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Allow students to inquire about topics that interest them.

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Allow students to inquire about topics that interest them.

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Push students to think more deeply by asking guiding questions and provide resources to help them independently find answers.  This article has some great ideas:  

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Push students to think more deeply by asking guiding questions and provide resources to help them independently find answers.  This article has some great ideas:  

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Have a “quescussion.’  Ask a guiding question and students must then come up with additional questions that relate to and build upon the topic, developing their critical thinking skills. NOTE:  students are not allowed to answer questions during the quescussion, only develop new questions.

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Have a “quescussion.’  Ask a guiding question and students must then come up with additional questions that relate to and build upon the topic, developing their critical thinking skills. NOTE:  students are not allowed to answer questions during the quescussion, only develop new questions.

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Form collaborative groups, allowing students to not only learn to work together and communicate effectively, but also gain a better understanding of what they are learning and improve their critical thinking skills through flexible collaboration.

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Form collaborative groups, allowing students to not only learn to work together and communicate effectively, but also gain a better understanding of what they are learning and improve their critical thinking skills through flexible collaboration.

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Develop an imagination mindset so that students become motivated to learn, look at challenges creatively, and don’t see failing as an obstacle, but rather learn how to fail forward so that they learn from their mistakes.

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Develop an imagination mindset so that students become motivated to learn, look at challenges creatively, and don’t see failing as an obstacle, but rather learn how to fail forward so that they learn from their mistakes.

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Make learning visible.  Build in visualization activities and have students make images in their minds.  Then, as students share their images, they will begin to understand the many perspectives each member of the class has on the same topic.

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Make learning visible.  Build in visualization activities and have students make images in their minds.  Then, as students share their images, they will begin to understand the many perspectives each member of the class has on the same topic.

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Try a socratic seminar and provide a list of potential questions.

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Try a socratic seminar and provide a list of potential questions.

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Post Visuals in the room  of a creative process that they can follow. 

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Post Visuals in the room  of a creative process that they can follow. 

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Display a Growth Mindset poster and reference it when students feel negative.

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Display a Growth Mindset poster and reference it when students feel negative.

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You could have students do a similar brainstorming activity just like this one we are doing. They could even use Padlet. Here is a visual for a Divergent thinking;

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You could have students do a similar brainstorming activity just like this one we are doing. They could even use Padlet. Here is a visual for a Divergent thinking;

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Try a fun re-mix activity. It gives students a starting point that they can build on. Attached is an article that has a list of Music Tech activities. #8 is the re-mix that sounds cool. 

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Try a fun re-mix activity. It gives students a starting point that they can build on. Attached is an article that has a list of Music Tech activities. #8 is the re-mix that sounds cool. 

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Question: What type of music technology activities can I do with my middle school students?

This question has been popping up a bit lately on Facebook and in my emails. Here are a few engaging, fun and creative music tech projects that are perfect for middle school students in years 5-9.

1. Funny Voices

Students record themselves telling a story (part of a fairytale or Dr Seuss story works well) in software such as GarageBand, Mixcraft, Soundation or Audacity and then edit their recorded narration to create "funny voices" appropriate to the story. Select a section of the recorded narration (the WAV form) and apply preset effects in the software. Try creating a scary ogre, a high-pitched chipmunk voice, robots, aliens or a Darth Vader effect.

2. Guess My SFX Story

Students can work in groups to plan a short story - 3 sentences will do - and work out how they can tell the story with sound effects only. Record the sound effects and piece them together in the right order in your favourite audio recording/editing software. Other students try to guess the story by listening to the sequence of sound effects.

3. Rap My Name

Students write a 4-measure rap about themselves, based on a provided structure and then record a rhythmic backing to go with the rap. They can record their rap and the backing on laptop or iPad. Full instructions for this lesson can be found here.

4. Transform The Blues

If you've been teaching your students the 12 bar blues, get them to record the blues chord sequence in a different style in your favourite recording/sequencing software. This can be as simple as recording the basic 12-bar pattern on a guitar or keyboard software instrument and then adding an existing drum loop in an unexpected, non-blues style - like dubstep, trap, or a latin style. They can then improvise a blues melody over the top of their blues accompaniment. I have iPad instructions for a project like this here, but they could also be adapted for desktop software.

5. Movie Soundtracks

Find a short video (one minute or less is ideal) and ask students to synchronise sound to visuals. They can add sound effects to match action on-screen and then create mood music to match the scene. Software like GarageBand or Mixcraft is ideal since it allows you to import a video and create the soundtrack while watching the video. Tip: if you're short on class time, students can choose pre-made loops instead of creating the music from scratch.

6. Video Game Composer

Along the lines of creating a movie soundtrack, students can compose music that matches different styles or mood or video games. Give students a choice of game styles and ask them to compose music that will evoke an atmosphere for the player. Style examples might include happy and light music for a light-hearted platform game, battle music for a war game, fast-paced music for a car-chase game and so on.

