This document provides strategies for developing creativity and critical thinking in students. It suggests encouraging students to explore their environment with their senses, become interested in many things, and believe they can learn to be more creative. Students should be taught what skills are involved in creativity and critical thinking, given opportunities to practice these skills, and have their work assessed. Some specific strategies discussed are comparing, observing, classifying, imagining, and criticizing activities and ideas.

1. Strategies for
Developing Creativity
And Critical Thinking
Myrna Skeen
Professor Torres
Secondary Teaching Methods
6 March 2017

2. Creativity is found in all areas of life
and is not limited to the arts,
to geniuses, or to the talented.
Creative thinking should be structured
into the curriculum and
encouraged through open-ended challenges.
Lang and Evans 2006

3. Let’s look at some ideas
for encouraging creativity

4. Encourage students to explore their environment
Have them use all of their senses and combinations
Of senses. Have them describe the things they
Find interesting. Let them discover how to look at things
With fresh eyes.
Lang and Evans 2006

5. Encourage students to become interested in many things.
Vary activities, take students on field trips,
bring in speakers,
and use media to help students
“stretch their minds.”
Lang and Evans 2006

6. Provide school time to encourage creativity
Structure activities or exercises
that require originality or problem solving.
Have students suggest new uses for old things.
Make frequent use of brainstorming and creative activities.
Let them know that creativity is sought.
Lang and Evans 2006

7. Help students believe they can
learn to become more creative.
Few inventors, scientists, or artists
were very creative at first.
Reward students who show evidence of
creativity, and reward improvement.
Lang and Evens 2006

8. Teach students what is involved in creativity
Help them learn that creativity is influenced
by the types, number,
and originality
of alternatives produced.
Train students to use specific thinking skills
and inquiry and
problem-solving processes and
how to transfer knowledge of
these into new situations.
Lang and Evans 2006

9. “To become critical thinkers,
students need
Instruction on what is involved
in doing critical Thinking,
interesting content,
opportunity to practice
It, and assessments of their attempts at
critical thinking” (Lang and Evans 2006).

10. Let’s look at some ideas you can use to
Encourage your students
to be critical thinkers.

11. Comparing
Comparing activities lead students to
additional insights and awareness.
As a result of many experiences
in making comparisons, students learn
how to observe perceptively
and compare before drawing conclusions.
Lang and Evans 2006

12. Observing
When we are observing, we can
make visual observations of data.
Observing also can involve
listening, touching, or smelling.
The sense evidence used
must be checked for accuracy.
Students must be made aware of the
possibility of
distortion and thus
false inference and misinterpretation.
Lang and Evans 2006

13. Observing
Continued
We want perceptiveness, acuity, and accuracy.
Reporting is needed for the accuracy
of observation to be checked.
Observing should lead to more
accurate data on which to base conclusions,
and to greater understanding.
Like any other skill,
practice is required for proficiency.
Lang and Evans 2006

14. Classifying
Classifying involves examining an assortment of items
and sorting them into related groups.
Each grouping is given a name.
When they are classifying,
students can process data mentally
and organize them systematically.
Ability to classify helps us
bring order into our lives.
Lang and Evans 2006

15. Imagining
For imagining, students are asked to let their minds travel
to whatever vistas they can invent,
to create freely and to exercise that
part of the mind that often goes untapped.
In imagining there is a release from rules and regulations
and unbinding from data.
Lang and Evans 2006

16. Imagining
Continued
Divergent thinking is promoted.
Imagining leads to creations and
inventions;
it brings humor, joy, spontaneity,
and beauty into our lives. A
feeling of accomplishment and
enhanced self-concept can result
from this rich inner resource.
Lang and Evans 2006

17. Criticizing
Criticizing lets students use a
higher level of cognition and
sharpen the thinking skills
that will improve the quality of their lives.
Lang and Evans 2006

18. References
Lang, H. R., & Evans, D. N. (2006). Models, strategies, and methods for effective
teaching . : Allyn and Bacon, Inc.