Module 8-Synthesizing

The NEW Way of Thinking Creatively

Jolene Roseth, CEP 818

“Creative people have always combined many ways of feeling and knowing simultaneously…equivalents melding sensual and intellectual concerns.”-Root-Bernstein (p. 309)

What is creativity as it relates to my class and my life?  That was the question I asked myself before reading about the seven cognitive categories for restructuring the way we teach and learn in education.  To be a creative person it is essential that people use a variety of strategies, tools, feelings, and knowledge to create and understand new knowledge.   Using the seven tools for creative thinking described in Root-Bernstein’s book Sparks of Genius: The 13 Thinking Tools of the World’s Most Creative People, one can expand and build on their ability to see and learn things not previously known.   Creativity is one of the most important tools for a child to develop in their educational years.  Having the ability to take a project and make it theirs, leads students to deeper thinking and a greater enjoyment of the school setting.  It builds confidence and skills at a deeper level than simply following directions by rote.

One must learn how to think outside the box using their pre-existing ideas and experiences to create something Novel, Effective, and Whole (NEW).  Creativity is unique, valuable, and aesthetically pleasing.  Using the acronym NEW, Mishra and Henriksen propose that novel ideas are new and surprising, and did not previously exist in that form.  A novel idea may hold no importance if it is not effective.  A creative solution is effective if the results hold value and are relevant.  Lastly, Mishra and Koehler (2008) add that creative solutions and products need more than the ideas being novel and effective.  They need to also hold a strong aesthetic presence and be considered whole.  These three terms:  Novel, Effective, and Whole must be combined and work together to define creativity. 

Great inventors have used their creativity to create authentically new ideas that did not previously exist.  For children, being creative is using ideas already presented and using them in new ways.  The concept of “twisting the knobs” to slightly alter an existing piece of work or creative piece is what many children, and adults alike, do to be creative. Henriksen & Mishra stated,  “…Creativity, though it may feel mysterious, is not magic, and is not out of reach of our understanding.” (p. 15).  In order to develop children’s creative thinking processes, teachers need to provide activities for children that will engage and enrich the ideas and knowledge they currently have.  To be creative it requires a wide range of opportunities and disciplines such as art, music, poetry, and theater to garner the wide variety of strengths and interests children have and use these to help develop creative thinkers.  

One activity that I would like to introduce to my classroom and first grade team is the concept of Reader’s Theater.   Reader’s Theater is a strategy used by educators to help students with fluency, by providing opportunities for repeated readings.  I have never used this idea and find the concept fascinating and feel it would be an exciting addition to my classroom.  It requires children to practice their reading skills, but also to foster their creativity by letting their personalities and unique skills come through.  I would take this a step further, and use this activity to create a modified play. “Engagement is a critical piece of building reading and comprehension skills and plays an important part in reading motivation as well.”  (Reading Rockets Website, http://bit.ly/1ysZWqL)  It would then allow for creative design of costumes, props, and music.  So much of today’s reading instruction is pouring information into their brains and hoping they learn it.  It’s sitting for long periods of time listening with little engagement or enjoyment for what is being taught.  How can I develop life long learners, when they are not enjoying the process?  It will be important to teach the basic phonological awareness skills, along with phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.  Many of these skills can be learned through hands-on and active opportunities by allowing students to be involved in putting on a play.

Root-Bernstein laid out seven cognitive tools for becoming creative learners.  They include perceiving, patterning, abstracting, embodied thinking, modeling, and playing.  Each of these tools helps us to think about creativity differently and adapt our thinking and teaching to help others (and ourselves) become creative people.  By using these strategies to help create an activity that is both for learning and enjoyment, the Reader’s Theater concept will hopefully be a success.

The first cognitive tool we will look at is “perceiving”.  In Sparks of Genius, Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein state, “Initially, all knowledge about the world is acquired through observing, paying attention to what is seen, heard, touched, smelled, tasted, or felt within the body.” (Root-Bernstein, pg. 25)  What better way to observe good reading habits than to have children watch fluent readers reading?  To watch, observe, or perceive what it looks like to be a good reader, with accuracy and a smooth cadence, can give confidence to many children.  For children with less confidence, seeing others act out a scene, or even for those with few line who are still able to wear a costume, can give the reluctant reader hope that they will be able to do the same thing.