7. Introducing Remixing - A Quick Start

Incredibox is a free interactive website. It's lots of fun and great to use as an introduction to arranging or remixing. Students can plan a "performance" of the Incredibox dudes which demonstrates a variety of arranging decisions. They can then record their remix using by clicking the record button at top left. This blog post walks you through the basics.

8. The Mystery Remix

Choose a well-known pop song with a simple chord progression (but don't tell the students what it is!). Songs with cyclical chord progressions work well - I have some listed on my Pinterest account

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10 Music Tech Ideas for the Middle School

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This question has been popping up a bit lately on Facebook and in my emails. Here are a few engaging, fun and creative music tech projects that are perfect for middle school students in years 5-9.

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Start out the week/unit with an over-aching question on the board.

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Start out the week/unit with an over-aching question on the board.

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Reverse the question: Students pose their problem by first tapping into their own wishes and goals that might have real-life results or be largely theoretical and in end in the modeling stages. (see strategy#1 attached) 

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Reverse the question: Students pose their problem by first tapping into their own wishes and goals that might have real-life results or be largely theoretical and in end in the modeling stages. (see strategy#1 attached) 

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Fuel Creativity in the Classroom With Divergent Thinking

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Teachers can inspire outside-the-box thinking for students by using problem-based learning, art, music, and inquiry-based feedback.

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I love how so many of these ideas are truly about various methods of running a discussion ... there are many ways, you have to find the one that you're comfortable with and then work with your students on the skills necessary ... Plus you have many other suggestions of how to support the discussion.

Thanks.

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Although educators claim to value creativity, they don't always prioritize it.

Teachers often have biases against creative students, fearing that creativity in the classroom will be disruptive. They devalue creative personality attributes such as risk taking, impulsivity and independence. They inhibit creativity by focusing on the reproduction of knowledge and obedience in class.

Why the disconnect between educators' official stance toward creativity, and what actually happens in school?

How can teachers nurture creativity in the classroom in an era of rapid technological change, when human innovation is needed more than ever and children are more distracted and hyper-stimulated?

These are some of the questions we ask in my research lab at the Okanagan campus of the University of British Columbia. We study the creative process, as well as how ideas evolve over time and across societies. I've written almost 200 scholarly papers and book chapters on creativity, and lectured on it worldwide. My research involves both computational models and studies with human participants. I also write fiction, compose music for the piano and do freestyle dance.

What is creativity?

Although creativity is often defined in terms of new and useful products, I believe it makes more sense to define it in terms of processes. Specifically, creativity involves cognitive processes that transform one's understanding of, or relationship to, the world.

(Unsplash/Chris Barbalis), CC BY

There may be adaptive value to the seemingly mixed messages that teachers send about creativity. Creativity is the novelty-generating component of cultural evolution. As in any kind of evolutionary process, novelty must be balanced by preservation.

In biological evolution, the novelty-generating components are genetic mutation and recombination, and the novelty-preserving components include the survival and reproduction of "fit" individuals. In cultural evolution, the novelty-generating component is creativity, and the novelty-preserving components include imitation and other forms of social learning.

It isn't actually necessary for everyone to be creative for the benefits of creativity to be felt by all. We can reap the rewards of the creative person's ideas by copying them, buying from them or simply admiring them. Few of us can build a computer or write a symphony, but they are ours to use and enjoy nevertheless.

Inventor or imitator?

There are also drawbacks to creativity. Sure, creative people solve problems, crack jokes, invent stuff; they make the world pretty and interesting and fun. But generating creative ideas is time-consuming. A creative solution to one problem often generates other problems, or has unexpected negative side effects.

Creativity is correlated with rule bending, law breaking, social unrest, aggression, group conflict and dishonesty. Creative people often direct their nurturing energy towards ideas rather than relationships, and may be viewed as aloof, arrogant, competitive, hostile, independent or unfriendly.

(Shutterstock)

Also, if I'm wrapped up in my own creative reverie, I may fail to notice that someone else has already solved the problem I'm working on. In an agent-based computational model of cultural evolution, in which artificial neural network-based agents invent and imitate ideas, the society's ideas evolve most quickly when there is a good mix of creative "inventors" and conforming "imitators." Too many creative agents and the collective suffers. They are like holes in the fabric of society, fixated on their own (potentially inferior) ideas, rather than propagating proven effective ideas.

Of course, a computational model of this sort is highly artificial. The results of such simulations must be taken with a grain of salt. However, they suggest an adaptive value to the mixed signals teachers send about creativity. A society thrives when some individuals create and others preserve their best ideas.

This also makes sense given how creative people encode and process information. Creative people tend to encode episodes of experience in much more detail than is actually needed. This has drawbacks: Each episode takes up more memory space and has a richer network of associations. Some of these associations will be spurious. On the bright side, some may lead to new ideas that are useful or aesthetically pleasing.

