ALEX Learning Activity

Students will learn to expand their creative thinking and generate original ideas as a media artist. They will draw on their personal knowledge to generate many, varied, and unusual ideas, activating metacognition to increase productive thinking.

This activity is the first of four to meet Media Arts Standard 5.1:

Using Productive Thinking in Media Arts

Identifying and Choosing a Message in Media Arts

Cracking the Secret Code in Media Arts

Storyboarding in Media Arts

This activity was created as a result of the Arts COS Resource Development Summit.

Learning Targets: 

I can use metacognition to increase the number of many, varied, and unusual ideas that I can generate.

I can access my personal experience to improve creative thinking.

The students will practice productive thinking in three rounds with the goal of increasing their fluency with generating ideas.

Students review how to use productive thinking: Generate many (actual number), varied (different categories of ideas), and unusual (not listed by anyone else) ideas.

Students will create a score sheet with which to score themselves in three rounds of productive thinking. Each round should have a space for scoring MANY (fluency), VARIED (flexibility), and UNUSUAL (original).

Round 1: Three Minutes

Students list many, varied, and unusual things that are the color _____.

(Teacher may choose the color based on the level of difficulty.)

After three minutes, students stop and tally their "many" score: the total number of ideas. Students tally their "varied" score: the total number of categories. Students share their most unusual ideas to see those ideas are unique among their classmates.

Round 2: Three Minutes

Students list many, varied, and unusual things that start with the letter ____.

(Teacher may choose the letter based on the level of difficulty). 

After three minutes, students stop and tally their "many" score: the total number of ideas. Students tally their "varied" score: the total number of categories. Students share their most unusual ideas to see if those ideas are unique among their classmates.

Round 3: Three Minutes

Students list many, varied, and unusual things that have ____.

(Teacher may choose what the thing has based on the level of difficulty, i.e., hair, handle, legs). 

After three minutes, students stop and tally their "many" score: the total number of ideas. Students tally their "varied" score: the total number of categories. Students share their most unusual ideas to see those ideas are unique among their classmates.

Teacher Talk: 
The teacher can encourage students in their thinking by asking them to engage their imaginations and "see" different places that they personally go: the grocery store, their rooms, their friends' homes, etc. Teacher guides students in using metacognition to be aware of generating ideas in one category and purposefully switching categories.

Formative Assessment: Students' self-scoring from Rounds 1--3
Summative Assessment: Students chose the best round and complete the Productive Thinking Rubric

Choose topics for productive thinking based on students.

Scaffold this activity by choosing topics with many common items that are visible in the classroom, i.e, many, varied, and unusual items in a classroom. 

The teacher may want to practice the exercise in order to experience how fluid "categories" can be. Categories are highly individualistic, depending on the thinking process of the person creating them. As long as students can justify their choices, their decisions are valid.

For example, if a student lists: "grass, house plants, leaves, weeds, our couch, cooked spinach..." then there could be a category of "things inside the house" with "couch, cooked spinach, and house plants" and a category of "outside the house" with "grass, weeds, and leaves". That would be two categories. However, more productive thinking would be that there are four categories: 
Living Things: grass, weeds, house plants, leaves
Non-Living Things: couch, cooked spinach
Inside Things: couch, cooked spinach, house plants
Outside Things: grass, weeds, leaves

Students may generate topics for Productive Thinking practice.
The teacher may differentiate based on the topic chosen. For example, things that start with the letter Q is a more difficult topic than things that start with the letter T.
The teacher may eliminate Teacher Talk to increase difficulty.
The teacher may set parameters for topics: Only 1 category, 5 categories, etc.

This is one activity in a series of activities to address Standard Cr.5.1.1 in Media Arts.

Associated activities are as follows:

Identifying and Choosing a Message in Media Arts

Cracking the Secret Code in Media Arts

Storyboarding in Media Arts