Creativity Blog Prompt 1

I am still confused as to how students who are gifted are identified. Many students excel compared to other students in the classroom, but I do not think that this necessarily means that they are gifted. However, I do like that they put creativity and giftedness in the same category because students who are creative are gifted as well to a certain extent. If giftedness is much more than performing at an exceptionally high level on IQ tests, than what is giftedness and how can it be identified in the classroom? Also, if there are not enough gifted students in a classroom or even a school, what kind of program should be created to attend to these students abilities or is it recommended that they go to a more gifted school?

Creativity is considered a form of higher order thinking or giftedness because an individual's creativity is part of their intelligence. However, this does not necessarily mean that people who are intelligent are particularly creative. Creative thinkers engage in divergent thinking, prefer challenge and complexity, take risks, and are curious and intrinsically motivated, which is a demonstration of higher order thinking and giftedness. Students that are creative generate ideas for answering a question or solving a problem and produce work that is unique and original. Higher order thinking involves learning to problem solve and this is what creative thinkers do.

In my classroom, I would want to show that creativity is valued by modeling creativity and giving students more time to do activities and think so that they do not feel rushed or stressed to finish something. I think time is an important factor for creative thinkers because they think in more depth into an idea instead of just brushing it on the surface. I also think encouragement to take risks is important because if students just stick to the norm and never take risks, then mistakes will not be made and they will not learn from these experiences.

In order to assess creativity, students must think outside of the box. I think it is important to start at a younger age so for example when students are just learning to add they do not necessarily have to think in terms of actual numbers but objects as well and create stories that have to with their adding problems. I think this is a good way to show creativity at the earliest of stages because students are not just demonstrating addition in the typical way of tally marks and numbers, but they are using objects or drawings.