So, there's a trade-off to peppering the world with creative minds. They may fail to see the forest for the trees but they may produce the next Mona Lisa.

Innovation might keep us afloat

So will society naturally self-organize into creators and conformers? Should we avoid trying to enhance creativity in the classroom?

The answer is: No! The pace of cultural change is accelerating more quickly than ever before. In some biological systems, when the environment is changing quickly, the mutation rate goes up. Similarly, in times of change we need to bump up creativity levels - to generate the innovative ideas that will keep us afloat.

This is particularly important now. In our high-stimulation environment, children spend so much time processing new stimuli that there is less time to "go deep" with the stimuli they've already encountered. There is less time for thinking about ideas and situations from different perspectives, such that their ideas become more interconnected and their mental models of understanding become more integrated.

This "going deep" process has been modeled computationally using a program called Deep Dream, a variation on the machine learning technique "Deep Learning" and used to generate images such as the ones in the figure below.

Author provided (No reuse)

The images show how an input is subjected to different kinds of processing at different levels, in the same way that our minds gain a deeper understanding of something by looking at it from different perspectives. It is this kind of deep processing and the resulting integrated webs of understanding that make the crucial connections that lead to important advances and innovations.

Cultivating creativity in the classroom

So the obvious next question is: How can creativity be cultivated in the classroom? It turns out there are lots of ways! Here are three key ways in which teachers can begin:

1. Focus less on the reproduction of information and more on critical thinking and problem solving.

2. Curate activities that transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries, such as by painting murals that depict biological food chains, or acting out plays about historical events, or writing poems about the cosmos. After all, the world doesn't come carved up into different subject areas. Our culture tells us these disciplinary boundaries are real and our thinking becomes trapped in them.

3. Pose questions and challenges, and follow up with opportunities for solitude and reflection. This provides time and space to foster the forging of new connections that is so vital to creativity.

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What creativity really is - and why schools need it

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Although educators claim to value creativity, they don't always prioritize it. Teachers often have biases against creative students, fearing that creativity in the classroom will be disruptive. They devalue creative personality attributes such as risk taking, impulsivity and independence. They inhibit creativity by focusing on the reproduction of knowledge and obedience in class.

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Many people assume that creativity is an inborn talent that their kids either do or do not have: just as all children are not equally intelligent, all children are not equally creative. But actually, creativity is more skill than inborn talent, and it is a skill parents can help their kids develop.
Because it is a key to success in nearly everything we do, creativity is a key component of health and happiness and a core skill to practice with kids. Creativity is not limited to artistic and musical expression-it is also essential for science, math, and even social and emotional intelligence. Creative people are more flexible and better problem solvers, which makes them more able to adapt to technological advances and deal with change-as well as take advantage of new opportunities.

Many researchers believe we have fundamentally changed the experience of childhood in such a way that impairs creative development. Toy and entertainment companies feed kids an endless stream of prefab characters, images, props and plot-lines that allow children to put their imaginations to rest. Children no longer need to imagine a stick is a sword in a game or story they've imagined: they can play Star Wars with a specific light-saber in costumes designed for the specific role they are playing.

Here are some ideas for fostering creativity in your kids:

1. Provide the resources they need for creative expression. The key resource here is time. Kids need a lot of time for unstructured, child-directed, imaginative play -unencumbered by adult direction, and that doesn't depend on a lot of commercial stuff (see this post about unstructured play).

Space is also a resource your kids need. Unless you don't mind creative messes everywhere, give them a specific place where they can make a mess, like room in your attic for dress-up, a place in the garage for painting, or a corner in your family room for Legos.

Next time someone asks for a gift suggestion for your kids, ask for things like art supplies, cheap cameras, costume components, building materials. Put these in easy-to-deal-with bins that your kids can manage.

2. Make your home a Petri dish for creativity. In addition to creative spaces, you need to foster a creative atmosphere.

Solicit a high volume of different ideas, but resist the urge to evaluate the ideas your kids come up with. At dinnertime, for example, you could brainstorm activities for the upcoming weekend, encouraging the kids to come up with things they've never done before. Don't point out which ideas aren't possible, and don't decide which ideas are best. The focus of creative activities should be on process: generating (vs. evaluating) new ideas.

Encourage kids to make mistakes and fail. Yes, fail - kids who are afraid of failure and judgment will curb their own creative thought. Share the mistakes you've made recently, so they get the idea that it is okay to flub up. Laughing at yourself when you blow it is a happiness habit.

Celebrate innovation and creativity. Cover your walls with art and other evidence of creative expression. Tell your kids all about your favorite artists, musicians, and scientists. Share your passion for architecture or photography or that new band you want to listen to all the time. Embrace new technologies like Twitter so your kids grow to find change exciting, not over-whelming or intimidating.

