Pedagogical Strategies:
A. Creative Thinking
1. Brainstorm, Reverse BS: Top Ten Lists
2. Simulations, Creativity License Cards, Six Hats
3. Wet Inking, Freewriting, or
Diaries
4. Role Plays & Assigning Thinking Roles
5. Forced Wrap Arounds
6. Semantic Webbing or Mapping
7. Idea-Spurring Questions, Think Sheets
8. Metaphors, What Ifs, Analogies
9. Checkerboarding, Attribute
Listing
10. Exploration and Web Link Suggestions
Activities—Creativity Tasks
For example:
Attribute
Listing, Modification, and Transformation (Davis pp. 178-186)
a. Attribute Webbing/Listing: "XYZ" shapes, colors,
sizes, purpose, numbering.
b. Attribute Modification: "XYZ"--after listing
attributes, think of ways to improve each.
c. Alternative Uses: Uses for "XYZ" for this class
or for teaching in general.
(find the second best or third best
suggestion)
d. Attribute Transferring: "XYZ"--transfer ideas
from one context to the next.
(with idea spurring questions--p.
80;
(What else is this like?
What have others done? What else
is this like? What could we copy? What has worked before?)
(What can we borrow from a carnival, funeral parlor, track
meet, wild west)
e. Idea Spurring Questions: how MAXimize,
MAGnify, arrangeRE,
combine-adapt, subtutesti,
EEEXXXAAGGGGGEEERRRAAATTTEEE, add new twist, modifie,
ChAnGe
Rearrange
facts/what if (Pick one and write
for a minute):
1. What-if no one
studied creativity and we had no understanding of creative processes?
2. What-if no one
assessed creativity? There were no cr measures or researchers?
3. Just suppose you
were in charge of curriculum? How would
you address cr?
4. What if we had
standardized creativity or coop. learning tests in
5. What-if creative
thinking was more prevalent in dogs than human beings?
6. If people didn't
need to sleep, would we be more creative in morning or at night?
7. Suppose the
Japanese were well known for creativity and creativity assessment?
8. What-if more
creative people lived 20 years longer than non less
creative?
9. What-if in 20
years, creativity became equated with intelligence?
10. What would
teaching creative thinking be like if we lived life in reverse...???
11. Just suppose
Which items would you like on your teacher report card?
12. Just suppose
teachers were asked to assess the level of student thinking?
Select questions that could be added to a student report card.
What would teaching be like?
What would learning be like?
Flexibility/Breaking
Set Activity
a. New Perspectives, Metaphoric Thkg,
Analogies, Synectics, Breaking Set, Imagery,
Aesthetics,
Finding New
Patterns, Juxtaposing Ideas, Seeing Functional Fixity, etc...
(See: Word games; Which one is different; Nine dots; Flying
Pig; Davis pp. 125 & 133); Synectics: Direct,
Personal, and Fantasy Analogies; Concealed colors, sentences/words; 13 original
colonies