Creativity can improve learning

Studies show that when students actively engage with course material and make it their own, they increase their learning potential. This is part of the creative process. Providing learners with enjoyable and involving learning activities will spark their creative spirit in the classroom.

Creativity is not just for or about the arts. There are many great ways to integrate a creative teaching technique into any subject. Use World Creativity and Innovation Week April 15 – 21 the time to experiment and play with new learning activities.

There are many resources available through educational sites. We offer a few more to consider:

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Graffiti

Who said that the walls need to be clean and clear? Why can't they be dressed up a bit? All you need is chalk and imagination. Use chalk to draw, write, and scribble, and then wash it all away with some water. Use chalk to draw outside on the sidewalk. Use chalk to scribble a beautiful quote on a wall somewhere. Draw arrows on the ground. See if people follow them. Then wash your creations all away with some waters. You are ready to begin again.

Decide O'Meter

You will need a clock, or a "See and Say", and 12 pieces of paper (you can use sticky notes). Write 12 fun activities of your choice on the sticky notes and place them on the face of the clock or the toy.

When feeling down in the doldrums take a look at the clock, and it's activity for the hour. If it is 2:30, you might have "Stretch a really good stretch", or "Listen to a favourite song".  A "See and Say" children's toy is also a great way to choose an activity. Pull the lever on the side, ignore the farm animal sounds, and pay attention to the particular activity.

Make up your own activities, or start with these:

• "Stretch a really good stretch"
• "Listen to a favourite song"
• "Turn upside down and look at your environment from the ceiling"
• "Tell your neighbour something nice"
• "Make a list of 5 things you love"

Doodle and Art Board

Sometimes students just need to draw pictures of bugs, or frogs, or play tic-tac-toe during a break. Doodle boards are a great way to release creativity at your own pace, alone or with others, in a couple of seconds, or over great lengths of time. Take pictures of your masterpieces  and post them up! Provide many colours of markers and a large white board. Place the large white board, place it in a communal area. Let the creativity take its own course.

Theme Days

Theme days are a great way to get everyone involved in silliness for the purpose of getting refreshed. Incorporate activities that alter the daily routine. As well as involving students in class, faculty and teachers can do it on their own to bolster their own 'mental health'.

Some ideas are: Re-Gift Day, Silly Hat Day, Dress Up Day, Ugly Sweater Day, Tacky Gift Day, Pick-a-Colour Day (everyone must wear that colour), Pick a Reflective Word Day.

Idea Jam

Get a bunch of students or faculty together to brainstorm. Use productive thinking and problem solving to make something better than it is! Do your best to invent new  ways to improve your school. Have someone facilitate the session for you to keep everyone on track. Remember the rules of brainstorming. Don’t stop the flow generating ideas by judging anyone’s input during the ideation phase. Write down all the ideas because all ideas are welcome. Go for quantity, then come back afterwards to see where the energy is. Select ideas that are compelling, and exciting. Choose one to make real

Invention Show + Tell

If you have an idea, don't just TELL someone: Make it and SHOW them! You can create a miniature out of cardboard, wires, or Playdoh. Create two inventions! Then make another! Make an IMPOSSIBLE invention. Make an invention that sings. Make an invention that has spots. Soon you'll have a whole collection of sculptures for show and tell.

Pay It Forward

When you do something kind and inspiring for someone, it makes everyone feel better. Brainstorm a number of creative ways to inspire someone else’s day. Then pass the spirit forward. You will need paper and art materials such as paint or coloured pencils, or a computer and printer to mass produce ‘Pay It Forward’ cards.

Write one inspiring action on individual cards. Cards' designs can be as imaginative, stylistic or attractive as you want. Leave a space for each person to fill in their name before they pass it along. Distribute them to friends, family, and co-workers. Remember to make a note on each card reminding everyone to release the card to someone else.

Inspiration Board

You will need a large bulletin board, thumbtacks, stapler, and push pins. Every time you walk by, you will notice new and special things about the people around you. What inspires them? What kinds of images do they like to collect? On your own or together with your family, friends, co-workers, school mates, create a collage of interesting, inspiring, beautiful pictures. Include baby pictures, magazine images, quotes, interesting objects, fabrics, mirrors, ANYTHING that sparks your interest.  As you learn to notice what attracts you, you will learn more about yourself.

Play the Clown

Playing is a great way to unleash your creativity, and what would be a better way to play than to play the clown?
Encourage your class to creatively dress up and act like clowns to celebrate World Creativity and Innovation Week.
You could challenge other classes and teachers and even the entire school to be clowns. Imagine an entire school of clowns!

Variations:

• Vision of the Future: Ask the class to dress up and act like a person who works in their favourite desired future occupation. Life Guard, Artist, Doctor, Maestro for the day. 
• Be what you Read: Ask the class to dress up and act like a character in, or the author of, the book they are reading.

Create a permanent creativity showcase

Create a permanent creativity showcase.
Encourage each student to use greeting cards, slogans, mini websites, and other expressive mediums to demonstrate to others what interests them. Then showcase their work.

For example: Photography students focus on a collection of different and unusually shaped bottles; advertising students create campaigns for their favourite sport; creative writing students compose an ode to their favourite food. 

Create music out of anything -- or nothing at all

Using pop cans, sticks, your feet, your hands, or your voice, create music that's loud, soft, rhythmic, on key and off key. Ask everyone to start all at once, and encourage each individual to listen to their own music amidst the noise.

Start by asking students to make the worst music possible. Then really celebrate how bad it is:  a standing ovation is always fun.

Encourage people to comment on what they noticed, what they heard and what they felt, both when the music was bad and when it was good. Ask them about differences or similarities in what they experienced.

