Creative Solutions are No Accident

Constraints Lead to Creativity

The idea of deliberately structuring tasks in certain ways so that they cause creativity has made me consider more carefully the kinds of constraints I place on students. I have spent the past few weeks reading, discussing and experimenting with constraints, creativity and problem-solving.  What I have come to realize is that for teachers to successfully transition to effective inquiry-based, student-centered classrooms, a deeper understanding of the function and role of constraints is needed.

It's important to know:

1. Constraints are important for new ideas to emerge.  Patricia D. Stokes work in creativity shows that when there are no constraints, we tend to default to conventional thinking and solutions that are already known.

2. Stokes also reveals that there are only 2 kinds of constraints.  The first are ones that define a domain. They involve mastery and require conformity. The second are "novel" constraints which allow a domain to expand and are how new ideas are generated.

3. For creative thinking to happen in classrooms, educators must think carefully about the purpose of the learning and what kind of constraints are needed at that moment.

"The creativity problem ... (becomes)  strategic and structural". Patricia D. Stokes

These thoughts were at the forefront as I designed our art lesson. We began learning about value by viewing The Virtual Instructor. Students then had to create a 7 step value line.

Next, I deliberately structured a lesson with carefully considered constraints so that students would have to become creative problem solvers to complete the task.

Materials:
1 brush
1 white paint
1 black paint
1 colour
1 sheet of paper

Constraints: Transition from white to black.
                  Make the transitions subtle.
                  The main colour must appear in the middle.

I liked this approach for many reasons. Many students don't like art as a subject because their work never turns out according to the model. By approaching the task as a problem to be solved rather than a work of art to be created, students took on a problem-solving stance.

Before moving to work stations, we took time to consider the Achievement Chart which we had begun using last week. It was a quick discussion, prompted by my questions. "In this activity, what is Knowledge and Understanding? What will the problem-solving look like? How will we know that you've communicated appropriately? What should we see? and so on.

Then students began. Their approach to this art lesson was certainly different from lessons where they are shown how to do something and then try to replicate the model.  The level of focus and discussion as well as the careful experimentation, showed they were in a problem-solving stance.

Peer Feedback

We used the product to develop skills in peer feedback.  James suggested that the works remain anonymous so that students would not be influenced by knowing who had created the works.

As a class we discussed one of the first attempts at painting a value chart to identify success criteria.

Next students undertook a gallery walk to see what stood out for them once they had the opportunity to see all the paintings.

Finally, students were given an organizer structured on the Achievement Chart for recording their feedback.

Finally, I asked them to consider the challenge of assigning marks. Assigning a mark is not easy and often takes away from a student's sense of achievement. Most of our work this year has been assessed through descriptive feedback. Being required to put a mark on the work made many students uncomfortable.

In perusing the feedback, I noticed that some students were very specific and others wrote vague statements such as, "I could tell you understood what you were doing". When we met at the end of the day, I placed several statements on chart paper so we could discuss useful feedback. We had an open and honest conversation. I asked if they had ever received feedback from teachers that wasn't particularly useful. All hands were raised. We explored thoughts and feelings about feedback and why it is so hard to ask teachers to be more explicit.  Power relationships, personalities and the challenges of communicating effectively came into the discussion. I knew it was time to bring out The Empathy Toy. The game requires blind-folded players to complete a building task while the rest of the class watches silently. It is frustrating and challenging and requires players to communicate clearly in order to meet with success.  The bell rang before we had time to debrief, but tomorrow we will explore what leads to good communication.

Sources:
Between the by-Road and the Main Road
Creativity From Constraints, The Psychology of Breakthrough

Building Ladders

For the past week my grade 7s have been working intensely with the Ladder of Inference. I drew from the lesson I had learned from by grade 6s about how important it is that teachers and students understand each other's ladders. 

We also read the short story The White Owl by Hazel Boswell. After reading it to explore the topic of superstitions, students constructed the villagers' and Felix's Ladders of Inference. This was done in groups of 4.

Today I introduced the idea of salience and that what one considers salient is influenced by one's beliefs. I adapted a lesson from Karl Adamczyk and Cheryl Patterson for this. Students read an article from The Los Angeles Times about the shooting of Jordan Davis, a teen, by Michael Dunn. After carefully reading and annotating the text, students were first asked to identify what beliefs each would have held before the confrontation. (Yeah to Jamie, who asked, "Aren't we going up our Ladders when we do this?)

Finally, students built the Ladders for Michael and Jordan.

