Tried and tested ideas from the classroom
CREATIVE THINKING
by Rachel Beyer, Deputy Head and Year 6 teacher, St Luke's RC Primary School, Telford
Over the past half term I have been using the technique of a thinking skills book to encourage creativity in the classroom, and to challenge the gifted and talented children in my class. A simple A4 book of plain pages provides the children with an excellent focal point and helps to inject passion and enthusiasm into teaching and learning.
The children use their thinking skills books in a variety of ways. First thing in the morning, their early morning activity is completed in this book. The children enter the classroom, look to see if there are any Closing the Gap activities for them to complete (or ‘Have I got any CTG?’ as my children are so fond of saying!) and then settle down to their thinking skills activity. This may take one session to complete (normally the period from 9.00 am to 9.30 am), or may be an ongoing task for the whole week. Sometimes it links with Literacy, Numeracy or a current topic, or it may be something completely different, just to keep them on their toes!
PMI(Q) activities have been a firm favourite over the past half term. Here the children explore positive, minus and interesting aspects of a scenario, and think about any questions it raises. We have related these to our term’s focus of Michael Morpurgo. The challenge ‘Use the PMI(Q) to explore what it would be like to have a white lion as a pet’ allowed the children to collate the ideas generated through our discussions of the text Butterfly Lion. As a follow-up, the children also considered questions such as ‘What would the ideal pet be?’ or ‘If you could invent a new animal to be the perfect pet, what features would it have?’ Activities of this nature allow the children maximum creativity in terms of their own thinking and the way in which their ideas are presented.
This freedom of presentation within the thinking skills book has really encouraged my Year 6 children to expand their own ideas within a relatively safe context. The thinking skills book doesn’t have the presentation boundaries or the continuity required by subjects such as Numeracy or Literacy where there are whole school policies to consider. Instead, the book is a blank canvas where the children can draw, write, complete tables or use methods similar to those used in picture poems to present their ideas in a way which appeals to them. The only rule is they must do their best and include as much detail as possible, be this in words, images or diagrams. I want to see just how creative they can be!
Our thinking skills books are also being used very successfully by my HLTA during PPA time. Word games have long been a favourite of hers and now, instead of doing these activities on whiteboards and rubbing them away once the task is completed, the thinking skills book has become a welcoming home for them. The children, as a result, respond much more positively to the task knowing that it is being recorded and not undervalued by its lack of permanency.
So, if you are looking for a creative boost to inspire teaching and learning in your classroom, a thinking skills book may be just the thing. Not only will your gifted and talented children be given an opportunity to be as creative and quirky as they wish, it will also encourage less confident children to ‘think big’, safe in the knowledge that there really is no right or wrong answer in their suggestions.