3. Allow kids the freedom and autonomy to explore their ideas and do what they want. Don't be so bossy. (If that isn't the pot calling the kettle black, who knows what is.) Stop living in fear that they are going to be kidnapped or not get into a great college. Statistically, the odds are very low that they'll be kidnapped, and I'm here to tell you that I'm not a happier person because I went to an Ivy League school.

External constraints-making them color within the lines, so to speak-can reduce flexibility in thinking. In one study, just demonstrating how to put together a model reduced the creative ways that kids accomplished this task.

4. Encourage children to read for pleasure and participate in the arts. Limit TV and other screen time in order to make room for creative activities like rehearsing a play, learning to draw, reading every book written by a favorite author.

5. Give children the opportunity to express "divergent thought." Let them disagree with you. Encourage them to find more than one route to a solution, and more than one solution to a problem. When they successfully solve a problem, ask them to solve it again but to find a new way to do it (same solution, different route). Then ask them to come up with more solutions to the same problem.

6. Don't reward children for exhibiting creativity: incentives interfere with the creative process, reducing the quality of their responses and the flexibility of their thought.

Allow children to develop mastery of creative activities that they are intrinsically motivated to do, rather than trying to motivate them with rewards and incentives. Instead of rewarding a child for practicing the piano, for example, allow her to do something she enjoys more - maybe sit at her desk and draw or take a science class.

7. Try to stop caring what your kids achieve. Emphasize process rather than product. One way you can do this is by asking questions about the process - Did you have fun? Are you finished? What did you like about that activity?

Related posts:

© 2008 Christine Carter, Ph.D.

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7 Ways to Foster Creativity in Your Kids

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Many people assume that creativity is an inborn talent that their kids either do or do not have: just as all children are not equally intelligent, all children are not equally creative. But actually, creativity is more skill than inborn talent, and it is a skill parents can help their kids develop.

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Naturing creativity in children is important in their development

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Naturing creativity in children is important in their development

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Synopsis

Whether you're a teacher or parent looking to foster creativity in children, finding time to indulge curiosity is essential. That's easier said than done in today's demanding climate, with such high premiums placed on immediate achievement and rapid skill acquisition. Have no fear! This article is all about finding space for the joy and magic of curiosity "in the cracks" of modern life, whether you're looking to take on a year long project or only have five minutes a week to spare.

People get sweaty palms for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes they get them before a first date with a long time crush or because an important exam or meeting is fast approaching. Teenaged Albert Einstein used to get sweaty palms because he could not reconcile his daydream of riding alongside a light beam with the then current descriptions of the physical properties of light. Make no mistake; it was a burning curiosity about a seemingly nonsensical, teenaged fantasy that pulled Einstein through decades of study and resulted in unrivaled leaps of understanding about the universe. Einstein's mathematical expertise and critical thinking skills (i.e., inbox thinking) were integral ingredients to his life's work, but he would have never developed them if the way had not been lit by spark of curiosity (i.e., outbox thinking). Curiosity is the spontaneous and free desire to learn that all innovators must possess. There are plenty of deficits an innovator can overcome, but this desire is not one of them. If we want children to grow into productive and happy innovators, we must ensure they learn to be as curious as Albert was.

The good news is children are born curious. The bad news is curiosity is a delicate thing. It requires safety and surety, but it also requires access to novelty and uncertainty. More than anything, it requires patience and an appetite for seemingly useless whimsy. Because American schools are increasingly under pressure to meet yearly benchmarks through standardized testing, they have little tolerance (much less any appetite) for the sprawling playground that curiosity calls home. Because high-stakes testing demands the same goal for all students (to demonstrate proficiency on a high-stakes test) and exacts such a price for failure (school funding, teacher employment/rating, student promotion), teachers are forced to struggle against the natural curiosity of their students. They must discourage the "distractions" of deviation, individuality, and original thought because students must use standardized response templates to progress in their educational careers. Our students are developing terrible Pavlovian responses, shuddering with boredom and fear at the mere thought of books, calculators, and classrooms rather than embracing them tools as the vessels of ideas, freedom, and exploration which they naturally are.

Don't despair! If you're a teacher or a parent who wishes to foster creativity in children, there is hope. While we wait for policy changes to free the school curriculums from the overwhelming wall of obligations high-stakes testing brings, we can grow curiosity in the cracks. Like a lotus flower in the mud, daffodils sprouting up from the spaces in a sidewalk, or creeping vines on the façade of a building, curiosity can flourish in the unlikeliest of places, and with less of a commitment than you thought. The following question answering strategies and activities are not content specific. They are designed to foster a love of learning in children and to give them the skills to indulge their curiosity.
Before answering children's questions, help children develop a lifelong passion for learning and empower themselves and their curiosity in self-directed exploration by:

Establishing close relationships through accommodating and adapting to their needs (securely attached children develop the courage to explore the new instead of clinging to the known)

Cultivating safe and free climates for curious exploration that:

Allows children's curiosity to determine the pace and direction of learning instead over structuring and scheduling with a focus on rote informationon

Follows children's interests (e.g., weather, bugs, dinosaurs, etc.)

