Extra-Curricular Competitions that Celebrate Creativity
There are several national academic extra-curricular competitions that not only encourage creativity from students—they require it. Here are five I’ve done with students that most certainly fostered creative thinking. I like to use national competitions because the challenges and infrastructures to evaluate them are already in place. 1. Destination Imagination Destination Imagination (DI) is a […]
5 Book Series that Show Gifted People Being Creative
Whenever someone reads a book, they want to be drawn to characters who think, act, and look like they do. This goes for girls, this goes for black and brown people, and this goes for handicapped folks as well. It’s no different for a gifted person: they want to see people who are like them, […]
Creativity Blooms Best in Summer
By the time summer rolls around, students are done learning and want nothing more than to spend the next three months doing as little learning as possible. However, when it comes to creativity, summer is actually the best time to be learning. After all, it’s the most sunny of the seasons, and sunnier days support […]
Creative Ways to Challenge Gifted Students
Usually, when people hear the word “gifted”, the first thing they think is that this person is smart. Typically this means that things come easily to them, and/or they’re particularly skilled in an academic subject area such as math or ELA. The problem with this characterization is that it often overlooks the fact that giftedness […]
STEM: The Perfect Conduit for Creativity
Imagine the following scenario. You give a student a few popsicle sticks, a sheet of sandpaper, a handful of paperclips, a rainbow of chenille sticks, a couple of rubber bands, a fistful of cotton balls, half a dozen toothpicks, and a glue gun, and you tell her, “make me a cell phone stand.” There are […]
The Possibilities of a Cardboard Box
When children receive presents for a birthday or holiday, parents often lament after spending tons of money on some newfangled toy, only to watch their child find more fascination with the box it came in. Why is this? What is so intriguing about something without any bells nor whistles? What is it about four sides […]
How to Create Your Own Makerspace in Any Classroom
Creating a culture in your classroom where students can feel free to tap into their creativity can be tricky. Sometimes you need to take a big first step. One of the easiest ways to do this is to create a Makerspace in your classroom. What is a Makerspace? Makerspaces came about during the STEM era, […]
How to Use Creativity to Get Out of a Rut
When I began teaching, I had lots of great role models: teachers who had been in the classroom for 30 years and still loved it and teachers who were taking on new challenges even late into their careers. Unfortunately, I also witnessed teachers who were the opposite. These teachers were so burnt out in the […]
Asking the “Why” in the Arts
When a student is working on a math problem, we always implore them to show their work. There are many reasons why we do this: To know what they were thinking To understand the process they were going through To know how they arrived at this product And yet, when a student creates a piece […]
Creativity is Everywhere, You Just Have to Look for It
When people hear the term creativity, they typically associate it with artistic ability. As my younger daughter tells me, “Daddy, you are not creative because you cannot paint pictures like Mommy and me.” I plead with her (I know. Pleading with a middle schooler is a sure sign of insanity.) that I have written over […]
Go Big or Go Home:
Encouraging Risk-Taking in the Classroom
Why go big? Go big or go home is a phrase we frequently use to encourage someone to take a risk. Why is going big so important? Because the “big” is where great things happen. There are many similar sayings out there, such as “no one ever achieved greatness by playing it safe” or “great […]