Five Ways to Celebrate Creativity Month

Thanks to its partnership with publisher Eye on Education, EducationWorld is pleased to present these classroom ideas for incorporating creativity into instruction.

Did you know that January is considered International Creativity Month? This month, remind your students about the importance of being creative. Give your students the ability to creatively express themselves by providing various options for a particular class assignment. For example, instead of assigning the same writing assignment to every student, offer five variations on the topic to give the students more flexibility to choose something they find worthwhile.

Here are five ways you can celebrate this month with your students:

1. Daily Writing Prompts—Have your students keep a journal and give them daily prompts (you can find fun creative ones by clicking here). Use prompts such as "If you could have any superpower, what would you choose?" or "If you could give one million dollars to any person, who would you give it to and why?" These questions will trigger creative thinking in your students.
2. More Than Meets the Eye—Show your students an image of clouds, or an optical illusion that can be viewed many different ways and ask them to write what they see in the image. Visual thinking is a great way to encourage creative problem solving. You can also expand this by asking students to write a short story based on the image they see. Here are two examples you can use: "Woman Playing in a Man's Ear," and "Old Woman, Young Lady."
3. Video Projects—Particularly for high school, if your school has the capabilities and the resources, you should divide your students into groups and assign them the the task of making short video documentaries. Students can direct and film the scenes and edit them using iMovie of Windows Movie Maker. Once every group is done, host a "screening party," to showcase each group's work. You can even bring in some popcorn!
4. In the News—This is an ideal assignment for middle and high school. Have students choose a news story that interested them and ask them to write their own news report on the story, write a dialogue in which a journalist interviews someone involved in the story, and answer a question like, "what could have gone differently?" (for example: if the truck driver had not answered his cell phone, he would not have caused the car accident).
5. "What If?"—Divide the class into groups and ask them to come up with the most unique "what if" question and answer they can think of. After the groups have finished, have the class compare them and vote on the most creative one. Examples can include: "what if people didn't need to sleep?" or "What if we 'elected' presidents by lottery?"

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