Professional Development: Creative and Innovation Thinking

We have been working on updating the ways students will demonstrate school wide expectations in our high school. During our back to school inservice, I co-led an activity around Creative and Innovative thinking.

As a YHS student, you will

• Communicate effectively;
• Exhibit personal responsibility, civic engagement, and global awareness;
• Work independently and collaboratively;
• Demonstrate critical, creative, and innovative thinking;
• Develop understanding through inquiry, research, and synthesis.

Activity:

1. Introduce Website
2. The 30 circles activity
3. Teachers chose an article from this list and read it.
4. Group people together by article. Using the Coffee Talk protocol, discuss and gather feedback.

Feedback examples:

1. "It was difficult to see a rubric on creativity and not think of it as an assessment tool, but rather a guideline to define creativity."
2. "I appreciated the opportunity to think about how another educator thought about assessing creativity."
3. "The importance of brainstorming and the many ways that can manifest itself in the classroom. Students still need practice brainstorming and creating their own original ideas. I also was intrigued by the 5 minutes at the start of class spent in silence. I have spent the summer wondering how I would change the start of class and had consider a minute of silence."
4. "Keep discussing this as a group--Betsy's got some GREAT ideas! We need more discussion and more sharing of ideas, rubrics, examples of assignments, etc. "
5. "Keep the readings and discussions going!!!!"