This was a challenging task for many students in the class, but they worked their way through. As each handed in the assignment, I asked them to reflect on what they had learned from the Ladder. Comments were similar:
1. It's useful.
2. You can use it to understand someone else.
3. People shoot up their ladders all the time.
4. People are mostly at the top of the Ladder.
5. You can use it to remind yourself to back down.
6. I'm on my Ladder a lot.

Using the Ladder of Inference to Improve Student-Teacher Communication

Because I teach both grades 7 and  6 Language, Social Studies and Computers, I have the benefit of seeing how the junior grades prepare students for middle school.  Our junior grades are focused heavily on inquiry, The Thinking Matrix and setting a strong foundation for writing so that when students come into middle school, they are ready to take on the challenges of Integrative Thinking. The Ladder of Inference is a tool that I reserve for grade 7, simply because learning the process of inquiry already provides such deep thinking opportunities for my grade 6s that I haven't felt it necessary to introduce the ladder.

This week, though, something happened in class that made it necessary to introduce students to the Ladder of Inference. We wrote a quiz. We were reviewing sentence structure - subjects, predicates and fragments - because the author of our novel, The People of  Spark, often uses fragments for effect. After leaving a lesson on this with a supply teacher and knowing we had gone over sentence structure at the beginning of the school year, I wanted to quickly determine which students understood the concepts.

As I began marking the quizzes, a student casually walked past me, looked at them and said, "I know I failed that. I thought it was going to be all about the definitions." There were no definitions on the quiz. All the questions were about application. Could students identify a fragment, tell whether it was a subject or a predicate and then write it as a complete sentence? I knew I needed to introduce the Ladder.

We did a number of preliminary activities to understand the Ladder and then we turned to the quiz. In the data pool is all the information that was available to us about our work on and the topic of Fragments. Next we constructed my Ladder. I showed the students everything that I had paid attention to in the data pool that caused me to create a quiz with only application questions. Then we constructed the student's ladder:

Interpretation:   1. The worksheets had many definitions 2. Teachers often test definitions.
                                                          Definitions must be important.

Conclusion: If I study definitions, I will be successful on the quiz.

Today, we went deeper into assessment. I wanted students to think about their work in terms of the Ontario Achievement Chart so that they are better able to construct their teachers' ladders. I put the chart into kid-friendly language. We discussed the quiz and figured out that the student was anticipating Knowledge and Understanding questions and I was thinking about Application questions.

Next I gave students a copy of an assessment they had been given in Science earlier in the year. They worked in partners to figure out where each question fit on the achievement chart, including combinations (for example, K & U, and Application)  It was fascinating to listen to the quality of discussions as students worked their way through this task.

After we debriefed, I pointed out that they need to become comfortable with the language of the Achievement Chart so that they can better understand the work they are being asked to do and what causes them to miss or hit the mark. I gave an example from a high school student who was very frustrated in her math class but didn't have the language of the Achievement Chart to understand what was causing the frustration.  It turns out that the math instruction centered only on knowledge and understanding - students were being shown formulas - yet the assessments were all about application of the formulas. There was a disconnect between instruction and assessment. Being able to break down a task in terms of the Achievement Chart will help them communicate better with their teachers and allow them to become more successful in school.

Open Response Questions, Self-Assessment and Inquiry

Much about grade 6 Language instruction in Ontario centres on encouraging students to engage with text, make inferences and interpretations, use evidence from texts to support opinions and then express one's thinking with clarity. At this point in the year after spending a great deal of time developing research, critical thinking, inquiry and problem-solving skills, we are zeroing in on writing with the goal of students being able to self-assess independently whether or not their written work is meeting or exceeding expectations and then set goals for improvement or next steps.  Students shouldn't need a teacher to tell them that work is up to snuff. This is part of the "yes ... and ..." of teaching. As we shift to inquiry, we must also address skill-building so that students are able to express their new learning in ways that are understood by others.

After reading aloud the first chapter of People of Spark, students were asked to answer two open-ended questions:

1. Describe Torren's personality. Use evidence from the text to support your ideas.

2.Torren has a variety of reactions to the refugees. Explain how he reacts using transition words to connect your ideas.

What I wanted to see was what students would do without reminders and instructions. How much of what they'd learned about answering Open Response questions in previous years and through the work they've undertaken this year would be reflected in the structure of their writing?

