Creativity

Definition: Thinking of novel (new) solutions. "If you look under the hood of creativity, what you see is pattern recognition (the brain's ability to link new ideas together) and risk-taking (the courage to bring those new ideas into the world). " - Steven Kotler

Motto: "I am creative, conceptualizing (thinking of) something useful, coming up with ideas that result in something worthwhile." ¹

____________________________________________

The Strengths Spotlight Podcast Series: Listen to the Institute of Positive Education descriptors of the strengths that include integration strategies.

What it Looks Like and How to Encourage:

• Seeking new and multiple ways to approach things

• Making connections within the ideation process (connecting the dots)

• Coming up with multiple approaches to handling a situation, problem, etc.

• Support with growth mindset language and strategies

• Respond to questions with guiding questions

• Developing and using a self-talk algorithm around how to engage one’s creativity

• Promote a language around creativity

• Finding multiple ways to represent ideas (e.g., writing, drawing, song creation, physical movement)

• Situational analysis (Teachable Moments)

Teacher Strategies to Personally Strengthen Their Creativity:

• Grow awareness of your strengths by making them more visible. Depending upon your learning style and preferred modality, choose tools from your instructional toolkit to apply to yourself. Examples: Audio Recording as in having a friend interview you to record your very own "strengths podcast"|Concept Mapping|Outlining|Sketchnoting. Find ways to show how you combine strengths in some situations while also connecting to your talents/abilities, skills, interests, and values.

• Use the CL construct of model, celebrate and enable to develop some personalized strategies.

Character Lab Creativity Teaching Strategies and Tips: How to offer age-appropriate versions of the strategies? Note: There are dozens and dozens of tips from Character Lab. These choices are filtered for elementary school and practicality to bring this strength into the culture of one's classroom.

• Build Connections for Classrooms

• Compound Interest

• Finding Flow

• The Creative Spirit

• Use WOOP to set goals supported by Character Strengths. (WOOP Worksheet from Character Lab. A more scaffolded worksheet.) Grades 3-5 lesson. WOOP App: Android | IOS

• Character Day - Find ways to participate and elaborate on the activities offered for this annual event.

• Creativity Calendar - Choose a month to post a daily creative activity for everyone to try. Here is a kindness example for February.

• Creativity Sketchbook - Introduce Da Vinci's notebook as a model for students to keep a sketchbook where they record problem-solving ideas, connections, inventions, art, music, etc. A guiding prompt to support creative and lateral thinking when students encounter new information is to think "that makes me wonder who-what-when-where-why...". Students can use a paper or digital journal to record their sketches and journaling efforts. Sketchnoting and mind mapping are helpful tools for this strategy.

• Creativity Websites - There are so many websites and apps that promote creativity. Scroll down the page to find a few resource sites.

• Flow - "Psychological Flow captures the positive mental state of being completely absorbed, focused, and involved in your activities at a certain point in time, as well as deriving enjoyment from being engaged in that activity." (Positive Psychology) You might have heard of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi who is known as one of the founders of Positive Psychology who also is known for his research on flow. It is really worth one's time to take a deeper dive into his work. Here are some articles that overlap: What is Flow in Psychology? | 8 Characteristics of Flow | Flow Theory in Psychology | Flow is listed here as creativity is often a component of flow and with some of the other Character Strengths as an opportunity for you to expand the wellness vocabulary of your students. We want to give students opportunities to work distraction-free on activities of their choosing that can put them into a state of flow. We want to be very purposeful to model and acknowledging the wellness benefits that flow can offer us. If you feel inclined, you can work to design and coach your students into potential flow experiences. This article offers some strategies.

• Genius Time - There are various approaches to giving students time to apply their curiosity in pursuing a question they wish to answer. Look to design a way to have students inquire, research, and report their learning back in a creative way to the class. Using the design cycle is one approach to take. Here is one resource to help students engage Character Strengths during their creative time.

• Inward-Outward ³ - Think of ways to engage your creativity internally for your own wellbeing. Think of ways to express creativity outward to benefit others. Example: Inward- Come up with a few creative ways to handle a personal problem. Outward- Create a painting, poem, song, etc. to share beauty with others.

• Sketchnoting to Paint the Strength Picture - Guide your students to make visible their self-understanding of how they currently engage with each strength. A secondary activity is to have your students sketch out new ways they can exercise each strength. We know that going from thinking about ideas to then making them visible often leads to taking action with the ideas. The first step to this strategy is to teach your students about sketchnoting. You will find applications of this tool across all areas of your curriculum. :) Students can take pictures of their sketches to upload them to SeeSaw to then explain their thinking.

