Ron Clark "The Excellent 11" Chapter 3 Creativity

Chapter 3:   Creativity
This chapter focuses on creativity.   Ron Clark believes that teachers and parents need to come up with as many ways as possible to encourage kids to learn or to understand.   If many different techniques are tried, then the best solution to helping children learn will be discovered.
Creativity Excites and Inspires
In this section, Ron focuses on reading skills.   Each year he tries to do something different to keep the material from getting boring.   While reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, a section of the classroom is transformed to look like a scene from the book and they play make-believe together.   The students can’t wait to finish the book, because they feel like they’re a part of it.  
Using Creativity to Raise Test Scores
Clark has a very difficult time raising reading test scores and figures out that the students don’t understand the vocabulary.   After the key words are introduced before reading, almost everyone does much better.   Many different ideas for learning vocabulary are given in this section.   Various games can be played and the concentration on vocabulary helps the students become better readers and obtain much better scores on their end-of-grade reading tests.
Creativity is Taking Advantage of “Teachable Moments”
When students show an interest in something that is not part of the lesson, then the teacher should use the moment as an opportunity to teach something.   If possible, try to connect the new topic to the one you were covering.  
Creative Discipline
This section gives many examples of ways to deal with discipline problems.   One example splits the class into groups of four and gives the best behaved group a trophy.   The trophy is placed on the desks of the group.   The trophy is moved periodically, depending on which group is working the best.  
Ron Clark gives some examples of how stickers can be used many different ways as a reward for good behavior, but thinks the best technique for getting...