Humans are creative beings. Students create with and/or without our help. Yet, in order to ask students to create toward a specific end (demonstrating a conceptual understanding, etc.), it may be necessary to prompt and/or inspire student creative endeavors in the classroom. To these ends, teachers need to find impetus/sparks to get students creating and craft compositional prompts that define the conceptual or technique-based tasks required of the students in a specific etude. When planning etudes, free compositions, or any project, we might do well to think about the elements of a good project noted by Martinez & Stager (2013):

 

• Purpose/Relevance: Will the project be personally meaningful?

• Time: How long will each project take? Is this enough time for students to explore and create?

• Complexity: How does this project combine different ways of thinking?

• Intensity: Does the project sustain student interest toward creating and refining their work?

• Connection: How will students connect and make use of peers, experts, tools, etc. in the project?

• Access: Which tools, instruments, etc. will students have access to? Do they need access to others? In what ways can tools scaffold their thinking?

• Shareability: To what degree are students able to share their work? How will they share it and elicit feedback from their peers?

• Novelty: Will the project be interesting and provide students will new insights that are important to them? 

 

Martinez and Stager (2013) suggest that good prompts are stated briefly and are ambiguous enough to allow students to answer a prompt in their own creative voice. So, as we move on to explore different prompts and begin to craft our own, consider the brevity and ambiguity of each. The following list includes a suggested spark, an example prompt, and a suggested extension or avenue for sharing: