In this piece, I draw on Stephen Bowkett’s 2005 book entitled: “100 Ideas for Teaching Creativity.” In it Bowkett’s opening line is “Ask 100 people what they mean by ‘creativity’ and you may well get 100 different answers. Educationally, this has been seen as problem” (p.xi). I could not have agreed more. Many scholars, including the public, try to define creativity, and at times, this concept gets misconstrued. One of the greatest popular beliefs is that creativity is the gift of the few. When in reality, creativity is all around us; creative products and thoughts are circulated in the world every minute of our daily lives. As per Bowkett’s words “Creativity is about making links between ideas as a habit of thought and looking at things in many different ways.” We all make those links to a certain extend in our daily lives. Thus in his book, Bowkett explains the importance of creativity, the linkage of creativity to human intelligence and he endeavours to educate by explaining the big picture of the benefits in encouraging creativity. Simultaneously, he provides 100 different activities for teaching creativity in the classroom, from which I have chosen my top twenty favourites activities:
- Thinking with the whole mind
- Creative Thinking and the Left and Right Brain
- The Creative Attitude
- Doing ‘Meaning-Making’
- Reactive Thinking
- The Creative Environment
- The Turn of a Word
- Making Learning Dynamic
- Inferring
- Visualizing
- Looking for Clues
- Obserpinions
- Colour It
- Engagement through Variety and Diversity
- The 6×6 Problem Solver
- Quality Questioning
- People are Like Onions
- The ‘What If?’ Game
- The ‘Why?’ Game
- Create!
This book is a great tool, particularly for teachers who need some direction on how to begin and share creativity with their students!
