Classroom Creativity and Its Impact on Academic Achievement In Relation To Intelligence amongst Senior Secondary School Students

1. INTRODUCTION

A school's environment is the thread that connects the multitude of activities on a campus. In many respects this thread is almost invisible, yet everyone experiences its influence. A school's physical environment includes the school building and the surrounding environs such as noise, temperature, and lighting as well as physical, biological, or chemical agents. The psycho-social school environment encompasses the attitudes, feelings, and values of students and staff. Physical and psychological safety, positive interpersonal relationships, recognition of the needs and success of the individual, and support for learning are all part of the psychosocial environment. Other factors that can affect a school's environment include: the economy; social, cultural, and religious influences; geography; socioeconomic status of students' families and legal, political, and social institutions The School environment can have a dramatic impact on how students learn. It can affect mood, motivation, creativity and productivity of students-positively or negatively Creativity is a mental and social process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the creative mind between existing ideas or concepts. The process of either conscious or unconscious insight fuels creativity. An alternative conception of creativity is that it is simply the act of making something new. Good education proper care and provision of opportunities for creative expression inspires, stimulate and sharpen creative minds. Creativity encourages and demands complete freedom to accept and express the varied responses. A positive environment or situation that is open, democratic and free may be said to contribute positively to the development of creative potential. On the other hand, a closed society, culture or situation may act as a strong deterrent to the development of initiative within the individual. Study habits can be interpreted as the planned programme of subject matter mastery. Learning how to study involves putting away the habits and ideas which have made study unpleasant and burdensome, and taking on habits and ideas which make study more pleasant and fruitful. Why does one individual learn more quickly and thoroughly than others? The main reason for inefficiency in learning is one‘s carelessness and ineffective study habits. According to New Standard Dictionary of Education, study habits mean theme setting of subject to be learned and investigated, and the tendency of pupils or students to study when the opportunity is given. Effective and successful study consists of more than merely memorizing facts. It calls for knowing where and how to obtain important information and ability to make intelligent use of it. The effective habits of study include plan/place, a definite time table and taking brief of well organized notes. To study successfully a student must decide what information is important and then form the opinions concerning it. All these things must be

study in the most effective way. Experts are agreed that great success in the field of knowledge is attributed to good and consistent study habits.

Vyas (2002): Studied learning style, mental ability, academic performance and other ecological correlates of under graduate adolescent girls with the objective to study the effect of ecological correlates on the academic performance of girls students by taking a sample of 545 adolescent girls and found that most of the girls showed academic attainment of average level; no significant difference in the

Goel (2004) instigated the effect of home environment on educational aspirations. The sample of the study comprised 100 students (50 boys and 50girls) of intermediate classes in age groups of 16-20 years. The results revealed that girls had much higher educational aspiration than boys. Boys felt more rejected with the autocratic atmosphere at home in comparison to girls who experienced more nurturance than boys Pande & Nanda (2005) conducted a study to find the impact of different environment of nursery school on the school readiness of children. The sample comprised of 60 children attending different level of quality of nursery school education in terms of school environment (good/average/poor). The children were taken randomly from 12 nursery schools of Ludhiana district in Punjab. Results revealed that good school environment improved the level of school readiness of children schools of Punjab concluded significant positive correlation between the variables of creativity and academic achievement. Significant difference was also obtained between the creativity of boys and girlsat 0.01 level of significance.

Pandey et al. (2008): Studied significance of difference between male and female adolescents on academic performance, achievement motivation, intelligence and socio economic status and found that there was no significant difference between male and female adolescents on the measure of academic performance.

When designing learning experiences, teachers can plan and frame curriculum and provide tools that give students options, voice, and choice in order to enable them to be creative. In my work in schools, I‘ve found four things that successful teachers do to develop creativity in their students.

Classroom example: Fourth-grade students are presented with a sample of rocks. They are to devise tests to determine what kind of rocks they have based on the definitions they‘ve studied. Students Another classroom example: A kindergarten class creates a new illustrated book each week that celebrates a different member of the class or an adult at the school. Each book is full of pages drawn by each student. They have the full liberty of depicting what the person likes and how they perceive him or her.

Classroom example: Third-grade students are learning about polygons and to see if they know the concept, the teacher takes them outside and gives each student a sidewalk chalk. Each student is given the task of drawing several examples of polygons on the driveway. Once the students have accomplished this, the teacher tells the students to transform those shapes into something they love. The students want to show everyone their geometric-based kittens, robots, and dragons and then have an opportunity to explain to the whole class why they liked them.

Classroom example: A second-grade class is learning about the concept of freezing. The teacher asks one question to get them started, ―Does only water freeze?‖ The students then design an experiment to determine what other things freeze. The limit is that they can only use what they have in the classroom at the time. The students come up with a list of things that they will leave outside to see if they freeze: water, juice, vinegar, glue, glass cleaner, toothpaste, and paper. Some suggestions they decide are already solids and shouldn‘t go outside: pencils, erasers, and books (but somehow paper stays on the test list). The next day, they discuss their findings and have engaging conversations about why the paper is stiff and the vinegar has not frozen. The initial discussion among students about what might freeze fosters skills such as advocating for one‘s ideas and compromising. The follow-up discussion encourages deductive reasoning and active listening.

Classroom example: A sixth-grade class produces Halloween costume plays. In order to wear

come up with how a giant soda can and the superhero Wonder Woman will interact. The students love the challenge.

Academic achievement of senior secondary school students in relation to creativity The mean and ‗t‘ score of female senior secondary school students Table reveals that ‗t‘ value between urban senior secondary school students having low and high creativity ('t' = 19.671) is significant at 0.01 level. In the context of mean scores, it was found that mean score of secondary school students having high creativity is higher than mean scores of senior secondary school students having creativity. Hence, the null hypothesis framed earlier, ―There is no significant difference in academic achievement of senior secondary school students in relation to their creativity‖ is not retained. This shows that urban students having creativity have better academic achievement.

The study revealed that significant difference was found in academic achievement of senior secondary school students in relation to their Creativity. This shows that students having creativity have better academic achievement than students having no creativity

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Research Scholar, Jayoti Vidyapeeth Women‘s University, Jaipur