Creativity & Complex Thinking
Establishing a Classroom Environment
Are happy people more creative?
What does creativity require?
Is creativity obvious?
Five Days a Week of Tips & Techniques Offered by teachers like...
Lisa Graziano
1. Interview Panel or Talk Show
Cast some students as interviewers who generate questions for the visiting "guests" and cast other classmates as famous individuals in history, scientists, artists, mathematicians, athletes, musicians, etc. give students time to research and role- play as these individuals in the format of a panel discussion or as a talk show.
2. Clock Buddies
Use the face of a clock and have students sign up with different classmates for "appointments" on each hour of the clock. With this strategy you can pair students quickly and randomly for brief exchanges, peer feedback, editing etc. by simply saying meet with your "six oclock appointment."
Clock Buddies Tool: Generate Templates or PDF for Printing
3. Harkness Roundtable Discussions
Assign a common read, article, political cartoon or piece of music for all students to examine about a topic you are studying. Pose a discussion question for the next class and require claims to be defended utilizing one or more sources. Arrange students in circle for discussion. See Harkness Discussion Rubric below.
4. Twiddla & 5. Rewordify
Use Rewordify to differentiate the complexity of text then group students with the "just right" reading level of an article. Create tiered groups of complexity and let students use an online collaboration tool like Twiddla to mark up the text with readers notes, highlight, ask questions and make comments.
6. Sketch Note A Quote
Teach student visual note making and learning techniques that use graphic arts and drawing. Start with a quote, brainstorm image ideas. Make a bulleted list of what is significant about the context of the quote and who said it.
IDEA 7. is called 1-3-6 with a video below for more details!
Individual thinking first, then in groups of three to share and collaborate. Then combine with another three to compare and contrast ideas. Provide graphic organizers for a student recorders to outline the thinking and discussion for groups of 3 and groups of 6.
(student recorder role is sometimes a good task for a student who is unprepared or has been absent or who needs to share the stage!)
Diversity and volume produce greater chances of creative outcomes.
"Give students the gift of more time by freeing them from busy work."
8. "VIZ Thinking" Graphic Facilitation - Time to Go Beyond the Quote!
Teach students that everyone can draw and use visuals to outline key points, processes, cause and effect relationships and more! The video tools below will blow your mind with images that bring the complex into learnable and memorable visuals!
9. Interactive Timelines
Go beyond the linear timeline and integrate visuals, audio, data, and maps! This allows for the application of multimedia skills and peer interactivity when reviewing one another's culminating projects. Synthesise the important turning points, individuals and discoveries from an era!
10. Retrospectives in Music
Listen to music from an era that presents two different moods, themes or perspectives.
Examples : WWI "I Didn't Raise my Son to be a Soldier" versus Cohen's "Over There"
Great Depression: "Brother Can You Spare A Dime" versus Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" Have students in small groups brainstorm messages and themes, perspectives. Then select five to ten images from the era that represent the themes, events, moods of the musical perspective.