An emphasis on creative thinking skills in the classroom necessitates providing students with open-ended assignments and encouragement as they search for new answers. Unlike typical textbook questions that have a given right answer, creative questioning and thinking assumes that there may not be one right answer, but many possibilities.
Primarily Creativity bubbles over with ideas to spark creative talent in young students. Get creative juices flowing with lessons in eight areas of creativity including:
- curiosity,
- fluency,
- originality,
- imagination,
- awareness,
- flexibility,
- elaboration, and
- perseverance.
Each section includes an explanation on the skill, questions that foster this type of thinking, a list of tasks, and several attractive, reproducible worksheets. This comprehensive text provides an enjoyable, balanced introduction to creative thinking.
For more problem ideas on integrating creativity in your classroom, see Primarily Problem Solving.
Grades 1-3
Biography
Judy Leimbach received her master's degree in Instructional Strategies in Gifted Education from National-Louis University. She has 14 years of experience teaching in regular classrooms, kindergarten through fifth grade, and 14 years experience teaching gifted students in grades 1-5. In addition, she has spent 5 years supervising groups of student teachers at Wheaton College.
When she first started teaching in a gifted program, there were few materials available for gifted students in primary grades, so Leimbach began writing her own and had several books published. Having previously taught in the regular classroom, she also was very aware of the need for high quality, easy-to-use materials for regular classroom teachers to use for their gifted students in both primary and intermediate grades. She began working with other teachers, including her daughter, a middle school math teacher, to develop materials to meet that need.
Joan Vydra is coauthor of No Problem!: Taking the Problem Out of Mathematical Problem Solving and Primarily Creativity.