Promotes, sparks, and provokes curious minds; model attentive, observant, and curious behavior

Avoids simply accepting and memorizing facts

Provides time for exploration, questions, and risk-taking

Recognizes and rewards those who ask questions, learn, grow and are open and responsive to new ideas, improvement, and change

Delays judgment about good or bad when children present new ideas; respond positively, optimistically and explore further

Commits time for reflection and discourse, and help children understand the positive impact of their questions and curiosities

Provides non-structured, self-directed experimenting with the complex, real world through:

Learning by doing, building, interviewing, storytelling, or cooking

Promoting after school clubs and electives

Allotting some time (even if it's only 20 or 30 minutes a week) for students' exploration through activities (e.g., free reading, visits to kids' museums, show and tell, etc.)

Providing examples, lessons, and environments to foster a love of learning and reading such as:

Share your love of learning with children (e.g., self-teaching, self-training, etc.).

Discuss short- and long-term educational planning with children, emphasizing the importance of learning, not only for academic or professional success, but also for its own sake-for the joy of learning (see small commitment #1 and both medium commitments on teacher activity list)

Sharing your love of science such as:

Share the fun parts while reading a science book

Demonstrate scientific principles in person (reactions, movements, etc.) whenever it's safe and feasible

Connect science topics to children's everyday life

Share stories about science history and the people behind it

Exploring the outdoors and looking for lives (animals, birds, butterflies, plants, bugs, etc.) those from science books and learn about them by asking questions such as:

What do you see?

What do you think they are doing?

What is happening here?

What else might be affected by this?

What would happen if they don't?

How can we find out more?

What are similarities and differences between them and people?

Planning out specific times and resources to support the follow up to student questions through:

A day-long field trip including:

At the library or in the computer lab researching the answers to questions generated

An afternoon with an expert

A morning outdoors

Visiting the same place a second time rewards curiosity by allowing students the satisfaction of testing their hypotheses after answers to questions have sought out

Exploring without store-bought toys:

Experiment with ingredients in the kitchen

Make ice cream and find out what rock salt does

Grow plants by planting seeds (in clear cups to watch the roots growing), and watch the life cycle of the plants daily

Collect natural objects (e.g., leaves, shells, rocks, fossils) and classify them by similarities and differences (in shapes, sizes, colors, etc.)

Look at things under a magnifying glass or a microscope (e.g., water from a pond, flower petals or leaves, fingers, etc.) and find similarities and differences

Visit zoos, aquariums, museums, technology centers, and give plenty of time to learn about different types of animals or things, asking questions about them

When children ask DIFFICULT questions, answer them with great care following the process below:

1. Don't dismiss, yell, freak out, dodge, or overreact to any questions.

2. Express happiness they asked such questions.

3. Delve deeper into what's going on in their head. Find out what prompted such questions and, to respond them more accurately, ask them to elaborate the questions further such as:

1. Why do you ask?

2. What does it mean to you?

3. What do you know or think about it?

4. What are you worried about?

4. Make the questions opportunities to chat with them.

5. Be sensitive to what they think or feel and why; validate their thoughts or emotions.

6. When you don't know the answer, say I don't know. How could we find the answer? Your approach to questions is more important than the answers in terms of developing children's curiosity.

7. For younger children, give a quick, honest, objective answer, and then encourage a discussion. For older children, provide an outline of the answer with follow-up questions, and then let them independently go off and discover more questions and answers.

8. Elicit questions using a discovery approach, instead of lecturing, and teach how to ask open-ended, higher-level questions.

9. Encourage noisy and disorganized argument and debate; avoid rushing their thinking process.

10. Go to the library or search online, from sources at a little bit higher than their level, to look for further answers together, with visuals.

11. Teach how to search for and find detailed answers, instead of just accepting easy answers.

12. Ask questions to make them think; focus on the critical thinking process more than arriving at the right answer; encourage them to develop their own ideas and delve below the surface with questions such as:

1. How do you feel about this?

2. Why do you think this happened?

3. What do you think would happen if ...?

13. Guide them to resources enabling them to find out information on their own and seek out answers for themselves.

14. Provide them with additional resources and activities they can engage (e.g. reliable and valid websites and books) to assist them in answering further questions.

15. Observe their research processes and ask them questions about similarities and differences between findings.

16. Let them make their own mistakes and fail when trying something new or experimenting; let them figure out how to correct the mistake.

17. If they ask for your help, ask questions guiding them toward the solutions instead of telling them how.

18. Use qualifying terms and avoid absolute terms or guarantees (e.g., definitely, all or nothing, black or white, work or play, etc.).

