Morgan Frye, M.Ed.

Master of Science in Education


Creating, Imagining, and Innovating



Table of Contents



Introduction
What is this Habit of Mind and why is it important?
What does this Habit look like in the classroom?
Explicitly Teaching this Habit of Mind
Reinforcement Activity
Student Reflections
Creating, Imagining, and Innovating During COVID-19
Conclusion




Introduction





What is creating, imagining, and innovating?



Creating, Imagining, and Innovating is another Habit of Mind that I explicitly taught in my classroom, following Listening to Others with Understanding and Empathy and Managing Impulsivity. This Habit encourages students to use creativity, their imaginations, and innovation to come up with solutions to a problem. When students are encouraged to use this Habit of Mind, they are encouraged to use materials around them, think outside the box, and think about problems in new ways. Students are often encouraged to use this Habit of Mind daily. When students are explicitly taught strategies, they feel more comfortable when attempting to solve problems.


One of the biggest issues in my classroom is that students are quick to give up when a problem is difficult to solve. One of the goals of this Habit of Mind is to encourage students to try coming up with creative solutions to problems. Teachers can facilitate this Habit of Mind through modeling and encouraging students to use the materials and resources around them to solve problems they face.


One of the biggest issues in students internalizing and utilizing this Habit to promote personal growth is that some teachers discourage students from using their imaginations, creativity, or innovation when solving problems. By explicitly teaching students this Habit of Mind, we can ensure that students will have the tools they need to make decisions and use this Habit of Mind throughout their lives, even if they are not explicitly told to do so.



Above students are learning about the Habit of Mind: Creating, Imagining, and Innovating during whole group. Students learned about all of the Habits discussed in whole group, and reinforced the activities in small groups.



Above, students are discussing the different ways that they use creating, imagining, and innovating in the classroom. Students identifying these ways ensured their understanding of the material.




What is this Habit of Mind and why is it important?





What does it mean to be creative, imaginative, or innovative?



When students are given the opportunity and room to be creative, imaginative, or innovative, students are more likely to be engaged in the work at hand and invested in problem-solving, as they have the space to think outside of the box to come up with their solutions. When students are encouraged to use this Habit of Mind, students feel comfortable to attempt solutions to problems they may not have been motivated to try otherwise.


Students that are encouraged to use their creativity, innovation, and imaginations to solve problems will be able to apply those skills throughout their lifetime, offering new solutions and promoting personal growth. Students will be able to continue to foster these skills throughout their entire lives, but need to be explicitly taught first with real-world examples.


For example, instead of discouraging students from drawing next to their answers on an exit ticket, I might encourage students to connect their drawing to their answer or supplement their written answer with a visual one. When faced with a large essential question or problem, students could be broken into groups or pairs to explore the different ways to solve the problem rather than forcing students to think about the question or problem on their own.


Teachers can model this Habit of Mind during instruction by creating thinking maps, encouraging creative, imaginative, or innovative language, and encouraging collaboration between students. Below are some stills from the lesson explicitly teaching students what the Habit of Mind means. Students began to really internalize this Habit during the reinforcement activity.


Below is an article from ASCD (2017) that discusses the important of utilizing this Habit of Mind in the classroom. Click on the link below the screenshot to access the full article.



Above students watch a video about the students in the video used this Habit of Mind to build their classroom pet a new cage with the materials they had in their classroom. Students were beginning to understand this concept and how their creativity could be fostered.



Above students are discussing different ways that they can use this Habit of Mind in the classroom and what the teacher can do to foster this Habit. Students were given examples that did not really sink in until they were allowed to engage in the activities.




What does this Habit look like in the classroom?





How are students demonstrating this Habit?



When students are using the Habit of Mind in the classroom, they are working to use their creativity, imaginations, and innovation to solve problems. In regular classwork, this could look like students using materials available to them to help solve their work, including technology, manipulatives, or other resources in the school and classroom. If students are working on projects or other problems, students may be granted permission to use materials in the classroom. Students could then tackle problems or questions by experimenting with classroom materials, using each other as collaborators, or devising plans to solve problems.


One of the ways that this Habit of Mind is seen in our classroom is through creativity, imagination, and innovation of students when working to complete our Black History Month door project. Students were tasked with creating a door that could showcase what they knew about Greenwood's Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Students were excited to dig in and use the materials they had available to them to create a door that could win the contest in a certain time frame.



Above students are working to come up with "black dollars," a symbol created by students to show the wealth of the Greenwood District in its prime.



Above a student is creating their dollars to incorporate on the Black History Month door. This door was a month long creative process and involved students using this Habit of Mind daily.




Explicitly teaching this Habit of Mind





How were students taught this Habit?



Students were taught this Habit of Mind through an explicit lesson: first, students were shown a video example of this Habit of Mind, and then given an activity in which they needed to make connections between words and phrases that didn't typically go together. These words and phrases helped students to begin making connections between things they would not normally associate together. This started to push student creativity as they were forced to begin thinking outside the box. Students were able to write sentences, draw, color, etc. in order to think about the words and phrases and how they could connect them. Some of the words of the words and phrases that needed to be connected include: "What is the happiest room in your house?" and "Which is crispier: celery or yellow?"


