Creative Thinking

I had the opportunity to work towards my gifted endorsement during the 2010-2011 school year.  I'm currently only halfway finished with the program, but I can already say that it has been a wonderful learning experience.  At first I was hesitant to begin the program, because I knew that there would be a considerable amount of work involved in the endorsement program, and I'm not the official "gifted teacher" at my school.  However, I have always believed that any teacher who teaches gifted students is a gifted teacher, and I wanted to learn new strategies to motivate and engage my gifted and talented students.   It has been so interesting to learn about the characteristics and needs of gifted children. 

One of the topics that has really intrigued me was developing creativity in our students.  I've never thought of creativity as something that could be taught, but I've been able to learn that there are strategies to develop creativity in all students, not just the gifted.  The most important strategy was to get students used to thinking about things in a new context and to learn to question their own thinking.  I used the creative thinking techniques to create monthly creative thinking booklets for my students.  I had a feeling that my students would enjoy working in their books each day, but after beginning the books I was shocked just how my students loved working in their books.  I would have my students write in their books for about 10 minutes a day, and then I would allow students to share what the wrote.  This quickly become our favorite part of the day.  I was able to finish my February booklet and wanted to share some of the creative thinking activities.

 

There are 15 pages in the book, and each month's book contains holidays and themes that correlate with the month.  For example, in the February book there are questions with a theme of Valentine's Day, President's Day, Groundhog's Day, and more.

Link to the Creative Thinking Activities