{"id":36,"date":"2015-04-27T04:44:24","date_gmt":"2015-04-27T04:44:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/69.89.31.227\/~makinha9\/hollysblog\/?p=36"},"modified":"2015-04-27T04:44:24","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T04:44:24","slug":"how-can-you-teach-creativity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.makingmathematicians.com\/hollysblog\/?p=36","title":{"rendered":"How can you teach creativity?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I look at the NAGC standards, they often refer to teaching creativity to our gifted youth, which makes me wonder \u2013 can you teach creativity?\u00a0 If you can, how do you assess it?\u00a0 Is there a way to define creativity?\u00a0 Well, as it turns out the long respected work of E. Paul Torrance delves into that very topic.\u00a0 He even has a test for creativity that used to be given in many schools before every one went nuts over No Child Left Behind.\u00a0 He defined four (4) areas in which creativity can be measured, explored, and basically taught.\u00a0 Fluency, originality, elaboration, and flexibility are the four areas in which creativity can be viewed as tangible.\u00a0 There is even a circle test that you can give people and have them score themselves in the four areas.\u00a0 Unfortunately, you need to be a licensed psychologist to assess the numbers, but I like to give the test as a great introduction to the four areas of creativity, their definitions, and how to start dialogue on the subject.\u00a0\u00a0 My favorite book on creativity that was introduced to me by Sue Gonyou (an educator that I deeply respect) is A Whack on the Side of the Head<\/em> by Roger von Oech.\u00a0 I find myself constantly reading and re-reading the book and getting fabulous ideas and a whole lot of laughs to boot.\u00a0 When I taught creativity to my group of teachers of gifted students, I assigned them to read a section of the book and then design a lesson off of one of the ideas.\u00a0 The lessons were to be appropriate in any classroom from grades 3-5; however, the teachers designed lessons that could be used for most grade levels.\u00a0 Some lessons take 5 minutes while others last multiple days.\u00a0 Creativity is usually prevalent in gifted individuals; however, by Torrance\u2019s definitions anyone can learn to be creative.\u00a0\u00a0 All of the lessons have a form of assessment attached (mostly to be used for self-assessment).\u00a0 In order to create these rubrics, the teachers drew ideas from Dr. Richard Cash\u2019s work in Differentiation for Gifted Learners<\/em>.\u00a0 I have posted the ideas on my website; they are titled starting with the words \u2018creativity lesson.\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I look at the NAGC standards, they often refer to teaching creativity to our gifted youth, which makes me wonder \u2013 can you teach creativity?\u00a0 If you can, how do you assess it?\u00a0 Is there a way to define creativity?\u00a0 Well, as it turns out the long respected work of E. Paul Torrance delves […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,3],"tags":[34,33],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gifted-education","category-math-ideas-lesson-activities-for-every-classroom","tag-creativity","tag-gifted"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.makingmathematicians.com\/hollysblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.makingmathematicians.com\/hollysblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.makingmathematicians.com\/hollysblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.makingmathematicians.com\/hollysblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.makingmathematicians.com\/hollysblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.makingmathematicians.com\/hollysblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37,"href":"http:\/\/www.makingmathematicians.com\/hollysblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions\/37"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.makingmathematicians.com\/hollysblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.makingmathematicians.com\/hollysblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.makingmathematicians.com\/hollysblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}