Phase: | Before/Engage |
Activity: | 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: |
Assessment Strategies: | Formative Assessment: Students' self-scoring from Rounds 1--3 |
Advanced Preparation: | 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: |
Variation Tips (optional): | Students may generate topics for Productive Thinking practice. |
Notes or Recommendations (optional): | 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 |
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