Think about it: when children are young, they’re encouraged almost constantly to be creative. They tell stories, play make believe and dress up, build forts, and draw pictures. Once they get to school, that flow of creativity starts to dwindle, and continues to do so as they get older and older. But the truth is that encouraging students to think creatively can be a challenge in today’s curricula and test focused classrooms. Our modern educational models don’t leave a lot of room for creative free thinking.
The handy infographic below takes a look at four strategies to boost students’ confidence in their creativity. Central to all of them is the idea of positive influence – which, as the teacher, you need to supply. If our students are confident in themselves and their creative thinking skills, they’ll be able to more effectively and efficiently address the complex, multi-faceted problems they’ll face in a fully connected, globalized world.
Steps To Creating Confident, Creative Thinking Students
In all of these steps, students should be encouraged to strive for positive traits and complete positive actions through the entire experience.
Who Do You Want To Be?
Teens are often asked the question ‘who do you want to be?” They can define their own traits or choose from a selection of popular traits that the group comes up with.
Create Your Own Mission
Teens should create a mission designed to demonstrate the trait they chose in the first step. During this step they can look at other student’s posts for inspiration.
Post Your Action
Teens post the result of their action, such as a video or photo, which will post to Instagram. They should use hash tags for the traits they want to show.
Social Feedback
Teens view streams of actions by trait that they care about being as inspiration and give feedback and points for fellow users.