Once they had written their responses I put a model answer under the document camera and we tore it apart. As we analyzed the structure of this response, students were thinking of their own responses, comparing them mentally, to what they were seeing. This was done deliberately. In the past I might have shown the modeled answer first, but I have found it more effective for students to have their own work in mind so that they can see their starting points and identify their next steps without me having to point them out.

Students then took highlighters and markers and tore their own answers apart.

Once students had assessed their own work, I met with them one on one to discuss their observations about their skills and goals.

By entering into such a structured activity, we aren't abandoning inquiry.  The word refugee sparked a discussion about current events and the Syrian crisis. Students spent their computer period constructing  knowledge of what it means to be a refugee. They went in many directions for this. Some used google maps to figure out how far refugees had to walk and what routes they had taken. Others learned about the lives of refugee children; some were curious about the country of Syria - its anthem, capital and history. 

Design Thinking for Impact Part 1: Collaboration

I spent Monday and Tuesday of March Break at Design Thinking for Impact: Solving Complex Problems with Stakeholders,  a 2 day workshop where participants develop understanding of the design thinking approach to problem-solving by going through the design thinking process to solve a messy problem.

It was held at the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto, a place that made me once again consider how different schools could be if spaces were designed differently.

This was not an education event and I found myself the only formal educator at the table which was an interesting position to be in.  All too often educators are isolated from the world they are preparing students for.  To consider problem-solving with those who are expected to solve 'real' problems in their workplaces so that their organizations or policies can advance is a different experience.  We often talk about the need for schools to become interdisciplinary. Interdisciplinary should mean more than bringing subjects together.  I often wonder what education planning would be like if we had public health,  designers, members from the private sector and parents at the same table. I am certain that our views on the role and delivery of education would shift.

Take collaboration for example. This is a word bandied about in the education world and some, but by no means all, teachers have heard that they should be teaching collaboration. The imperative for teaching collaboration skills remains distant, though. To some it still seems like a choice. Collaboration  is not group work. It requires an effort and skill that goes well beyond merely working with others to complete a task. It requires teachers to show students how to enter into and embrace conflict, how to negotiate, how to set feelings aside and explore ideas, how to develop a common language, how to build on ideas, how to critique, how to identify and question assumptions, how to deal with those who dominate or don't contribute, how to work with contradictory ideas ... how to ... it's complicated.

On the first day of DT4i, one of the participants brought up the issue of collaboration in the changing workplace. Interdisciplinary teams working collaboratively are now an expectation in many work environments, yet many employees lack the requisite skills.  Some have gone right through graduate school working independently. This is a real issue that employers are struggling with and it was a very real problem in her own workplace.  For groups to truly develop new and better ideas rather than "default to the solutions they already know"*, the skills of collaboration must be in place. Part of the reason why she and others were attending the Design Thinking for Social Impact workshop was to develop a better understanding of collaborative problem-solving so that they could help their colleagues. She expressed frustration that these skills are not being taught in school. Students should be graduating knowing how to work collaboratively.

What Design Thinking does, is provide a toolkit for collaboration - techniques for working through complexity to solve really challenging problems so that the solutions found are ones that no one would ever have imagined on their own at the start of the problem.

I'll be sharing more of what I learned about the value of Design Thinking during those 2 days later this week, including how I along with another participant ended up at the Wheat Sheaf Tavern, interviewing an Indian (this was the person's preferred label) hockey cameraman who had just returned from the Sochi Olympics, about community, hockey, art and what one longs for from childhood,  in order to solve a complex problem ... and how this made me bang into my assumptions head first. I still have intellectual bruises!

*Jennifer Chan

The Mobius Strip of Creativity

Triggering Creativty Part 2: The Oreo Cookie Challenge

This week my grade 7 students continued our exploration of creativity. I find myself thinking a great deal about the differences between involving students in creative activities such as drama or art or an engineering design challenge, and deliberately having conversations and structuring the environment so that learners become aware of how to become more creative and  develop strategies for sparking new and better ideas.

Once again I have Josie Fung of the Ithink Initiative at U of T's Rotman School of Management to thank, as well as Jennifer Chan of Exhibit Change, who is doing some very interesting work in design thinking and education for my growth in understanding of the kinds of conversations we need to be having with learners about creativity. Thank you Jenn for the Oreo Cookie idea!


My grade 7 students were asked to sit in pairs and became extremely puzzled as I walked through the class and placed an Oreo-type cookie on their desks. I then asked them to discuss with their partner the correct way to eat an oreo cookie.

Next, I asked students to come up with as many ways as possible to eat an Oreo cookie.