Role Reversal

During World Creativity and Innovation Week invite the students to dramatize being a teacher while the teacher plays the student.

Break the class into groups and ask each group to teach for a part of the day.

The What and the Why's of What You Want

Each student takes one of their goals or dreams and creates a collage to express it to the class. They collect old magazine pictures that show what they want and, more importantly, why they want it. The images can be literal or symbolic.

Each student can give the class a preview of their collage and ask the other students to guess what their goal or dream is. Once the guessing is done, students can share the meaning behind their collage.

Research shows that the bigger the "why" -- the reason behind what you want -- the better the chances of getting "what" you want.  

Strike a Pose

The idea here is to create imaginative silhouettes of each person in the class. Split the class into pairs. Taking a very large piece of Kraft paper or black poster board, one person lies down on the paper and strikes an imaginative pose which expresses an emotion (for example: happiness) or conveys an action (for example: catching a fish). The other person takes a marker and traces the outline of the person lying down. The pair then switches roles.

At the end of the class the silhouettes are shuffled and held up one at a time; the class then guesses which silhouette matches which person, and what they were expressing.

Other ideas: 

• Use chalk to trace the outline on the floor of the classroom or hallway.
• Take students outside and use chalk to draw their outlines on the pavement.

Celebrate mistakes... really celebrate mistakes

A big part of creativity is taking risks. Sometimes risks lead to mistakes. To encourage risking and building trust for classmates, celebrating mistakes is a great thing to do! Learning from mistakes grows wisdom.
Make a pact with the class that for one day during World Creativity and Innovation Week every time someone makes a mistake he or she will celebrate it and the class will to celebrate with them.

Celebrating includes:

• Throwing one's head back, and enthusiastically shouting '"I made a mistake!!!!!"
• Clapping
• Cheering
• Whistling
• Dancing
• Shakin' and shimmying

To stimulate "mistake making," try this game:

Gather everyone in a circle. Have a list of general topics ready. When one topic is announced, each person has to name something related to is as quickly as they can. Go around the circle to each person quickly and as soon as someone makes a mistake they must go to the centre of the circle and celebrate.  

For example:

• Name a type of tree
• Name a female celebrity
• Relate the topic to your lesson plan. Etc.

Mistakes include:

• Answering too slowly
• Not being able to answer/respond with an example
• Answering incorrectly
• Answering in a way that is difficult for others to hear

Idea-a-thon

Sometimes great ideas come from bad ideas. And sometimes ideas are lost because they aren't examined thoroughly.

The idea-a-thon is a great way to encourage the discipline of looking for the gold in any idea.
Pick a challenge (or opportunity). Encourage the class to shout out every idea they can think of to solve it. Then encourage them to come up with the worst ideas they can think of. Record all ideas for everyone to see. The goal is to make as long a list as possible all the while encouraging students to stretch for more ideas.

Once you have a list of bad ideas, review them, select one and then encourage the class to "mine for gold" by asking the following questions:

• What is positive about this idea? (record the responses)
• What is the potential for this idea? (record responses)
• What are the concerns of this idea? (record responses)
• Now take the concerns and reframe them in to "How might we..." statements

Here is a real life example:

A drinking glass company was not meeting its deliveries because the drinking-glass packers were slow. The packers were slow because the glasses were wrapped in newspapers - and the packers were reading the articles. The company called some of its employees together to solve the problem and came up with these ideas:

• Use blank newsprint 
• Hire different packers

Then someone shouted out "poke their eyes out." Obviously this is a bad idea. However, it led to reframing the question to, "How might we hire people that don't read?" The solution - hire people who are visually impaired.

The positives of this idea were:

• Packing went faster; therefore, the company made more money.
• There would be fewer broken glasses because people who are visually impaired had better touch sensitivity. Therefore, the company had less breakage which led to more profit.
• New employment opportunities became available for the visually impaired in their city

Read to a Pet

Students are asked to read to a pet and observe the pet's reactions to their voice. The students can practice shifting their tone of voice, inflection, sound level, excitement, and other emotions according to what they are reading.

Students are then encouraged to come to class and report what they read, what they tried with their voice and what they observed.

Variation:
Bring a pet to class and ask the class to take turns reading to it to see what reactions they get. While one reads, the others observe the pet's reactions.

What was it that made the pet react the most?
Are there any similarities with reactions in people?

Discussion questions might include:

• What made the pet react the most?
• Are there any similarities with reactions in people?

Build it and they will come

80% of the neurons in the brain are connected to the hands. People can more easily access a deeper level of their imaginations when their hands are engaged.

Create various "building stations" in the class. Provide different building materials at each station:  plastic water pipes, Popsicle sticks, cotton balls and pipe cleaners, Lego, etc. Add some glue, tape, string, scissors and/or markers to each station.

Divide the class into groups. Ask each group to go to a different station and build with the materials on the table.

Some ideas for what they could build:

• A solution for world hunger.
• A solution for the Food Bank.
• Build something/anything and then figure out its use.
• Build something without talking to one another. Then discuss what it is or could be used for and how each person felt when building.  

Ask each group to present what they've built.

• What is it?
• What makes it unique?
• How was each member of the group involved in the process?

Variations:

Tell only half of the groups what to build; the other half of the class has no idea. Make observations about how the process and the outcome varied for the groups that were told what to build versus the groups that weren't told what to build.

Share your ideas!

Share some of your students’ creativity work on our Creativiki. If your school is holding an event that you want to share with the creative community, then send us a note. We’ll post it in our newsroom. Upload your videos to YouTube using the tag 'worldcreativity'