Are You a Paperclip or a Balloon?  Do you like things organized and logical, or would you prefer to be a free-thinker?  Pushing the balloon in all of us is critical in fostering deep thinking in your classroom.  Here are a few ways you can integrate creative thinking.  If they take away too much from your routines, think about ways you can incorporate creative thinking in do nows or homeworks.

Metaphorical Expression (Creative)

• Carousel brainstorming
• Direct and Personal Analogies
• Compressed Conflicts

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking involves logical thinking and reasoning including skills such as comparison, classification, sequencing, cause/effect, patterning, webbing, analogies, deducting and inductive reasoning, forecasting, planning, hypothesizing and critiquing.

Creative Thinking

Creative thinking involves creating something new or original.  It involves the skills of flexibility, originality, fluency, elaboration, brainstorming, modification, imagery, associative thinking, attribute listening, metaphorical thinking and forced relationships.  The aim of creative thinking is to stimulate curiosity and promote divergence. 

Metaphorical Expression Strategy

The Metaphorical Expression Strategy uses direct analogies, personal analogies, and compressed conflicts to teach new concepts or to deepen students’ understanding of already known concepts.  Using these three types of metaphors to look at content gives students a new/and or different perspective on the material.

Metaphorical expression is the rich use of metaphors in communicating with others.  We use metaphors in school to help students gain a greater insight and deeper meaning by seeing content in new and different ways. 

    Typically in schools, we teach to the strengths of the left hemisphere: the analytical side, which responds best to verbal, abstract, and sequential material.  The right hemisphere deals with spatial relationships and pictorial, holistic and nonverbal cues.  Metaphorical expression engages both sides of the brain.

CAROUSEL BRAINSTORMING

Purpose:

1.    to brainstorm (gather and grow) in a group and within the whole class in order to generate as many ideas as possible in the pre-planning stage

2.    to think outside the box in order to create a thesis for an open-cycle compositionthat’s original and would hook the audience

Carousel brainstorming provides an alternative to traditional brainstorming by allowing participants to move from one area of the room to another and to work in groups.  It provides an opportunity to generate lots of ideas in response to different prompts as well as to the thinking of others in the group.

The carousel begins with groups positioned at different stations around the room.  At each station a different idea or question relating to a general topic is posted.

A signal is given.  Each group brainstorms responses at its assigned station.

After an appropriate amount of time, groups rotate to new stations and generate responses to the question or idea posted at that station.  The group can generate new responses, expand upon previous groups’ responses, or provide support for ideas already generated.  Groups continue to move until all groups have visited each station.

At the end of the session, groups participate in a “walk around the gallery” reading of the final list of responses.

• How is intelligence like love?
• If creativity were a machine, what would it look like?  Draw your idea below.
• If you were a salad, what type of dressing would best match your personality?
• How would you feel if you were a great book that was never read.
• What are some things that are both trapped and free?
• Generate as many ideas as you can for each of the following: helpful anger and sensitive strength.
• Generate as many ideas as you can for each of the following:  speedy procrastination and simple complexity.

DIRECT ANALOGIES

1.    Choose an analog that provides conceptual distance (two objects that are not usually similar)

2.    Explore connections between the subject and the analog.

3.    Communicate connections made.

4.    Reflect on how the analog doesn’t fit.

Sample Activity:

         Place bags of common household objects on each table.  Give each student a card with the name of a concept, process, social issue, or problem on it.  Instruct each student to pick an object from the bag.  Then have them make connections between the idea on the card and the object selected from the bag.  For example, if the card selected has the word “multiplication” and the object selected is a book of matches, the student should explore ways in which multiplication is like a book of matches.

PERSONAL ANALOGIES

Have you ever felt like a doormat or a rug?  A wet blanket?  A wallflower?  Many times we compare ourselves to inanimate objects in order to express our feelings.  Personal analogy, defined as “the description of how it feels to identify with a concept, process, or living or non-living thing, gives feelings and emotions to both animate and inanimate objects by treating the object as if it were human.”  Using personal analogy is an indirect way to develop a new context for familiar content and for getting a better understanding of the content.  They are appropriate for all grade levels and content areas.  They are particularly useful for content normally viewed as far removed from the human experience.

In personal analogy, students involve themselves by empathetically identifying with the concept or process being studied.  The personal pronoun “I” is used in personal analogies, and the concept of process is personified by giving it human feelings and characteristics.

Personal Analogy Example:

Pretend you are someone’s favorite old shoe.  What makes you a favorite?  Why would someone put you on instead of a shiny shoe?  What do you like?  How do you make the foot that you’re on feel?

COMPRESSED CONFLICTS

A compressed conflict is a type of analogy that is rich with paradox.  Compressed conflict is a metaphor that describes an object or concept using two words that contradict or fight each other.  It usually takes the form of a noun modified by an adjective or adjectival noun.  The modifier is the element that causes the strain or conflict.

Some compressed conflicts are more subtle than others.  “Imprisoned freedom” is an example of a compressed conflict where the two words that constitute the phrase are in conflict or opposition.  “Passive violence” is a compressed conflict that describes pollution and suggests more than just conflicting descriptive words.  There is the sense that violence cannot be passive, yet we know that the results of pollution are destruction, death, and disease, words that connote violence.  At the same time, pollution is passive in the sense that it does not occur on its own but occurs as a result of human activity.  It appears impossible that these two words, passive violence, could be used together to describe one concept, but they can.

Conceptual strain is built in to compressed conflict.  The two words that make up the compressed conflict oppose or fight each other.  The present contradictory yet descriptive dimensions of the concept of process.   It may provide broad insight into a subject.  It is developed by a process that is essentially analytical.

Introductory Activity for Students Unfamiliar with Compressed Conflicts

State the following to the students:

Have you ever felt happy yet sad?  Confused about something yet sure about what to do?  Angry because a loved one was late yet relived that he or she arrived safely?  Life is filled with contradictions and paradoxes.  Problems, solutions, situations, even people have contradictions.  Contradictions help us see the complexities in life.  They help us recognize the duality in life and the need to keep things in perspective and balance.

Think about your own personality.   Think of one word that best describes many aspects of your personality.

Now think of another word that describes your personality yet is in conflict with or fights the first word.

Now, put the two words together to form a phrase and explain it to your neighbor how the phrase describes your personality.

Phrases such as cheerful pessimist, flexible determination, or warmly aloof are examples of compressed conflicts that might describe a personality.

Resources to Check Out:

http://members.tripod.com/~ozpk/000create

http://www.virtualsalt.com/crebook1.htm

http://www.infinn.com/creative.html

http://www.creativitypool.com/