I then asked students to eat their oreo cookies without hands which causes a great deal of laughter!


Finally we debriefed.

1. We tend to fall into patterns of behaviour that we don't really think about.

2. We stop finding new ways to do things because of habit.

3. To spark creativity and get new ideas we need to break our patterns of thinking and doing, and then deliberately try to think of new ideas.

4. We discussed how it felt to not be able to eat the cookie the way they had planned to. For some it was slightly stressful.

Finally I asked students to think of something they do in a habitual way and to come up with three new ways to do that task. These they shared with other students.

It was a fun 40 minutes of learning.

When we meet again, we'll revisit the activity to consider our ideas about the right way to do things.

Exploring Angles on the 3D Printer

A few boys in grade 6 are using the 3D printer to create a mini-hockey set. The sticks and pucks have been straight forward designs. The net, however, presented challenges. What is the best design for webbing and orientation for printing to create an actual net?

Spencer and Finnlay explored this challenge on Wednesday.

Will the 3D printer handle all those narrow 45 degree angles?

Will the webbing on the left net be destroyed by the raft?

Prototypes uploaded to Makerbot

                                                                 Test of prototypes.

Although it appeared to be working, eventually the printer didn't handle the angled print. The flat net was successful.  Being able to develop an idea, test it and receive immediate feedback is proving to be invaluable learning. For that alone, the 3D printer is worth the investment!

Side note. One of my students forget to bring a spoon for his yogurt.  He did, however, come up with a solution.

Carter in 71 Knocks it Out of the Ballpark with 3D Printing

At the start of my lesson, yesterday, on combining short sentences to improve writing, Jade mentioned that it would be neat to create a hinge on the 3D printer for Sebastian's box and lid.

About 10 minutes into the lesson, Carter's hand shot up as he announced that he knew how to create the hinge. It turns out that while I had been teaching, a number of students were solving the problem of the hinge in their heads.

Today, Carter came to school and informed me that he had spent several hours last evening designing the hinge.

He wanted to know, however, before printing the entire hinge whether the printer would print a hollow cylinder.

Tinkercad Design

We ran a test.

Uploaded to Makerbot

Hollow cylinder with raft to stabilize it during printing.

Success! It has been wonderful observing Carter analyze, problem-solve and prototype as he develops his hinge. He is going home tonight to refine his design and tomorrow we'll print.  

Character Sketches, Mental Models and the Hidden Curriculum

Oops! I hit publish before this post was ready. This looks better. Apologies to those who were appalled. :D


Model for a Stock or Flat Character

As mentioned in a previous post, several students were alarmed that the characters they had selected for their character sketches were not round enough to write about using the model the class had developed. As a class, we figured out what a character sketch might look like for a flat or stock character. The new model looks like this.

Paragraph 1: Description

Paragraph 2: Role in the story - how they help advance the plot.

Paragraph 3: Strengths/Weaknesses

Paragraph 4: Relationship to other characters.

Paragraph 5: Personal opinion.

Every student was now satisfied that the writing task could be accomplished.

This marks a shift in my practice and comes from our work in Integrative Thinking and mental models. Previously, I would have taught one model for a character sketch. This creates rigid thinkers. Part of our thinking now involves learning that every structure is only a model and we consider where that model doesn't apply or might not be useful. This meets a goal of 21 Century learning: creating flexible thinkers who learn, make use of and then abandon concepts which are no longer useful.

Writing Process, Feedback and When to Intervene

Rubrics and Success Criteria which are co-constructed with students have become the norm in Ontario classrooms. When I first began using Success Criteria for writing, it was done at the beginning of a task. I would present a  model that we analyzed together and then we'd generate criteria for their own writing. This was not a bad approach; however, it certainly has limitations.  For students who quickly grasp abstract concepts, it works well. Most students need to experience and spend time working with a genre,though, before they can describe what success looks like. Often when co-constructing Success Criteria, the strong students speak and the ones who really don't quite understand remain quiet. Developing criteria too early in the process also means that as a teacher, I am unable to see which students have a strong grasp of a concept and which ones truly need support so they can develop conceptual understanding.  It is possible, after all, to follow a recipe for writing but understand nothing.

Students have been working on rough copies of their Character Sketches and I have been circulating, answering questions, providing feedback and most of all allowing students to struggle as they consider how to describe their characters in writing. They have a rough outline for their paragraphs but nothing more.

