Helping students to express and develop their creativity
Creativity is one of the most difficult thinking skills to express but is the most desired. It is valued in a vast number of career paths, ranging from music to business opportunities, where students will be able to solve problems, generate unique ideas, and overall present the right attitude to a task. Creativity and innovative ideas will lead students to be successful in whichever career they decide to pursue.
Inspire them to take risks.
In order to enhance the practice of creativity, students need to be able to step outside of their comfort zone and try new things. Creativity requires this sort of bravery, alongside a determination to carry out the task. We can encourage students to take risks within their work, by allowing them to explore their thoughts and produce innovative ideas on a broad range of topics. This is so they come up against topics they have dealt with before, and topics that are completely new to them, so you can see the potential of the student, when they apply creativity to a task. These tasks should be done regularly. By challenging a student’s creativity consistently, it supplies opportunities for fresh perspectives to help foster creativity and consequently have a positive impact on that student.
Showcase creativity in the classroom.
Creativity should be showcased as often as possible. Creative showcases will help motivate other students to try new things and apply their creativity to tasks. These displays can include experiences from famous people, or even better other classmates. We believe displays from classmates are the most effective as students will enjoy sharing their creative ideas with other individuals, as it allows them to share their knowledge and skills whilst also presenting just what’s possible when creativity is accepted during work. Additionally, vicarious experiences are one of the key factors in creating self-efficacy expectations. By seeing someone who is your same age, do well by using creativity, it gives this belief that you too can do the same thing. Therefore, it improves a student’s motivation to apply creativity to their tasks.
Give feedback and reward it.
To improve their creativity, students rely heavily on the feedback they receive after attempting to apply it. Being able to learn from criticism is the main factor within creativity, as they can use it to develop stronger ideas when they next face a similar task. As teachers, we should all be willing to provide this feedback to the students, as it not only encourages their creativity, it enhances other skills such as problem-solving. By extension, these skills will actually contribute to creativity, as it allows them to develop stronger ideas. Rewarding creativity is also important, as it increases a student’s motivation and willingness to maintain their creativity levels, or even further develop them.
Group working.
This is a way in which students can actually influence each other in terms of their creativity. A student does not only hear the perspectives of others, but they may also have the job of comparing and contrasting a classmate’s ideas with their own. By comparing other perspectives with their own, it may show flaws in their own ideas. This can help to sharpen student’s creativity.
Creative thinking is a key skill for the future, and therefore should be attempted to develop in as many places as possible, and a great start is in the classroom.