Creativity

One question I had was why do the use IQ tests to identify giftedness if it’s not as accurate as other methods? This was surprising to me. Maybe it is the cheapest, or most efficient way to do it, but it seems to not be the most effective. How can we make an efficient and effective way?

Creativity is a form of higher order thinking because it requires out of the box, or divergent thinking. Creativity would be manifested in a science class through an open-ended project that involves redefining the problem, questioning assumptions and evaluating their own ideas. This could be a project where students are given a science project or lesson that a teacher needs help with. The task of the students would be to design a lesson that the teacher can use to teach the content. During this project, students would have to think of all the problems a teacher is experiencing with this lesson and redefine them. They will have to come up with new and innovative solutions to the problem. They would have to question all the assumptions the teacher previously made about students prior knowledge and ability. Then once they had designed their proposal of a new lesson, they would have to evaluate their work. These three steps show creativity through this project.

You can create a space where creativity to is expected by creating a choice work time where students have work that challenges their thinking. They could choose reading in which they could read short profound articles and respond or journal using guided open-ended questions. They could do a math enrichment in which they need to rewrite the problem using their background knowledge to solve. Choices in learning, such as these, help to foster creativity in the classroom.

I would use many methods to assess creativity by looking at the students who take on challenges, take risks, and are intrinsically motivated. I would also assess creativity by the number of solutions a student can provide for a given problem and their ability to elaborate on assignments.