Students have been continuously reminded of this Habit when working on their daily activities. As their teacher, I have promoted using materials in the classroom, collaboration with their peers, and seeking answers through innovation when working on their school work or projects. Students learn these values by modeling how their teacher presents them, and one of the ways that I have continued to promote this Habit of Mind is by encouraging students to make connections and think about things in new light- by continuously offering suggestions, encouraging students to take some questions home for the night and think them over, and showing students pictures or items that could connect to the topic at hand- without giving students the explicit connection.


Below are the slides that I used during the lesson to teach this Habit of Mind. Below the slides is the video embedded from ASCD (2017) that presented the Habit of Mind using an animation.



[ASCD]. (2017, December 18). Creating, Imagining, and Innovating. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/__LWGAUY-4I



Above students make connections about ideas, words, and concepts that do not typically go together. Students were encouraged to write words or phrases that helped to bring the terms together, even if students thought they were silly or meaningless.



Above students use their imaginations and innovation to think about concepts in new ways. Students began to develop connections between words and phrases where they hadn't before.




Reinforcement Activity





How was this Habit reinforced?



One reinforcement activity for teaching this Habit of Mind was to push students to think about what we were going to do for our Black History Month door contest. My teacher's assistant drew our topic out of a hat: "Greenwood's Black Wall Street." The contest rules stated the we only had one month to prepare the door, and that students must be the ones to create the door designs.


Students were able to work together to help design the door through delegation of work. One of the activities that students came up with was designing "black dollars" to represent the economic wealth that Black Wall Street had at the time. Students were given access to materials they needed to create the money and students got to work creating dollars for the door contest. Students also worked to design and draw the buildings and possessions of some of the Black Wall Street residents. There were several black families that owned airplanes during this time, which was a true display of wealth since Greenwood District's Black Wall Street's prime was in the late 1910's, only fifteen or so years after the Wright Brothers made the first flight in history. Other creative parts of the door included street signs, Black Wall Street fact cards, a spinner to point an onlooker in the direction of a fact card, and homemade Black Wall Street buttons (a souvenir from our door- to help make it memorable when judging the door for the contest!)


In this activity, students worked together and used creativity, their imaginations, and innovation to showcase an incredible, historical community in a new way- on a door. Students accomplished an incredible feat, and through using their creativity, imaginations, and innovation (and lots of tape!), students won second place overall in the door contest.



Above is our classroom door decorated for the Black History Month contest. Our door theme was "Black Wall Street."



Above is a student-created Black Wall Street road sign, showing the main street that ran through historic downtown Greenwood District.



Above shows student innovation when thinking about how to display downtown buildings on the door.



Above shows more student innovation when thinking about how to display downtown buildings on the door, as well as some fo the cars that residents of Greenwood District drove.



Above shows one of the planes that students created to showcase on the door.



Above shows the feedback that students received from the door. Students created this feedback system because they wanted to see the thoughts people had when they saw our door.




Student Reflections





How did students internalize this Habit?



As students continue to internalize this Habit of Mind, students were encouraged to think about the different ways they could continue to use this Habit of Mind inside and outside the classroom setting. Students were eager to apply the knowledge they gathered from the lesson and from the door contest and apply it to their Black History Month projects: a living museum of historical black figures. Students discussed how they are excited to collaborate, think outside the box, use their imaginations, and come up with innovative new ideas to showcase their historical figures. Students were also thinking about how important it is to be creative, imaginative, and innovative in their everyday lives. Click play below to listen to a student reflection on this Habit of Mind.








Click on the play button below to listen to Student 2 reflect on the Habit of Mind of Creativity, Imagination, and Innovating.







Creating, Imagining, and Innovating during COVID-19





How can students continue to show this Habit in the classroom?



Students are continuing to be creative, imaginative, and innovative in light of COVID-19 by thinking about different ways to stay busy and engaged while they are at home. Click on the play button below to hear a students discuss their thoughts on this Habit of Mind during this time.








Click on the play button below to listen to anther student reflect on their thoughts concerning this Habit of Mind in light of COVID-19.







Conclusion





How can students continue to show this Habit in the classroom?



Students will continue to show this Habit of Mind in the classroom as teachers allow for them too. Students need to be encouraged and allowed the space to continue to grow, and by allowing this, students will continue to foster this Habit of Mind for their personal growth and development. If teachers do not encourage students to think outside the box and unleash their creativity, imaginations, and innovations, students will not have the confidence of the willingness to try to tackle problems in new ways.


Teachers can continue to provide this and encourage students to internalize these Habits through demonstrating modeling and fostering collaboration between peers. While we are already seeing the effects of students internalizing these Habits of Mind, even throughout COVID-19, we must continue to push students to not lose their creativity, imagination, or innovation.




References





ASCD. (2017, December 18). Creating, Imagining, and Innovating. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/__LWGAUY-4I


ASCD Guest Blogger. (2017, December 18). Creating, Imagining, and Innovating: Developing the Leaders of Tomorrow. Retrieved from https://inservice.ascd.org/creating-imagining-and-innovating-developing-the-leaders-of-tomorrow/