They are far enough into the process, however, that I can see where the gaps are and what needs to be discussed. Providing evidence to support ideas is one element that needs to be addressed. All students are including evidence to support their ideas; however, much of it is poorly written, vague or doesn't really explain how the evidence supports the opinion. Today I gathered the class together to explore how to provide quality "evidence".

It became very easy for students to examine their own writing and see where improvements need to be made. The Success Criteria for evidence was developed at the right moment for deepest learning. The above example is Level 3. It meets grade level expectations for a student's ability to provide evidence, but does not go beyond expectations. I asked the class for ideas of how to turn this into a level 4 response. Several suggestions were made including comparing the character to one in another book and providing more examples of the trait.

The Hidden Curriculum

In the lead up to writing their character sketches, students were provided with many resources.

1. We read a character sketch which students deconstructed.
2. Students developed 2 different formats for writing the sketch.
3. Students were provided with a list of character traits.
4. We looked at how similes create pictures for the reader.
5. We explored types of characters.
6. Students watched The City of Ember and made notes on their character.

What puzzles me as an educator is that some students instinctively make use of those kinds of resources to create quality work and others never make the connection nor consider how the resources might be used. They don't understand the game of school and what is needed to successfully jump through the hoops.

We took time today for hoop jumping. We learned how to think about how the resources they are given by teachers. This is part of the meta-cognitive process that leads to better learning.

I began by talking about clever students, the ones who know to include certain information even though they have not been explicitly told to do so. What do they see that other students don't? I placed some of the resources from our lessons on character sketches on the bulletin board and described what I saw in their writing.

"Some students just knew that the list of character traits was useful and used it to find sophisticated words to describe their characters. How many of you realized that after we had gone over those words, it would be wise to include them in your writing?"|

"Some students have included similes to describe their characters, even though I never explicitly told them to do so, after the lesson on similes. How many of you made the connection between your own writing and the lesson?"

"After we examined types of characters, some people used the types (protagonist, stock, dynamic ...) when describing their own characters and it never occurred to other people to do so. Why is that?"

... and so on.

We had a fantastic discussion on how to make strategic use of resources to produce higher quality work. We talked about how students submit work they think is fantastic and then are disappointed with their marks, but have no idea why their mark is low. This led to a discussion of the hidden curriculum: what some students understand that other students never realize. Some students know how to make use of resources.

Finally we talked about the limitations of Success Criteria.  How does being handed a checklist at the beginning of a task, such as for the Science Essay, limit them?  My students were insightful:

If you're always given a list of what to do, you never really have to think for yourself or figure things out on your own.

All work ends up looking the same.

You don't have a chance to be creative.

It's possible to be successful without really having learned anything. 


This doesn't mean that students should never be handed a checklist.  Students must understand, though, that sometimes they are following a recipe and sometimes they must make connections and decide how to proceed independently.

The 3D Printer has Arrived

A Makerbot 3D printer has arrived in our classroom thanks to Mr Jared Bennett and the 21 Century Fluencies department. Needless to say it has been a learning experience.

Our greatest challenge has been finding online design tools that will run on our XP School Connect computers. Unfortunately, none of the options recommended by Thingiverse worked well in our Lab. My daughter, Hannah, who is in the first year of a science degree, was home for reading week and came to Dundas Central for the day to help find a solution to our problem. She figured out that our best option would be Tinkercad but that we would need to run it on a different operating system than XP.  She managed to design and print (after a few false starts) using her Windows 8 laptop.  Luckily for us we had recently received a shipment from Computers for Schools that contained 6 VISTA computers. My grade 7 students removed the Windows XP stand alones from my class and replaced them with VISTAs. The library also has 6 VISTA stand alones thanks to the efforts of Mr Bell, so we now have 12 computers available for 3D design.

It has taken us some time to get a successful design. We printed several of the default designs just to see how the printer works and learned that we must not shake nor bump the counter when printing.

Effort 1: messy blob

Effort 2: a fish that shot off the printer when the counter was bumped which caused the object to shift and the printer to catch.  Everyone now knows not to touch the counter or walk heavily on the floor when the printer is running.

Effort 3: We decided to make a simple rectangle just so we could complete a print. Success!

Effort 4: Abbi in grade 7 was the first student to successfully complete a design.

Effort 5: Sebastian in grade 7 leapt forward in design by creating a 2 piece print: a box with a lid.

Effort 6: Jacob printed a fish with an open mouth and we are now considering how to file down some rough edges.

Most students are working on very simple, almost 2 dimensional shapes for their first attempts.

