Creativity Step 4

Creativity: The use of imagination and the generation of new ideas.

Step 4: I generate ideas to improve something

Outcomes

To achieve Step 4, learners will show that they can generate ideas to make something better.

In the previous step, learners focused on how to generate ideas when they were given a clear brief and success criteria. This step continues to focus on generating ideas but without the brief and success criteria being given – instead, to make an improvement, learners have to be able to identify what the success criteria are for themselves.

Learners need to be able to:

Understand the success criteria for a brief
Improve something using those success criteria

Introduction

Ask learners what is meant by 'success criteria'. Use a spider diagram to collate their ideas on the whiteboard or in their books. See the previous step for a recap.
If we are not given success criteria, we can ask ourselves questions to work some out on our own:
- What is this thing trying to do?
- What does the thing do well?
- What could it do better?
For example, if we were designing new boots we might want to make the studs lighter so that we can run faster in them.

Skill Starter

Coaching Criteria

Model a recently learnt sports technique or skill to the group, as if you were practising this for the first time. Ask learners to discuss ideas in small groups on how they could coach you to improve this skill. Remind learners of the prompt questions:

What are they trying to do?
What are they doing well?
How could they do it better?
Which of the improvements matter?

Ask the group to give feedback on their ideas.

Optional: Ask learners to choose a skill they’d like to improve and repeat the activity in their groups, taking turns to provide feedback.

10 mins

Individual activity

Group activity

Discussion

Teach & Apply

Once we know the success criteria, we can work out how to make something better. When improving something, you might start from a problem that you have experienced in using the product or service.
However, it is really important that we think about whether your idea might solve a problem but accidentally make something else worse.
For example, if we were designing new boots we might want to make the studs lighter so that we can run faster in them. This is an improvement. But, the lighter material of the new studs might not grip the surface as well and be less safe for running.

Optional Activity

Warming Up Ideas

In pairs or small groups, set learners the challenge of generating ideas to improve the team warm up activity.

You may choose to highlight an aspect in particular which you’d like to improve upon or build in time for learners to discuss this independently.

Learners can then run their activity in their small groups or, if appropriate, take turns leading the whole team warm up.

When taking turns, encourage learners to pause and discuss how they can keep improving their ideas.

Optional: Which muscles haven’t been warmed up yet? How can we keep the activities varied?

20 mins

Group activity

Active

Reflection & Assessment

Embed these strategies across your teaching and coaching to help learners apply what they’ve learnt.

Learners can be encouraged to think more widely across their experience in sports, education and at home to identify things, whether products or services, that they could improve.

Use these ideas for ways of assessing this skill step to help you check learners’ understanding and confidence.

This step is best assessed through a structured challenge. For example, by setting learners a challenge to improve something that they are familiar with, and providing them with some cues to think through the logical process to ensure they really are making improvements, not just changes.
Ask learners these key reflection questions:
- How can we work out what success criteria are for different things?
- How can we come up with lots of ideas?
- How do we know if an idea will make something better or not?