Creativity X4: Using the Common Core Standards

The Common Core State Standards, with their emphasis on breadth, depth, and higher-level thinking skills, are exemplary vehicles to enhance creative practice and production in the classroom. Because the standards are both general and conceptual in nature, with broader curriculum application and a problem-solving focus, they have the potential to both lay the groundwork and provide the framework for higher-level thinking, including creative and critical thinking. Common Core State Standards hold the promise of providing opportunities for developing creativity through the integration of new ideas, technology, the arts, and higher-level questioning.

Creativity and innovation are considered by P21 Partnership for 21st Century Skills to be some of the most important areas on which to focus work within the Common Core State Standards. Indeed, in the 21st century, creativity and innovation skills are central components of college and career readiness. Creativity x 4 includes four practical, standards-based lesson planning formats to use to develop creativity and higher-level thinking:

Six Thinking Hats®
Encounter Lessons
QuestivitiesTM
SCAMPER

Six Thinking Hats® is a thinking process that identifies six different ways of thinking with each way indicated by a different colored hat. Each way of thinking adds information and helps students look at problems or challenges more creatively and with a variety of points of view.
Encounter Lessons include open-ended questions that help students practice good listening skills, stimulate creativity and higher-level thinking, and provide motivation for all students.
The QuestivitiesTM format consists of a Project Activity and a series of Thinking Questions that stimulate creative and critical thinking and give practice in research skills.
SCAMPER is an acronym for words describing seven different thinking techniques to spark creativity and generate ideas for problem solving. It provides teachers with the means for generating questions and gives students a vehicle for demonstrating higher levels of thinking.



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