What is Creative Thinking?
Teachers
today recognise the need to encourage creative thinking. Society and
industry acknowledge the need for creative, lateral thinkers, who can
come up with original, outside-the-square ideas - both to solve problems
and to come up with new methods, new strategies, new ways of doing
things. As the old adage says, “You can’t use the same
old thinking that got you into the problem in the first place...”
Creative thinking activities need to be incorporated into teachers’ daily plans. With only a few minutes a day devoted to creative thinking, you will soon notice the difference: as they hear others’ ideas, students become more willing to risk-take, to think outside the square; they begin to elaborate more; and social skills can also improve as students realise the value of listening and piggybacking on others’ ideas.
Creative thinking cannot be taught; it can most certainly be enhanced.
There are four main areas in creative thinking:
1. fluency (i.e. the number of ideas generated)
2. originality (i.e. unique, unusual ideas)
3. elaboration (i.e. the ability to vividly
elaborate or add details to ideas, use vivid vocabulary)
4. flexibility (i.e. the variety of ideas)
Typical lessons in Creative Thinking
You can address creativity through oral, written and hands-on activities.
Following are some examples to get you started. We strongly suggest that
you do activities for Fluency, Originality and Elaboration (FOE) only to
begin with. Marking for flexibility is time-consuming and is much more enjoyable
if addressed separately. You will find that once your students have spent
some time on FOE activities and are producing large quantities of quality
responses, you will want to move on to something new. Flexibility produces
a very enjoyable next step!
Check out
the following examples of ready-to go creative thinking activities.
Do print them out and try them out with your students to see how they
benefit from this type of activity (the only thing missing is the evaluation
sheet which is provided in the actual book!):
printable
free sample from Creativity Starters
printable
free sample from Creativity Extenders
printable
free sample from Design It
printable
free sample from Brain Busters
Here's a creative thinking activity that kids just love.
Besides offering a creative thinking outlet, this activity also offers CHOICE and a challenge if the child wishes:
1. Click on the image below (or drag it to your desktop) to enlarge it, and print a copy. Cut off the sample at top right so your child doesn't see it!
2. Provide your child with scissors, coloured felts/markers, glue and a sheet of white paper.
3. No time limit!
___________
Activity Instructions:
Use at least 3 of the shapes to make a picture of an object or scene.
You can roughly cut out the squares and arrange them on your paper, and when you're satisfied, glue them into place. Then draw on and around them to make them part of your picture.
You can even put them UNDER your paper, and trace over them.
When you've finished your picture, use a magic marker to TRACE OVER the shapes so that they can clearly be seen in your picture. Remember to give it a title and perhaps a description!
CHALLENGES:
CHALLENGE #1
If you like a challenge, then see if you can use ALL FOUR of the shapes in the same picture.
CHALLENGE #2
For an even harder challenge, see if you can use all 4 shapes, AND make your picture of only one object.
Pretty amazing how your creative mind works, isn't it?
Creativity Challenge #1
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The above is an excerpt from the book "How
To Teach Thinking Skills" by Jean Edwards - available from ThinkShop.
a) More resource ideas in our CREATIVE THINKING section
b) More samples and ready-to-go ideas for you HERE on Jean's blog!
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