Creativity

I have been reading the book, Different Minds by Deirdre Lovecky. This book is geared toward twice exceptional gifted children, or gifted children who have an accompanying disorder.

Chapter Five: Finding Flow: The Wellspring of Creative Endeavor has some suggestions on enhancing creativity. This is helpful for all gifted children so I thought I would summarize the suggestions.
1. Have quiet places where children can retreat to daydream
2. Creativity depends on both divergent and convergent thinking skills. Children need to develop both.
3. Creativity is correlated to big-picture thinking. Children may need help in making connections to larger themes or issues.
4. Creative work has often been inspired by witnessing the pain and hardship of others. It is okay for children to see age appropriate issues and develop their empathy.
5. Creative work can be used to overcome obstacles. Use your creativity to bolster a weakness or embellish a mistake.
6. Special interests can lead to or impede creativity. Computer games, Pokemon or Game Boy are not creative activities. Limit non-creative activities and spend more time on open-ended activities.
7. Much of the research on the early lives of creative people suggests that reading is an important activity.
8. Adults should model their own creative work. Discuss the joys and hardships of living a more creative life.
9. Have adults work with children to help them get started on projects. Let them see that the process of flow in doing something creative, feels good.
10. Help creative children who never finish anything by selecting one of their ideas to work on.

"Gifted people who are creative do not stop being creative, even if they achieve little in the way of recognition. It is not recognition that makes them creative but their own inner connection to their material. The process of becoming one's whole self, of using all of ones' potential to benefit oneself and others, should be the goal of gifted people." (Lovecky, 2004)

November Happenings

Third Grade is busy learning about inventions and simple machines. The students have investigated levers, pulleys, inclined plane and wheels. We will add the gears and screws later in the month. Creative Problem Solving was used to address a school problem, noise in the cafeteria. Next students will look at problems and the inventions developed to address the problem. Then the students will find a problem and invent their own solution.

Fourth Grade has been using Creative Problem Solving to look at the issue of natural disasters. One of the classes has decided to create a website to help others learn about natural disasters and how to manage the problems they create. The second Fourth grade class will create a PowerPoint presentation to show their solution to the Sound Tunnel problem

Fifth grade has been working hard to get ready for the FIRST Lego League qualifier on November 19th. They have investigated food contamination and invented a solution that they will present. The students have also worked hard in learning to program, and in addressing the missions.

FIRST Lego League

We are in full gear to get ready for our FLL qualifier in November. Fifth graders will program an NXT robot to navigate the challenge field. We could use any adult help in building the lego components of the field kit. This is one thing adults can do for the group. Since our preparation time has been reduced, I am not using students to build the field set up. Their time can be better used programming and preparing our presentation on food contamination.

We have used the IIM model for researching food contamination. We set our research goals, gathered notefacts from government websites, videos and food experts, organized our notefacts, and evaluated our goals. Next we will use Creative Problem Solving to identify the problems, pick an underlying problem, list solutions, use criteria to decide on the best solution and then create a presentation for the competition.

Time is our biggest challenge. In order to give us more prepartion time, we will have practices on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2:30 to 3:30. Adult help is welcome.

September Happening

Third Grade-
Third grade SPACE classes finally get to start the week of September 12. For about a month, we will have one SPACE day until Ms. Laymon can finish Second Grade Child find activities. After those are complete, students will have SPACE twice a week so they can get 3 hours of GT service.
We will begin learning Talent Unlimited Thinking skills, logical thinking and the Creative Problem Solving process. We will soon start our Invention Unit

Fourth Grade-
Ms. Laymon received a grant for Power Up: Inventive Thinking. Students will learn the Advanced Systematic Inventive Thinking Model, get to use new software to develop their creative and critical thinking, and get to practice creative thinking through Science Olympiad practice problems.

Fifth Grade-
Fifth Graders have begun the FLL Robotics 2011 Food Factor Challenge. We have begun to research food contamination, the problems and solutions. We will begin building our robots and learning how to program them with Labview software. Lots to do!

Many Thanks

Thank you so much to all the families for the classroom donations. They are GREATLY appreciated. Yahoo!

Welcome to our New School Year 11-12

School has started. I am happy to see all the students from last year and look forward to meeting new students. I hope everyone had time to see family, relax and maybe try something new this summer. I am looking forward to all the new things we will be doing this year.

Supply lists will go home today, and any time you want to drop the supplies in the classroom is fine. We will start classes for 4th and 5th the week of August 15th, and 3rd graders will start mid September.

Art Work on Exhibit

Our Dream Rocket Panel has been selected for two gallery shows. The first show is August 1, 2011 to September 1, 2011 at the New Britain Public Library in New Britain CT. The second show is September 15, 2011 to November 1, 2011 at the Educational Gallery Group in West Palm Beach, FL.
Way to go Fourth Grade SPACE students!