Today something interesting happened. Jade mentioned that it would be cool if the lid to Sebastian's box could be hinged. She made the suggestion just as we were starting a lesson on sentence structure. We were a few minutes into the lesson when Carter's hand suddenly shot up.  "I know how to design the hinge!" The whole time I was teaching, a number of students were considering the hinge design challenge in their heads. Those students launched into a discussion about hinges and design options. It was fascinating to watch and listen as they expressed their 3 dimensional design ideas in words. This was purposeful problem-solving so very, very different from the problems we typically present to them in school settings. It reminded me of the kinds of conversations a previous class used to have when they were designing an app. The level of engagement and meaningfulness is real; the conversation is not an artificial construct happening only because it has been mandated to happen. There is such an obvious difference!

Jamie in grade 7 moved the class forward in their understanding of the possibilities that a 3D printer allows by designing a car with axles and 4 wheels which he will print separately. The idea of creating something with moving parts hadn't occurred to anyone yet and I could once again see ideas sparking as students minds opened.

My grade 6 students are also engaged in the design and printing process.  We had our first successful print of  a student's name. A number of other designs are ready to go. Our discussions have centered on design and printing challenges. What is the best orientation for a print job? What supports need to be in place for a structure not to collapse during printing? What might have caused the errors in print jobs? Each time we encounter a problem, it is an opportunity to think deeply and visualize what might have happened. The thinking, problem-solving and immediate feedback of the process is rewarding. Students are spontaneously sketching and discussing design options, and attempting to predict and prevent print errors.

Set for tomorrow are a table, a cupcake, a curling rock and a robot. A group of boys will be printing mini hockey sticks and pucks to play with at nutrition break. I suppose this means that my meter sticks and masking tape rolls are now safe. :D

A side note:

While Hannah was visiting I asked her in front of the class what she wished she had learned in high school that would have been useful to know for university. Her answer: coding. She now has to code for physics and those students with backgrounds in coding are finding the process much easier.

Triggering More Ideas More Often

The HWDSB West Cluster Integrative Thinking Initiative has had its second day of training. Educators were introduced to Causal Modeling and the Ladder of Inference as tools for helping students understand the complexity of problems as well as for making thinking explicit. As I listened to discussions, it became apparent that my colleagues were really beginning to grasp the power of Integrative Thinking and visualizing how the tools might be applied in different subjects. More than one person mentioned that these tools are not just classroom thinking tools, but learning about them has been personally transformative.

My grade 7 students launched into Integrative Thinking two weeks ago. This time we began with Creativity and the application of  ideas I had been introduced to during session Spurring Creativity: The 3Cs of Creativity conducted by Josie Fung and Darren Karn at. the Rotman 1 day Integrative Thinking Essentials for Educators on February 1, 

At that session, Josie posed some excellent questions: 

1. How do we develop creative confidence in learners? 

2. What are the connections, constraints and kinds of collaboration necessary for creativity to emerge so that more and better ideas for problem solving emerge more often?

We engaged in a number of activities that are designed to break our go to patterns of thinking, to understand how ideas are triggered and to help us defer judgement so that ideas are not shut down before they are fully explored to see where merit lies. These activities teach learners the process of creativity so that when confronted with problems, they are armed with techniques for generating many solutions. 

The concept my grade 7 students worked on over the past week centered on knowing how to leverage the ideas of others to trigger more ideas individually so that the group has many more ideas to work with.  I have conducted web brainstorming activities in the past. Students have worked in groups to generate ideas. What I was not aware of, however, is that a particular group dynamic needs to be in place for the brainstorming to pull as many ideas as possible from members. Students need to be explicitly taught how to brainstorm so that many, many ideas are generated. When addressing the 6 Cs, I now realize when teaching the skills of collaboration, learners must become aware of and skilled in the process of idea generation. 

http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/document/reports/FullanReport_EN_07.pdf

Uses for a Paperclip

One activity directly from Josie and Mark's session was to list uses for a paperclip. The first time was done silently and individually with pencil and paper. Individually, students came up with between 4 and 10 uses. We did the activity again, but this time out loud in a group where possibilities were listed on chart paper. This time in the same time span 40 possibilities were listed.

During the debrief 3 key observations were made.

1. I saw that any idea was acceptable.

2. I had more ideas.

3. When someone said something, that gave me a new idea.

We conducted a number of similar activities over the week so that by the end, students could explain that to get many ideas, ideas must be said out loud and that you must use your group members to get more ideas.