19. If questions are related to:

1. Sex: Set safe boundaries about what body parts are off-limits to others, and together find the facts about what can happen when having unsafe sex.

2. Drugs, alcohols, smoking, or illegal acts: Tell them they have control over their actions but less control over the consequences (also, tell the truth about your mistakes and allow them to see your imperfections).

3. Money: Discuss the difference between wants and needs.

4. God: Discuss your own beliefs and values and then explain how others believe differently.

5. Non-factual science: Research various answers and then explain these arguments are not accepted by all scientists.

6. Fights or divorce: Model behavior on respectfully resolving disagreements or differences during fights (also, explain decisions about not living together).

7. Death: Explain inevitability of death, the preciousness of life, how valuable spending time and building memories together are and then discuss your religious or cultural beliefs related to death as well as others' beliefs, so they know other people believe differently.

8. Social rejection:

1. Validate what they think or feel by empathizing with them.

2. Ask them what they think they can do about it to help them think about their own solutions and empower them to work through their feelings.

3. Share your own childhood experiences with rejection and getting through them.

4. Teach them to imagine how others feel, and nurture big-picture thinking, and empathy and compassion.

20. If there are no definite answers, tell them nobody knows for sure, though many people have tried to find an answer; encourage them to try as well.

21. Indicate room for change fostered by new research and encourage them to pursue further in-depth questions.

22. For further questions, nurture children's reading habits to become independent readers who love reading by:

1. Not over-scheduling their day so they've time to read without pressure

2. Sharing your passion for books by visiting the library, constantly reading, and sharing how books entertain you, ignite your imagination, and/or fuel fantasies

3. Making reading a central activity at home and in school, and make learning to read fun rather than work

4. Reading books together:

1. Read age appropriate books to them regularly even if they can't understand.

2. Have children of all ages read to you.

3. Read poetry to them in cadences and rhythms improving their use of language.

Here are sample activities teachers (and parents) can do to foster creativity in children. They will not revolutionize your teaching (or parenting), yet they could alter children's intellectual lives in marvelously unpredictable ways. Like a single dollop of bright red paint on an otherwise blank white canvas, sometimes the smallest things make the most vivid differences:
Note: While the following small, medium, and large commitments are phrased in a teacher focused way, there is no reason that parents can't use them in the home. If anything, they are even easier and more fun when the formalities of the classroom are removed and the familial relationship is allowed to take center stage during the activity.
SMALL COMMITMENTS
1. Book Showcase (5-10 minutes weekly): Each week, showcase a different book from your classroom (or home) library (it can be any book you've read, but if it's something also available to children, that's even better). Spend a minute or two sharing something you learned from the book and why you liked it (but don't summarize it, you should let them uncover the book's mysteries on their own). Make suggestions about the kinds of books you think they might be interested in. Additionally, getting into the habit of conspicuously reading or having a book around can be great inspiration.

2. Static/flow journals (5-10 minutes weekly): To be alive and awake is to be caught in the flow of time. Each of us encounters the wide world in every moment. It comes at us in dizzying variety and via more avenues than it's possible to count. If we are to pull a melody from all the noise of existence, we must narrow the scope of our attention and plug our ears against the notes that don't fit.

Our search for a melody (whether it comes in the form of a career or family, an art, hobby, or the pursuit of knowledge in a discipline we love) gives many of us joy and lends meaning to our lives, but it demands large amounts of our time and mental energy in return. This is certainly a fair trade, but a single melody does not make an entire symphony or a whole life. Many of us long to hear music other than our own or else we find ourselves being reminded to, "stop and smell the roses" by our loved ones.

It's worth your time to listen for other melodies with children. Not only is it a relaxing exercise, but helping them use their curiosity can sharpen their ears for when they pursue their own melodies. Static/flow journals are designed to help children notice the world all around them by challenging them to search for and pay attention to static and flowing events that are not a part of their conscious lives.

Brainstorm daily events that people frequently encounter but do not typically scrutinize. A few examples: the number and sorts of birds we pass every morning (and whether they are singing or silent) the lunch of dinner menu at home or school, the genres of TV shows, movies, magazines, or books we or people close to us gravitate toward, where light streaming through a particular window hits a wall or the floor at a particular time of day and what color it is, our own moods when we engage with certain daily tasks, the mood or activities of a librarian or crossing guard or cashier we see most days.

Once a list is generated, ask them to select one that they predict is mostly static (or unchanging) and one that is mostly flowing (or frequently changing). Have them observe their chosen phenomena for a few minutes each day. Ask them to record what indeed is static about their static selection, but also what flows (and vice versa for the flowing selection). Spend a little time each week discussing what's surprising about observing something that was once almost invisible and lifeless over time. Did their static and flowing items surprise them or conform to their expectations? Can they think of anyone whose life might center around these events that are peripheral to our own? Are there any events that are central to our own lives but peripheral to others? How might that change other peoples' observations of what we do?

