen for and when that word is said they have to put up their hands.
There are many variations on this theme. The one that I use most often, (even at the start of one of our theatre shows) I am calling Hands Up and Stop! In this version I split the class into two teams. Then, before starting the activity, I train them to put their hands up as quickly as possible and shout stop. I let them know that the activity is being run as a competition where the team that reacts the fastest when they hear one of the words gets one point. The team with the most points at the end is the winner.
Activity – Jigsaw writing
This is a well-known activity that can be used to generate a lot of written material in a short time. Each student has a piece of paper And they start by writing the title of a story at the top of the page. The titles can be anything, I usually prepare four different titles, three fairy tales and the title / It was a stormy night in winter …. (which is how that story has to start). Students are then given two minutes to start the stories, just the first few sentences, writing as much as possible in the time. Once the time is finished they pass the paper on to the person sitting on one side of them and receive a new paper (with a different story) from the person on the other side. They are given a moment to read what is on this new paper before being given another two minutes to continue this new story, again writing as much as possible. The papers are passed on again and the process is repeated. I usually allow five or six rounds before announcing that the next round will be the last and so they should try to finish the story they have.
The process
In Prague I started the session with the activity Word Association (from Activities to Bring the Primary Classroom to Life). I then moved on to You Will Never Guess … and Using Music to Create Film Scenarios (both described in Activities to Bring the Secondary Classroom to Life).
In Brno it was a little different, I started with Hand Up and Stop before moving to You Will Never Guess … Then we did a variation of Word Association where instead of going around in a circle, everybody made associations with words that I gave before comparing their word with others around them. We then had a discussion in groups before moving on to the main activity of the session – Jigsaw Writing.
All of the activities in these sessions were improv activities, that is activities where students are expected to produce something without long preparation. They were also creative activities which required students to produce their own original material.
How the sessions were planned.
I wanted to demonstrate two points in these sessions.
The lesser point was how a lesson can be constructed using short activities to prime longer ones.
Each of my sessions had a main activity that was a bit more complex than the others. In Prague it was Using Music to Create Film Scenarios, in Brno it was Jigsaw Writing. These are both activities which require participants to create longer original ideas. In both cases I used two shorter creative activities to get the group in a good frame of mind for the more complex one.
Word Association involves participants in a very low-level form of creativity, simply thinking of a word. This is easy, but it is still creativity. You Will Never Guess … is another short activity that requires a greater level of creativity, thinking up or explaining an incredible story. The idea was that by starting the session with these two short games I was opening the groups’ minds to the idea of being creative. These short creative activities were a warm-up to the discussion and the longer creative activity that were to come later.
On being creative in the classroom.
The main point I wanted to make with these sessions was that student creativity is a key to student motivation and to creating a positive learning atmosphere in the classroom.
Many people say that they are not creative, that they just do not have creative ideas. However, as these simple improvisation games demonstrate well, that is simply not true; everybody is creative. Thinking of an activity for another person to act out is a low-level act of creativity, and it is one which almost anybody can manage. Making up the crazy stories in ‘You Will Never Guess What Happened to Me‘ is more creative, but it is a level of creativity that most people who have the right level of language skills are not unduly challenged by. The activity ‘Using Music to Create Film Scenarios’ is the best example, as the music triggers the creativity in a very natural way. It is almost impossible for somebody not to think of a film scenario.
There are a lot of benefits to letting your students be creative, not least of which is that it makes them feel good about being in your class. Being creative and expressing our own ideas is empowering and motivating, in fact I think it is the most motivating thing a teacher can do with their students.
