Blog Post 1, Creativity and Giftedness

My question about this unit actually is about assessment. In this blog prompt, you ask us to think of ways we might encourage or assess creativity. That got me thinking... how does one assess creativity? The book gives us a checklist (for identifying creative students for gifted programs), but I think that some of the most creative students are the ones that you don't notice right away. Also, sometimes (especially in middle school), some of the most creative students are embarrassed or shy, and therefore don't broadcast their higher order thinking. How can we assess creativity?

Creativity is a form of higher order thinking because it involves divergent thinking: coming up with more than one solution. Convergent thinking, or coming up with one right answer, is typically what's common. Divergent thinking involves a lot of critical thinking and risk taking, as well as questioning -which many students in a school setting are afraid to do. I usually think of creativity as part of Bloom's Taxonomy, which helps me to explain why it's higher order thinking. If you look at Bloom's Taxonomy, it begins with "remember" and "understand" - things that don't require as much thought. As you go up, you need more critical thinking - words such as "apply" and "analyze". "Create" is one of the last words in the taxonomy, and for a reason - it requires such higher order thinking to take everything you know about a subject and try to come up with new ideas and/or more than one answer.

Most people assume that musicians are creative. Therefore, coming up with ideas to foster creativity should be easy. While the arts are a more creative outlet, I would say that I'm not very creative at all - and yet, music is my major. There are some people who will be in choir class who are afraid to be creative, or aren't used to having an outlet to do so. I will try to encourage it by having the class participate in it a lot! For example, I think one of the most creative things musicians do is improvise. I didn't do a lot of that in high school, and now I always feel uncomfortable when I have to. So, in my choir class, I'll take a lot of opportunities to have each student do so. It doesn't even have to be singing if they don't want it to - they can improvise rhythms as well. Improvising is literally creating on the spot, so it's a great way for people to get comfortable with their creativity. I would also use composition as a creativity tool. The class that I'm observing has a composition project, and it's a great way for students to begin to understand what it's like to create something and be proud of your work.