Generating ideas

Students in an English class were asked to write group essays on a poem of their choice and then to reflect on their creative thinking.

This student made a model of a house for a Science Fair project and applied his knowledge of circuitry from Science to put in lighting.

Once he had lighting, he wished he had plumbing too but could not immediately see a way to do that. However, one day he had an “Aha!” moment about how to get running water in his house:

“One day I was drinking from a juice box and I squeezed too hard and the juice went everywhere.  I thought I could use that idea for the water in my house.” 

In this classroom, an hour a week is set aside as “Genius Hour”, a time when students can pursue their own interests by working on projects of their own choosing.

The teacher found that initially the students did quite safe, school-like projects but he decided to “trust the process” and persevere. Some students are now in their second year with this teacher and have started to find interests and passions to pursue.

A class was planning a secret Santa exchange. This student, who is the class’s “social coordinator”, decided they should make a vending machine for presents with an elf inside who would deliver the presents down a slide. She got the idea last year and did something along those lines, but she wanted to refine her idea. She engaged about a quarter of the students in the class in this project and they worked on it at lunchtime.

After reading the story, Not A Stick by Antoinette Portis, students asked to turn a stick into something new and innovative. All of the students were able to complete the task and create something using the stick and most of their work would illustrate Profile 2.

However, this student made the task fit his existing passion for invention and his current creative project.

This student had drawn a detailed picture of a mine that he wanted to share with the class. He knows a lot about mines – he plays Minecraft and his dad works in the mining industry internationally. He is aware of his creativity (“I have a creative mind”) and clearly values it. But where his ideas come from is a mystery to him. He says it’s a “secret” but knows that’s not quite the right analogy:

The teacher gave an English class the following assignment:

In a joint outdoor education project with three other classes (about 85 students), Aboriginal elders shared their knowledge of traditional medicines based on local plants. Students then had the opportunity to apply this knowledge to develop their own/creative medicines. These girls were very engaged in this task.

A student was reluctant to throw away or even recycle plastic plant tags because she remembered that much earlier in the year, the class had been talking about reusing. So she suggested that everyone in the class use them as bookmarks.

As part of a science unit on fruits and vegetables and the different kinds of plants that produce them, the teacher presented a slide show on the work of Italian artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo who created art works based on fruits and vegetables. She had the students identify the fruits and vegetables Arcimboldo used in his work. She then had students go to a fruit and vegetable table she had prepared for inspiration for their own works.