10 HANDS-ON EXERCISES TO SPARK STUDENT CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION Charles M. Wood, PhD UNIVERSITY OF TULSA Abstract Ten theoretically-based exercises are described in order to help instructors expand students’ creative capacity and encourage the development of innovations. Some projects have made the blog, others are favorites from other bloggers, and some are just simple creative prompts and activities you can set-up in a matter of minutes. Instead of being taught to reiterate what was learned, students learn to develop their ability to find various solutions to a problem. Email tammy@housingaforest.com if you want to pin to this board. Sometimes, it is. 2. Now, how they have all that energy at the end of a long school day and after school activities, I don’t know, but that’s part of the fun. These creative writing activities for elementary students are all about inspiring your kids to think big—and dream bigger. The following interactive student activities are three of the most effective ways to encourage more speech in your classroom. When you just can’t seem to figure out what you need to figure out, here are 13 creativity exercises that make sense for knowledge workers. Every Friday afternoon, the Product Experience team at Foursquare gets together and ends the week with a creative exercise. You can do it in just a few minutes at a time. Creative thinking skills can be developed and mastered. These are my versions of various exercises that have been passed down from one creative generation to another. They are guided and specific, but my students get a chance to be creative and have a little fun in the process! Are you ready to help your class achieve its full potential? This post contains affiliate links to products I love and recommend to my readers. If you get lost in your story and keep writing for hours, that’s great too. “I had seven groups of students, and got seven different ways to measure inebriation,” he says. Actually, this game is quite simple. Here is a collection of 80+ EASY CREATIVE PROJECTS FOR KIDS we have tried over the years. Great creative writing teachers are very passionate about literature, and because of them many of their students will continue to pursue creative writing outside of school. 2. 5 Creative Response to Reading Activities. BOOKSNAPS. You can try some creative ways to make writing pleasant and enjoyable. Creative thinking can be taught with practice and typically produces something unique, original, and fresh. Bill Wallace, a high school science teacher, asked his students to design experiments meant to investigate how sensitive fruit flies are to alcohol. 1 Learn specific strategies for developing your students’ creative abilities . After teaching the theory and letting your students make some exercises, you make some time to do a self assessment with your students. Then, we challenged our co-founders, John Feustel and Justin Anthony to complete them. 5 Creativity Activities to Try with Your Students 1. Creativity is thinking outside the box. 8 Creative Figurative Language Activities for Review Equipping students with the ability to properly locate, analyze, and evaluate the use of figurative language has many benefits. And in this blog post I’ll take you through some activities you can try out with the Adobe Spark tools. How can we encourage innovation and creativity in ourselves and our students? Click here to download your own copy for free! All the ideas are kid tested & approved! They learn how to challenge problems and find innovative solutions. Writing Activity #1: Seeking Adventure . Give each pair of students enough time so they can reach a proper conclusion, and permit the kids to share their conclusion in their voice. Students described these activities as a “high yield investment”; spending an hour each day in these activities improved their entire day (Schure et al., 2008). The PX team is a big mash-up of visual designers, UX, copy, research, and… Introduction Creative processes and ideation play a crucial role in the development of innovations. Check your understanding of creativity with an interactive quiz and printable worksheet. To make things easier, we’ve sorted these activities based on whether they work best for groups or one-on-one teaching. 2 Discover ways to help your students brainstorm, develop problem-solving skills, and generate new ideas . I use these engaging goal setting one pager activities to help my students craft these goals. Your students are reading. 2 PD Hours. Give your learners some sample ads as well as typical expressions that are used in advertising, and then ask the learners to create their own ads. Creative exercises to boost your creativity and brainstorm new ideas with design thinking, writing & drawing exercises. You can bring some familiar objects to the classroom and tell the learners to advertise them. Things don't always turn out the way you planned. In short, they learn faster and more effectively. They can use it to persevere when they face difficulties and solve problems in unusual ways. 1. Think, pair and share. Writing games need not be all plain, boring or intense. 1972), disabled students (Jaben, 1983, 1985a), athletes (Kovac, 1998), art students (Rump, 1982), science stu-dents (McCormack, 1971, 1974), and engineering stu- dents (Clapham & Schuster, 1992). Although students are participating in the same activity, the process of divergent thinking will emerge because none of the solutions will be the same. This article includes some ideas to get your students’ creative juices flowing – no matter which subject you teach. 3 Explore how to help students push beyond their first ideas and create a framework for creative work. The student also recognizes areas where new learnings must be acquired in order to understand or address the problem. Creativity is improvisation. In a creative classroom, students can express themselves fully. 1. I prefer the exercises that 1) involve using your camera, 2) are less assignment-based, and 3) are fun! There are lots of ways that students can capture things that they are grateful for. Fun Writing Games For Kids . The camouflage drawing challenge is a great exercise to foster creativity. Also, review under, over, beneath, above, etc if needed. Set a problem or a question around a certain topic, and pair up your students. Not only will it create stronger, more discerning readers; those enlightened readers will in turn be able to use the literary devices they have mastered in their own writing. We put together a few creativity exercises to get your imagination activated. Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube. What a great life skill and habit to develop with our students! Read on for some creative writing exercises for high school aged students. Mindful eating. There are also some writing activities for kids who are embarking on the journey of learning. 1. Creative education is when students are able to use imagination and critical thinking to create new and meaningful forms of ideas where they can take risks, be independent and flexible. Some of the preschools, day care centers, schools can help your kids to exercise them, but never forget that the best teaching method – is your own example! Camouflage Drawing Challenge . When a student is asked to "invent" a solution to a problem, the student must draw upon previous knowledge, skills, creativity, and experience. Those responses don’t always have to be formal, though. These exercises can also help writers unleash their creativity and break ingrained writing reflexes. There’s no better writing fodder for elementary students than the prospect of adventure. First, ensure students know direction words like right, left, turn, go straight, etc. See more ideas about activities for kids, creative activities for kids, creative activities. Merlo, a computer science teacher, says that interactive classroom activities are not new to students, and one main reason why teachers have trouble connecting is that they fail to adapt to their students’ perspective. If I have reproduced a favorite, I apologize in advance for the inability to credit the original artist/inventor of the exercise. Everything doesn't always have to be black and white. Ask your students to think about how they feel they are doing on the lesson material and let them raise one of the three cards. Creative people have a great skill to keep them interested and engaged in life. Hooray! In this post, MomJunction shares 15 best writing games and activities for kids to learn while having some fun. 7 Creative English Activities to Inspire Your Teenage Students Activity planning for teenagers can be a challenge. But in some subjects, teaching creativity may seem beyond your reach as a teacher. With this in mind, I’ve come up with a list of imaginative exercises modified for us office-types. Let's see how they did.