- Question Assumptions – Make questioning a part of the daily classroom exchange. It is more important for students to learn what questions to ask and how to ask them than just to learn the answers.
- How to Define and Redefine Ideas – Encourage creative thinking by having students choose their own topics for papers or presentations and their own ways to solve problems. Sometimes they must choose again after trying out their initial idea and learning from their experience.
- Allow Time for Creative Thinking – If you stuff too many questions into your tests or give your students more homework than they can complete, then you are not allowing them time to think creatively.
- Instruct and Assess Creatively – If you want to encourage creativity, you need to include at least some opportunities for creative thought in assignments and tests. Ask questions that require analytic and creative thinking. For example, students might be asked to analyze a process and then think about how it might be improved.
- Reward Creative Ideas and Products – Let them know that creativity does not depend on your agreement with what they write, only that they express ideas that represent a synthesis between existing ideas and their own thoughts.
- Encourage Sensible Risks – Students are no longer willing to take risks in school because only perfect test scores and papers receive praise and failure may mean extra work. Focus on the learning process, not just the outcome.
- Find Excitement – To unleash your students’ best creative performances, you must help them find what excites them. Remember that it may not be what excites you.
- Allow Mistakes – Schools are often unforgiving of mistakes. Over the course of a school career, children learn that it is “wrong” to make mistakes. The result is that they become afraid to risk the independent and the sometimes-flawed thinking that leads to creativity.
- Encourage Creative Collaboration – Encourage your students to collaborate with creative people because we all learn by example. Students benefit from seeing the techniques, strategies, and approaches that others use in the creative process.
- Proselytize for Creativity – Use examples of creative student work, particularly from students who are not gifted in traditional academic abilities, to demonstrate the difference creativity can make. Richer, funnier, wilder, and more interesting assignments, book reports, and projects make our lives less boring.
Adapted from: http://www.cdl.org/resourcelibrary/articles/teaching_creativity.php
