Activities for Boosting Creativity
Hall Houston
Hall Houston is an English Instructor at City University of Hong Kong, English Language Centre. His first book, The Creative Classroom, will be published soon by Lynx Publishing (www.lynxpublishing.com). His professional interests include cross-cultural communication, discourse analysis, creativity and critical thinking.
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Introduction
Faces
Ideas from proverbs
Brainstorming mingle
Photo gallery
Idea poster
Related words
Creativity is about generating ideas. In the following activities, you will find new and intriguing ways of getting students to produce novel ideas and unique solutions to problems. If you like these activities, you'll find more of them in my new book, The Creative Classroom.
Materials: Pictures of people's faces, blackboard, chalk, paper, pens, portable stereo, music CDs
Time: 30 minutes
1. Before class, find close-up pictures of people's faces, preferably faces not known to your students. You should include a wide range of ages and nationalities.
2. Choose an issue or problem, and have students discuss it in pairs for 3 to 4 minutes.
3. Arrange desks in a circle, and place one picture on each desktop.
4. Tell students to walk slowly around the center of the circle. Play music, and when the music stops, tell everyone to sit down in the nearest desk.
5. For 5 minutes, they are all to imagine the person in the picture is sharing his or her ideas about the issue with the student. Everyone takes a few notes on what this person might be saying.
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 a few times.
7. Put desks back where they were. Gather up the pictures. Hold them up one by one, and ask students what they imagined the person saying.
Materials: Paper, pens
Time: 20-30 minutes
1. Ask students to tell you some issues or problems that they are concerned about. Write one of their ideas on the board.
2. Ask students to think of proverbs or traditional sayings from their home country. Give them about 5 minutes to think.
3. Call on a few students to come up to the front and read out one of their proverbs in English. They should explain the meaning and usage of the proverb.
4. Put students in pairs, and ask them to choose one proverb that suggests an idea or solution related to the problem.
Materials: Labels, pens
Time: 45 minutes
1. Before class, ask a friend, neighbor, or friendly stranger to brainstorm about 15 to 20 ideas from a prompt, something fairly down-to-earth (ways to improve self-confidence, how to get along with family members). Number the ideas. Make a few copies of the list, and tape them to the blackboard in your classroom.
2. Ask students to walk up to the board and look over the list. Assign them to find 2 ideas that they find the most attractive, for whatever reason. They write the numbers on a label, and put them on their shirts.
3. Now ask them to wander around and find someone who has one or more of the same numbers they do. Students discuss the ideas they chose, and why they chose them.
4. Next, ask students to try to find someone who doesn't have any of the same numbers they do. Get them to share their reasons for choosing or not choosing some of the ideas.
5. Take all lists down from the board. Invite everyone up to the board to write one or two ideas the original writer didn't have.
6. (Optional) Take a picture (or several pictures) of the board, and give it to the original writer. Ask him to write his or her reaction in a brief note to the class.
Materials: Blackboard, chalk, poster board, paper, pens, cameras
Time: Several classes
1. Choose an issue or problem that you have covered in your course book, and write it up on the board.
2. Put the students into groups of 5 or 6. Tell each group that they are going to create a series of photos related to this issue. They should act out scenes related to the issue, or simulate actions or reactions.
3. For homework they should take the photos, develop them, then put them up on poster board.
4. Hang up the posters, and tell everyone to come up and take a look.
5. Students work in pairs and write down ideas suggested by the pictures.
6. Bring the class together for a discussion of the best ideas.
Materials: Poster board, pens, paint, pictures, glue
Time: Variable
Note: It's best to ask school administration for permission to do this activity.
1. Put your class into 4 groups, and have each group decide on a problem or an issue they want to work on.
2. Tell the groups that they are going to make posters to invite people outside the class to contribute ideas. Give each group a poster board and tell them to write a short statement of the problem at the top, with words of invitation for others to write their ideas on it. They can then decorate it with drawings, paintings, pictures, etc. They should leave plenty of blank space in the middle for others to write their ideas.
3. Students choose a spot around the school to place the poster. Then they wait a few days for students to add ideas.
4. After the posters have attracted many ideas, students should bring them back to class for discussion of the ideas.
Materials: Blackboard, chalk, paper, pens, a die
Time: 30-40 minutes
1. Write a phrase on the board that represents a world issue or problem that you want students to discuss.
2. Put the students into 4 groups. Each group will make a list of 6 words related to the problem. The first group will choose nouns, the second group verbs, the third group adjectives, and the fourth group adverbs.
3. When they are ready, have each group read out its list, as you write the words up on the board. Number the words for each group.
4. Bring a student up in front of the class. He or she will roll a die 4 times, and the numbers will determine words from each list.
5. Put students into pairs, and have each pair try to come up with an idea related to the problem statement using 2 or 3 of the words.
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 a few times.
7. Give each pair a minute or two to read their ideas out to the class.
Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Humanising Large Classes course at Pilgrims website.
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