These journals and discussions can help build the reflex to pay attention and observe the world that will pay off in countless ways while being fun for children. Not the least of which is by encouraging the kind of attention necessary for close reading.

3. Circling Back (5-10 minutes weekly): Children invariably ask questions (sometimes tangential or unrelated to the lesson or activity) at times when it's difficult to answer them. We might mean to address these questions later, but who has the time? Sometimes they ask questions precisely to avoid a responsibility. Knowing this can make responding earnestly to "out of left field" thoughts particularly frustrating after you poured much into a lesson or activity.* While it's obviously impossible to answer (or remember) every inopportunely timed question, it's easier and more important than you think to circle back. Try to record one or two questions on the board or a notepad you keep handy.Make a show of doing this, half of the importance of circling back is how it can imbue children curiosity with value by demonstrating care or shared curiosity. Return to this question whenever you get the chance, it doesn't matter when or if your answer isn't particularly deep. It's better if they can participate in finding the answer with you. Rewarded curiosity leads to more curiosity. Also, don't worry, children who ask questions simply to distract might stop doing so if they find themselves missing play time to discover something they didn't really care about (even better: they might find they did care after all!).
MEDIUM COMMITMENTS
The Weekly Curiosity
Materials & Time: Notecards/5-10 minutes prep time/5-10 minutes a week in class time/
10-20 minutes a week in individual student guidance and/or internet time (depending upon your situation)

What Happens: Begin by modeling your own curiosity about something encountered each day (like the origin of your school's street name or why chalk is harder to erase from a blackboard after left there for a week). Show how you can use a resource to find the answer to your question. If used as a weekly activity, you might gradually add complexity. Providing a mini-lesson about a new way to form a question/curiosity one week or using a new resource type the next. Allow students to submit their own curiosities on notecards. Each week, spend time with one student as he or she searches out an answer and crafts a short presentation for the class. Can be used as a tool to help individual students build research/presentation skills and provides a fun fact/short break for the rest of the class each week after quiz or whenever you'd like!

The Multimedia Poem
Materials & Time: posterboard/chart paper, yarn or markers, art supplies, printer/45 minutes to an hour (or more) for initial set up

What Happens: Select a grade level appropriate poem (better yet, have the class select one together). Poems longer than 10 lines but short enough to be written on 1 or 2 pieces of chart paper (in a font legible from a distance) are best. Once you've selected a poem and written it on chart paper, place it somewhere your students will encounter it frequently. Start the process of transforming it into a multimedia poem by adding your own "riff" first. Example: the line "Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land," from "Dover Beach" might remind you of one summer day when you noticed the color of blueberry juice soaking into your paper plate, so you take a photograph blueberry juice on a paper plate and hang it next to the poem, indicating the line that inspired the photograph with yarn. Maybe you're inspired to write a few sentences about an emotion the whole poem inspires in you, or want to label a song that you think would go well with it. All of these are valid riffs. Encourage students to add their own riffs whenever they are inspired to. There are no wrong kinds of riffs. The students are creating a community of reaction to the poem. They might even want to riff on each other's riffs or change something they put up because they've noticed a line means something different to them now that they've thought about it or seen how someone else responded to it.
BIG COMMITMENTS
The Curious, Natural World Around Us (all grade levels, but especially 3-8)

Project Overview:
A classroom pet needs to be fed over holidays and taken to the vet on weekends. It requires supervision and it will repeatedly make a mess. It's expensive. The pièce de résistance: of all the observable traits and behaviors animals have evolved over eons, the ability to infuse months of 3rd period science or language arts with heartbreak by suddenly dying might be the one you and your students always remember. So, why do teachers choose to incorporate aquariums and terrariums into their classrooms? More importantly, why should you? The obvious answer might be that classroom pets allow students to engage with the natural world through sensory experience and it stimulates their curiosity. Curiosity is an integral trait of creative people, but "effective curiosity" is even better. By pairing a classroom pet with a curated set of informational sources about animals, from which students can learn about the parts natural world they cannot see or touch directly (an "illumination station") and a "discovery board" where they can proudly display what they've learned, you create a synergy that helps students to leverage their curiosity into new knowledge. At its core, this project is about teaching students to bridge the gap between the world as it meets us through everyday experience and the abstract resources (books, articles, websites, the wisdom of experts) that can help explain it.

