Imaginative+Education

toc =Introduction= Imaginative Education is a way of creating engaging lessons by understanding something about the hopes, dreams, desires, and passions that went into creating that knowledge or cultural artifact. These lessons get students emotionally involved in learning as well as intellectually involved. This type of lesson planning can help you to make engaging lessons on just about any topic you can think of.

The people who created this form of teaching have a website that explains the whole idea and provides many, many teacher resources: []

=What is Imaginative Education?= Go to [] and watch one of the introductory videos at the bottom of the page.

Imaginative Education is an approach to lesson planning where you create stories that introduce the subject matter and also make it understandable. Teaching through story telling is a powerful way to help students remember what they are learning. Just as an aside here, I learned about how bases neutralize acids in 1976 from my Appalachian high school chemistry teacher. In his strong regional accent, he told us about how a coal miner's battery (used for the helmet light) leaked on his leg. Mr. Cable, my chemistry teacher, had gotten to go to college because of the way in which Berea College works (everyone is on a work-study scholarship and if your family has too much money, you can't go), so he knew what to do. He had them put milk of magnesia on the miner's leg to neutralize the acid from the battery. From then on, he told us, if anything went wrong, they would get out the milk of magnesia! That story has stayed in my mind for 35 years.

=Imaginative Education Lesson Frameworks= Go to [] and look at some of the lesson frameworks.

=Examples of IE Lessons= There are several examples on the site but I'm going to choose some of the best to share with you (you are welcome to look at all of them):

14 Lines: A Romantic Approach to Sonnets
[]

Bread
[]

Pioneers
[]

Dr. Frankenstein's Anatomy Laboratory
[]

=Create Your Own Story= Think of something you will teach and find a story (history, fiction, etc.) or make up a story that you could use to teach it. Briefly list some of the activities you could do with students around this story.