Creativity Blog Post 1

List a question, confusion, or something that surprised you about the Creativity/Gifted chapter.

I’d never thought of creativity in relation to giftedness. I was surprised by the original giftedness being the top two of the population. I wonder if the percentage would be of people their age or of the entire population. It would be difficult for a 2^nd grader to compete with a person with their master’s degree. I imagine that it’s only versus people their age. I need a better way to remember this chapter. I understood pretty much everything, but I wouldn’t be able to tell about many of the concepts if I was asked to do so.

How is creativity a form of higher order thinking? What would creativity look like in your content area? Think about how you might encourage or assess creativity.... 

Creativity is a form of higher thinking because you have to think of things you know and how they could be related to what you’re working with/trying to figure out. Being creative may be natural to people (they are inclined to “think out of the box”), but each instance of creativity is different. I want to teach elementary students, so the possibilities are nearly endless. Elementary students tend to get little hands-on projects. I can give suggestions or a “create your own within these limitations” project. I used to do math creatively in elementary and middle school. I couldn’t understand it the way it was being taught, so I looked at patterns and came up with my own way to solve the problems. The teachers sometimes got mad when I would do that because it was more difficult for them to follow my strategy, but I still came up with the correct answer. The “create your own within these limitations” project would encourage creativity. I can assess it by thinking of how far out of the ordinary the project is. Is it pretty much doing exactly what I said or did they have some fun with it.