Materials:
The aquarium/animal(s)/care supplies:
Costs and materials for this portion of the project will vary. The following resources can be helpful in determining your specific needs and providing strategies/funding to complete the project:

1. Pets in the Classroom ( http://www.petsintheclassroom.org/considering-a-classroom-pet/ ): provides advice and recommendations for beginning, intermediate, and advanced care-level animals allergies). Also awards grants for purchasing animals and care supplies. Pre-K through 8th grade private and public school teachers are eligible for the grants, which vary depending upon animal selection.
2. Donors Choose ( https://www.donorschoose.org ): a general, crowd-source based fundraising website. It offers more freedom than "Pets...," no grade level or funding amount restrictions, but requires a teacher generated application and presentation of project. It can be used to supplement a grant provided by Pets in the Classroom.
Illumination Station:
Grade level, access to the internet & multimedia, and teacher preference will drive this portion of the project. Here are a few starter ideas:
1. Zoobooks (http://zoobooks.com )
2. National Geographic Kids (http://kids.nationalgeographic.com ) While these long running and perennially popular publications typically center around the sorts of wild animals that it's neither feasible nor safe to keep in a classroom, Zoobooks about sharks, whales, or any of the great inhabitants of the deep can help inspire wonder at their smaller relatives kept in salt water aquariums. Turtles and lizards go well with Zoobooks about alligators and crocodiles, or a National Geographic website about Galapagos tortoises. If a bearded dragon barely half a foot from snout to tip of the tail fails to hold students' attention midway through the year, learning about her cousin, the 200 pound Komodo Dragon with deadly saliva, through videos, books, or trips to the zoo, might cast her daily hunt for crickets in another light.
3. Animal experts are wonderful resources. Their visits are memorable and fun events for you and your students to look forward to, they provide a natural point of focus for developing questions or goalposts/deadlines to meet for projects. Most major zoos have educational outreach departments that offer a wide variety of experiences both in zoo and in the classroom.

Discovery Board
A whiteboard/chartpaper/sticky note area on the wall where students can post their discoveries, questions, and connections for their classmates to see will help make the interplay between the pet and the illumination station more explicit and drive home the idea of curiosity blossoming into new knowledge.

What The Teacher Does
The most important role of the teacher in this project is to facilitate the easy flow of information between the pet and the resources. This means being a tireless promoter of the resources available and attentive to/praising students who engage actively with them, without an eye towards a particular "quality" of result.

What The Students Do
The students should be free to come and go as they please. Their interactions with the illumination station and the pet should be fun and come at their own pace. To encourage some students who might not engage on their own, requiring a certain number of discoveries during the course of the semester might be helpful, but they should be free to make the kinds of discoveries that they want, not be forced into a particular line of inquiry.

The Philosophy
When setting up your "Curious, Natural World," think about how you can foster "effective curiosity" in your students. This means that you want to inspire wonder, but you also want to inspire students to satiate their wonder with knowledge. Two important factors to remember: 1. While you may choose to center activities, lessons, or assessments around your aquarium, it can be most effective if you and your students think of it as a permanent fixture/learning space in your classroom: a place that can be visited, explored, approached and left at leisure; alone, in groups, or guided by the teacher. Curiosity and freedom go hand in hand. If you create a high pressure environment around your classroom pet, you may stifle the natural curiosity that can grow in your students 2. It is the connection between the students caring for/playing with the animals and learning about them with the "illumination station" that is most critically important. It's true that your students will benefit in countless ways from the specific experience of caring for an animal in a classroom community and learning about them, but the larger goal of this project is to foster curiosity. It is a tangible example of how the world of experience and the acts of reading and research can inform and enrich one another. Your classroom can be the place where students learn that there are resources to explain the everyday world (and color it into exciting mysteries) and that they are capable of using these resources (and growing from their use) themselves.

Variations

If caring for animals in the classroom is not a realistic option: consider substituting plants, geodes, crystals, metals, fossils, driftwood. A magnifying glass or microscope can reveal hidden facets of these seemingly familiar objects.

Perhaps you can create an illumination station and discovery board in preparation for a trip to a zoo or park.

Find more research findings about how to foster creativity in children in The Creativity Challenge: How We Can Recapture American Innovation, and follow Dr. Kim @ Kreativity_Kim.

By Dr. KH Kim and Alex Riccio

Dr. Kim is Professor of Educational Psychology at The College of William & Mary. She has trained groups of individuals around the world, helping foster their own and others' creativity. She has dedicated her career to the research on creativity and innovators in hopes of helping individuals, especially those who feel different or misfits, use the power of creativity to achieve their dreams. As a culmination of her research for almost 30 years, she published her new book, "The Creativity Challenge: How We Can Recapture American Innovation, to change the world!

Alex has been involved with public education since he was an undergraduate at Fordham University where he spent weekends mentoring local students. Since then, he has studied secondary education at the City College of New York and the New Science of Creativity at The William & Mary. He taught middle school English Language Arts and Social Studies in the Bronx for 6 years before teaching students through-out New York City how to code with Vision Education and Media. He's a frequent reader, writer, and hiker who is passionate about building educational curriculums that use cutting edge and exciting ideas from the world of academia to enrich the lives of students in schools everywhere.

Tags: creativity in education, creativity tips, curiosity, discovery, dr. kh kim, educational psychology, self-directed exploration

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