• Strength Chart - Teachers have lots of ways to bring strengths into the language and culture of their classrooms. A teacher at one of my schools connected to the school core values by having the names of students on small sticky labels that he stuck to the school core values poster. He would place the student's name by the value on the chart in the following ways that are adapted here for the strengths. One technique for students who want the class to support his/her effort to grow a strength is to have his/her name placed beside the designated strength(s). A second strategy is for teachers to verbally highlight students who are applying their strengths at the moment in class. The teacher then puts the student’s name by the strength on the chart.

• Superhero Creation - Challenge your students to create a superhero who maximizes this strength. One approach is to have your students draw a picture of the character with a biography that describes how the superhero uses the strength in his/her life. You can provide categories such as physical, intellectual (thinking), emotional, and social as to how the superhero demonstrates the strength. This activity could take the form of playing cards that students then create games around.

• Universal Design for Learning (UDL) - Use the UDL principle of providing multiple means of action and expression to help students communicate their creativity. Technology can offer opportunities but they need to be balanced with not spending too much time in the construction process.

• Other possibilities - Creativity Superhero marketing design projects, Student-created videos highlighting creativity stories, high school IB students using CAS time to produce age-appropriate videos for ES students answering questions of “What is creativity? What does it look like in action?”, older student buddies and their ES partners from time to time to share creativity engagement efforts, incorporate into co-curricular activities like field trips, after school activities, assemblies, etc.

Grade(s) Specific Teaching Strategies: The following ideas are offered as jumping-off points for teachers to build from and adapt to their needs.

EC-K>

• Lesson Listing - Access teacher-created lessons and those from other providers. (To be developed)

• Storybook readings, digital media, and share time by teachers and students to build understanding.

• Use the prompt “how did we show/demonstrate creativity in this activity?”

• Use visuals of toolkits and tools engaging language of creating our "strength toolkits" with strengths as tools.

1-3>

• Grades 1-2> Do storybook readings and use digital media that involve curiosity. Eventually could lead to students writing their own storybooks about characters who engage their creativity.

• Lesson Listing - Access teacher-created lessons and those from other providers. (To be developed)

• Use the prompt “how did we show/demonstrate creativity in this activity?”

• Use visuals of toolkits and tools engaging language of creating our "strength toolkits" with strengths as tools.

• Weekly Creativity Seesaw Journal post: will need to develop prompt and potential categories for students to draw a picture of and/or take a photo of their creativity in action. They then voice-record their response.

4-5>

• Ask the following: "How can we move from ideas about curiosity to then create?". Scaffold an activity or two that guides students to think about ways they can act upon their curiosity to then create.

• Journal - Google Doc or paper version. The teacher provided prompts and in time, work with students to create new prompts. Could be a section of their portfolio.

• Lesson Listing - Access teacher-created lessons and those from other providers. (To be developed)

• See if Edward de Bono’s Six Hats Thinking can be adapted in some form.

• Use the prompt “ how did we demonstrate creativity in this activity?”

Learning About and Being Creative:

Websites>

• Design Squad at PBS for STEAM problem-solving ideas

• NGAKIDS Art Zone from the National Gallery of Art

• Poetry4Kids writing resource

• San Francisco Symphony Kids to "hear, listen, have fun, and play games with music"

• StoryBird illustrated story maker

• StoryJumper illustrated story maker

• Tate Create Activity Center from the Tate in London

• The Artist's Toolkit to learn how to create art

• Word Cloud generator from Tadexo

Books>

• Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World by Adam Grant

• Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind by Scott Berry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire

Parent Engagement:

• Ask someone to video record the strength in action and publicize the efforts via social media (#----------) and the school website.

• Family Tree of Strengths: Provide parents with definitions and what strengths can look like in action. Provide a family tree graphic organizer with space for names and the individual’s main strengths. Offer prompts to guide parents to explain how family members and earlier generations lived specific strengths.

• Have students take their character cards home to teach their parents about their strengths.

• Share the Right Question Institute resources page for parents

• Strength-based Parenting - Share with your parents the Dr. Lea Waters website which includes resources and information on her book. Here is an article to help with your understanding of strength-based parenting.

• Teachers send specific reminders to have family talks around the creativity reflection products the students produce.

• Teachers offer ideas for parents to share with their children weekly examples of their experiences of creativity.

• Use our various communication pathways to inform parents of their children's creative actions.

• VIA Strengths Survey: Send parents information about the strengths and the English language Strengths Survey that they can take. The results can offer a discussion starting point for families.

Character Lab Research References

Character Lab Image Source

¹ Niemiec, R. M., & McGrath, R. E. (2019). The power of character strengths: appreciate and ignite your positive personality. Cincinnati, OH: VIA Institute on Character.

² Embedding Character Strengths. Institute of Positive Education. With permission.

³ Niemiec, Ryan M., and Neal H. Mayerson. The Strengths-Based Workbook for Stress Relief: a Character Strengths Approach to Finding Calm in the Chaos of Daily Life. New Harbinger Publications, Inc., 2019.