The second cognitive tool to foster creativity in my classroom is looking at patterns.  With the Reader’s Theater program, students would be able to use this concept when looking for and deciding on scripts to read. Creating patterns allows us to make sense of otherwise complex ideas, actions, and thoughts.  Patterns bring order to a world sometimes filled with chaos.   Having a story with repeating lines builds confidence in students.  The structure of Readers’ Theater also builds on the sequence and order students read their parts.  For instance in the script The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, http://bit.ly/1G7cB8E the story lists seven narrators that read.  They start with readers 1-7 then repeat two more times with the same order.  The children would automatically be able to identify the pattern of who reads when.  Patterns are reassuring when there is order to them. 

Modeling is another cognitive tool Root-Bernstein explains in their book.  This concept intertwines with these other forms of creativity, abstraction and embodied thinking.  They state, “Models can be formulated only after a real system or situation has been intensively observed, simplified by abstracting critical features, rescaled for human manipulation, and embodied physically or expressed in some verbal, mathematical, or artistic form.” (p. 230) These concepts of modeling, abstraction and embodied thinking would help foster my student’s creativity.  These cognitive tools will work well together when working to create a classroom scene that represents our story.  If we were to read and perform the story The Hungry Caterpillar, one can imagine a small tiny caterpillar that is eating an apple.  For a play we often have to use items that represent the characters or props.  The students would have to use their imagination for how to depict the caterpillar.  They would use this form of abstraction to bring the characters and scene to life.  Would they think of a costume, design a pattern on paper to represent its body, or bring in a stuffed caterpillar? Or would they have bushes or trees, and if so how would they decide which materials would represent the tree? They would have to scale their models to fit the scene.  Since this is a small play they would need to “act” out parts of the story. Using our bodies to physically interact by touching and feeling builds a stronger connection between our physical self and the knowledge to be learned or gained.  Perfect example of “embodied thinking”.   

Playing is what most children enjoy the most.  Any opportunity to learn through play becomes an opportunity for children to use their creativity.  Creating the opportunity through a Reader’s Theater activity, allows students the ability to play and learn at the same time.  The symbolic play of make-believe helps children act out what the characters, think, do, and feel.  They get to dress like the character, think like the character, and act like the character.  In Root-Bernstein’s book, the authors state, “Playing is therefore more than just exercising other tools for thinking; it is a tool in and of itself.” (p. 249) Play is a great motivator!  It fosters, creativity, interests, and pure enjoyment for learning.

The synthetic approach to creativity is bringing all of these ideas together.  We must combine our thoughts, feelings, memories, and knowledge to transform our thinking. (Root-Bernstein, p. 296)  Creating a structure for my classroom by introducing the Reader’s Theater idea, cultivates a thorough and synthetic opportunity for creative learning.  Education has shifted back and forth over the years regarding what is being taught and how it’s being taught.  Our current education is a strictly scripted curriculum through specified reading programs and specific math curriculum that teachers are being told to “teach this way”.  There are fewer opportunities for teachers to be creative and this leads to fewer opportunities for students to express their creative abilities.  “We need not change what we teach.  A synthetic education requires only that we change how we teach…” (Root-Bernstein, p. 317)  Bringing together all curricular areas, such as art, music, and other core classes, we can create a classroom that creates diverse learners.

I have learned this semester that all students have the capabilities to be creative learners.  Learning how to teach students in a way that allows them to utilize the seven cognitive tools for creative learners will create life long learners. Students will be able to use their knowledge and their imagination to produce innovative and original ideas. “Education is meant to open many doors, leading to many rooms.” (Root-Bernstein, p. 325)  As these doors open, so do the doors that lead to unlimited potential in children. 

Book/Journal References: 

Henriksen, D., Mishra, P. & the Deep-Play Research Group (2014).  Twisting knobs and connecting      things:  Rethinking Technology & Creativity in the 21^st Century. Tech Trends (58), p. 15-19.

Mishra, P., Henriksen, D. & the Deep-Play Research Group (2013).  A New Approach to Defining and     Measuring Creativity:  Rethinking Technology & Creativity in the 21^st Century.  Tech Trends (57) 5, p. 5-13.

Root-Bernstein, R. & M. (1999).  Sparks of Genius: The 13 Thinking Tools of the

           World’s Most Creative People. Houghton Mifflin Company:  Boston & New York

Other References:

Interview of Kelly Strouse, former Kindergarten teacher in East Lansing, on “What is Creativity?”

Website:  Reading Rockets, http://bit.ly/1ysZWqL

Website:  Dr. Young’s Reading Room, http://bit.ly/1G7cB8E

Elevator Pitch:

I've created a Glog to share my ideas about using creativity to guide reading and promote creativity.  Here is my link:  http://joroseth.edu.glogster.com/cep-818-creativity/

Twitter:
You can find my tweet by searching #CEP818.  My name is @Joroseth