CREATIVITY IN JACARI LESSONS
Why is creativity important?
The most memorable and inspiring activities you do with your pupil are likely to be those
that are very different from school. Children who may find school quite difficult or
boring will enjoy activities that encourage learning in a less standard way, and can be a
great way to motivate your pupil.
Preparing lessons quickly when you haven’t had time to go to the Jacari library
 Grab whatever you have around you! Eg. hall menu, cereal box, magazine. With a
menu you could discuss which meals your pupil would enjoy or wouldn’t enjoy
and why, if there are choices which ones your pupil would choose and whether
these are the same as your choices, whether your pupil has particular dietary
requirements, how many times yoghurts are served in a week, they draw a picture
of a meal and then you guess which meal it is, creating an ideal lunch menu etc
etc. There’s loads you can do even from something simple like a menu and it can
involve reading, writing, speaking and listening as you wish.
With an older pupil you could use a cereal box to discuss nutritional information,
what “wholegrain” / additives etc. mean, and there may even be calculations that
you could do based on the nutritional information eg. if 5g sugar per 100g cereal,
how many g sugar in 30g serving?
You could cut pictures out of a magazine and get your pupil to label them, or
write short descriptions of the pictures and get your pupil to match description to
picture.

Play games which don’t require any preparation eg. hangman (good for spelling!),
write or orally give descriptions of objects and then get your pupil to guess, then
swap so your pupil writes a description. Younger children love guessing games
and will happily play them for a long time!
Craft activities
Great as they allow English learning while focusing on something your pupil may see as
more “fun”! We have craft packs in the Jacari library with all the basics- different
coloured paper, pencils, colouring pens, glue and scissors. Some ideas for using these
craft packs are:
 Origami- from written or spoken instructions that you give- your pupil will need
to listen very carefully!
 Fortune tellers (look up instructions for making on internet)
 Your pupil could write up a story they’ve written into a book (fold paper in half
into a booklet with the right number of pages) and include lots of illustrationnice for displaying your pupil’s achievements.
 Learning shapes/symmetry
Activities requiring a little more preparation
 Make puppets and perform a play using them
 Get a catalogue eg. from IKEA/Argos. You could give an older child a budget and
fussy requirements and get them to choose 5 items for your kitchen. Or for a
younger pupil you could draw a plan of a house and get them to cut out objects
for each room. Extend their vocabulary by asking if they know what a quilt,
sideboard etc is. Play a game where each of you has a house with specific rooms
eg, kitchen, gym, and you point at objects at random from the catalogue with your
eyes closed and the first one to have three objects suitable for each room wins.
Get your pupil to design their ideal bedroom on a certain budget.

Write a postcard to your pupil from an imaginary friend/ relative, which your
pupil could draw the picture for on the front. Get your pupil to write a postcard
back to them. You could talk about different countries and geography following
on from this.

Get hold of a cartoon with language of a suitable level, and tipex out some of the
captions, photocopy and get your pupil to fill them in with what they think should
go there. Or mix frames and get your pupil to reorder them. Remove the last
frame and get your child to make up their own ending. Get your pupil to
summarise the story in their own cartoon of only six captions.