Critical And Creative Thinking In The Classroom

Critical and Creative Thinking is included in our Australian Curriculum as one of our General Capabilities as it involves students thinking broadly and deeply using skills, behaviours and dispositions such as reason, logic, resourcefulness, imagination and innovation in all learning areas at school and in their lives beyond school. It teaches students to think for themselves and become problem solvers and more resilient.

This type of thinking can be taught in ways such as brain breaks, journal prompts, homework, even as a starter of the day. School trainings such as leadership training for school captains and the team should include some critical thinking in there. It really encourages risk taking and thinking outside of the box and allows time for students to be creative. Students also learn team work skills, leadership and problem solving skills.

I like to incorporate a little each day, yet you could also organise a fun day for your students and create critical thinking activities that relate to all areas of the curriculum. Call it…

• Wonder Day

• Problem Solving Day

• Inquisitive Day

• CCT day (critical and creative thinking)

In class you can try out things like;

• Mr Squiggle - provide students with a few lines on a page and they must turn it into a picture

• Take the children out to look at the clouds. What can they see in the clouds?

• Ask them what are they wondering about at the moment? What are they curious about?

• Brainstorm - if the school was given 1000 ping pong balls, how could they be used? In what ways can a shoe be used? Demonstrate ways a hairbrush can be used for various tasks

• Build the tallest tower out of marshmallows and dried spaghetti

• Build a paper plane that will fly the furthest

• I have created a Creative and Critical Thinking Pinterest board for further ideas

• Teachers Pay Teachers is a fantastic resource also

There is also a great YouTube Channel called Bright Side which offers short ten minutes segments of problems and students have to think outside the box to solve them.

I attended training in Sydney offered by Minds Wide Open where we spent the whole day going over critical and creative thinking. They are a great resource to check out with so many ideas for in class activities.

There is the app called Brain Out which children love to try to solve the problems on each level.

You may have heard of the acronym SCAMPER. This is one of the ideas used for critical and creative thinking in schools.

• Substitute: What are the alternatives to materials, processes, methods you’re already using/doing?

• Combine: What can you combine or bring together?

• Adapt: How can you adapt something you’re already doing/using for a project?

• Modify: What materials, processes, methods can you modify to solve a problem?

• Put to other use: Can you put a material, process, method to another use?

• Eliminate: What can you do to eliminate any problems and inefficiencies? What materials, methods, and steps, can be eliminated?

• Rearrange: How can you move around materials, method steps, and processes, to solve a problem?

How do you teach critical and creative thinking with your class? or at your school? Have you tried the Scamper method? We would love it if you joined the conversation and left your ideas below in the comment section.