Bring Out the Creative Genius in Your Students

Artist Salvador Dali conceived a method for waking himself up right at the moment he fell asleep. Composer Igor Stravinsky stood on his head in the mornings while Beethoven favored long walks. Society’s highly creative thinkers have unique and unusual ways of keeping focused and innovative, proving there is no single path to creative genius.

          With creativity being considered by some to be the most important skill for the 21^st Century and gifted children craving creative outlets, I decided to develop a unit called “The Creative Genius Project,” which I would like to share. The premise of the project is to have students research the lives of highly creative people they find interesting and study these individuals’ thinking process and daily habits. The ultimate goal is for students to develop their own creative thinking process that personally works for them.

          The project is broken into three phases:

Phase 1

Students select two highly creative individuals (from past or present).  I provide them with a list of possibilities, but they can also propose other people to study. The reason for studying more than one person is to get students to consider the varying creative processes, routines, and habits of these people, understanding there is no one “cookie cutter” method to living a creative life. Next, I require students to write an essay comparing these two individuals in regards to education, work, accomplishments, family life, etc. The information for the essay is gleamed from biographies found online.

Phase 2

The next task is to study the creative processes of the two selected subjects. Students can find articles that discuss this individuals’ work habits, sleep schedules, diet, etc. in hopes of “mapping out” their creative process. Taking that information, students must then create a visual aid showing the process for each of the two studied subjects. Products could include a poster board, PowerPoint, Prezi, etc.

Phase 3

The final step is for students to take what they learned from studying the creative processes of their chosen subjects and develop their own creative thinking process. To share their development, students must create another product, such as a slideshow, to teach others their creative “secrets.”

(In regards to assessment, I build rubrics into each phase, including one for the essay and different scoring guides for the various products. You could also have a presentation rubric).

You’ll notice that the project takes students up the Bloom’s Taxonomy Thinking Pyramid, requiring them eventually to analyze, evaluate, and synthesize what they have learned. As a teacher, I want my students to go far beyond just studying famous people and to take their newly acquired knowledge and insights and implement it into their own lives—lives which will hopefully be more creative as a result

Thanks for reading,

Steve