An Investigation of Creativity, Engagement, and Academic Success Using Student-Led Lesson Planning in One Third Grade Classroom

The purpose of this study was to investigate creativity, engagement, and student success using student-led lesson planning within a third-grade classroom. It was designed to see the impact of creativity on engagement and understanding through the use of daily student self-assessments and feedback, and daily input from students, concerning the upcoming lessons. The daily student self-assessments included three rating scales for engagement, creativity, and confidence in content. Each day, students were expected to rate themselves on a scale of one to five for each of the categories, regarding their views for that day’s lesson. This measured the effectiveness of each student-led lesson regarding the students’ reflections of their own engagement, feelings of creativity, and the degree of understanding. In addition to the daily ratings, students also gave input for the next lesson, based on their ratings for the current lesson. This allowed students to be creative in using their problem-solving skills to suggest a more effective lesson style. There were twenty-four students who participated in the week-long study. At the conclusion of the study, the results of the daily surveys were analyzed for every question using a paired-samples t-test with an alpha level set at .05. The t-test revealed a significant increase in ratings in all three categories of engagement, creativity, and confidence in understanding between the beginning and end of the study. Therefore, student-led lesson planning was found to positively impact the engagement, creativity, and student success of one group of third-grade students