Creativity and Critical Thinking
Strategies for Developing Creativity and Critical Thinking
Strategies for Developing Creativity
Fletcher, T. S. (2011). Creative thinking in schools: Finding the "Just Right" challenge for students. Gifted Child Today, 34(2), 37-42.
Help students find flow.
Encourage students to recognize their own responses to stress or boredom related to projects to enable them to plan, anticipate,and deal with these responses.
Give students the tools they need to generate lots of work.
Consider investing in various types of programs and resources beyond the normal to serve as enhancers to your students' imagination and ideas.
Foster an environment that encourages risk taking and preserves integrity if efforts fail.
Engage students in activities that allow them to feel safe if they fail. Encourage the generation of a number of solutions or ideas for a problem instead of too much focus on detail.
Provide hands-off leadership that is consistent and predictable.
Allow students to design rubrics to evaluate their work, while continuing to maintain predictable expectations, clearly understood guidelines, and attainable goals.
Honor and nurture individual differences.
Be sure to model your own thinking process and decision making. If you don't feel confident in a particular task, invite someone into your classroom who is.
http://www.criticalthinking.net/howteach.html
Provide for many guided opportunities in varied contexts.
Students should get the opportunity to practice critical thinking in application, such as in realistic situations what they see as significant.
Teach for the transfer of critical thinking principles to everyday life and other subjects.
Call students' attention to how the critical thinking principles apply in a transfer situation. Allow students to practice transfer applications.
Ask the question, "Why?"
Ask "why" when you are unsure of yourself, or are trying to find out what they mean. Another question may be, "Would you say a little more about that?"
Urge students to be reflective.
Encourage them to stop and think, instead of making quick judgements, or accepting the first idea that comes into their heads.
Encourage the idea of alternatives.
Emphasize alertness for alternative hypotheses, conclusions, explanations, sources of evidence, points of view, plans, etc.
Ideas and Thoughts from my Group Members
Be patient.
Don't always jump in too soon to help. Allow students to figure out the best solution as needed.
Compare and contrast.
Allow students to compare and contrast the topic and explain the significance of the differences.