Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

Figure 40.3
Idea Trees for Witches’ Farms
Creative Problem Solving 305
USING CREATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING STRATEGIES IN CURRICULUM UNITS
Teachers can offer students creative assignments or have them use creative problem solving
strategies in a variety of ways in curriculum units. A number of examples are shown in Table 40.4.
In this subsection I will discuss ways of using these in culminating assignments, at the beginning
of units or topics, or in other subject areas.
Culminating Assignments. If teachers use a creative assignment—a playful or fanciful
activity—as a culminating project for a unit, this can create a purposeful context for reviewing
and organizing a great deal of the material from the unit. It can also give the class a shared
knowledge base with which to be conceptually playful. Here are three examples:
In an accounting class, the teacher asked students to imagine that they won a $1,000,000 in a lottery.
They were to brainstorm a list of ideas for how they would want to use the winnings. Then they were
to prepare financial statements to show all transactions and summaries one year later. The students
were asked to complete Future Projection Charts to generate ideas for entries in their statements.
In a word-processing course, students were asked to develop application forms/templates for potential
life partners to complete.
In a grade 2 or 3 classroom, as Halloween approached and the class was concluding a unit on farms,
the teacher had students work in groups to make floor murals of witches’ farms. To produce ideas for
their witches’ farms, the teacher had the class force connections between an Idea Tree about farms
and an Idea Tree about witches. Figure 40.3 shows such trees with only the main branches labeled.
The culminating assignments do not always have to be extensive or time-consuming. It is
mainly important that students find them engaging and that they provide a reason for reviewing
the material in the unit and using strategies to generate conceptually playful ideas. For example,
After a unit on Halloween safety rules, the teacher might ask the students to each make a poster that
uses a Halloween character to teach a safety rule. Each student makes only one poster to advertise
one rule, but in the process of doing so considers all the safety rules there are to choose from. The
students’ posters collectively reiterate all the safety rules as well.
Playful or fanciful activities can take the form of creating games, dramatic performances,
murals or three-dimensional constructions, posters, news reports, story plot lines. Being aware
of themes, preoccupations, or activities of high interest to students can help teachers to imagine
suitable creative assignments.
At the Beginning of Units or Topics. There can be many benefits to having students make Idea
Trees or Attributes trees at the beginning of a unit. Here are two examples: