University of the People
Dr. Angela Andrews
02 08, 2022
Divergent thinking
I've been teaching since 2005. In 2005, I graduated from university with a bachelor's degree in linguistics, in 2010 I received a bachelor's degree in psychology. One of my internal beliefs is that the teacher gives the student not only experience and knowledge but also a sense of care, security, and trust. The teacher needs to form the student's tendency to accept the world as it is, but not to be afraid of it, not to stop trying to study new ways to solve emerging issues.
In fact, I do not think that you can become a teacher at some point. This is a process of development involving changes in spiritual, material and social significance. If we take into account the structure of the lesson, the most important stages that we were taught while working at the International School of Almaty are : familiarization, comprehension, consolidation and assimilation.
“A student in a lesson must turn from an object of learning into a subject of learning activity. This is almost the basic requirement of modern didactics. Then the student will learn and not be taught. All this is also necessary because the specificity of the subject requires it: foreign language speech activity cannot be taught, it can only be learned. K. D. Ushinsky wrote:"The real lesson does not begin with a bell, but from the moment when a child's thought flares up." That is why it is important to plan the lesson in such a way that the student is active, acts independently and shows his creativity.” ("A lesson in FL. Requirements for a modern lesson")
Human education is determined not so much by substantive knowledge as by its versatile development as a person, which is guided by the traditions of domestic and world culture, the modern system of values, is capable of active social adaptation, independent life choices, self-education, and improvement. Therefore, in the modern educational space, education is aimed at the comprehensive development of the child's personality. The use of traditional methods is therefore insufficient. The arsenal of techniques is supplemented by innovative techniques, educational programs, and non-standard methods of transmitting information from teacher to student. That is why school practice uses active teaching methods that form divergent (creative) thinking. The young generation must be able to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary for the development of society, which requires a transition from the process of transferring a ready level of knowledge to the priority of the development of the person, her abilities to self-improvement, which ensures her success in decision-making, independent functioning in constantly changing social conditions. (Fuel Creativity in the Classroom With Divergent Thinking)
Methods of assessing divergent thinking. To assess the level of development of a given type of human thinking, creative tasks and tests with or without unexpected answers are used. They can be arithmetic, text, verbal or graphic (for example, you need to finish the drawing, giving its plot as non-standard direction as possible).
Here is a simple test for creativity, which was invented by the father of the concept of "Divergent Thinking" Joey Guildford: In 3 minutes you need to come up with as many options for using paper staples as possible, the invented options can be briefly recorded. Then calculate how many options you have:
less than 10 - the level of creativity is below average;
10 - 12 - average level; 12-20 - good level;
more than 20 - a high level of creativity.
https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/
Development of divergent thinking There are many simple exercises aimed at developing creative thinking:
1 Compiling a list of words that meet a given criterion. For example, those that end with "I" begin with "l" or consist of an equal number of letters.
2 Select any word, for example, "Sun" and compose a separate sentence from each of its letters. It will be even more effective if these proposals are combined in meaning into one common story.
3 Inventing unusual ways of using ordinary objects.
4 Visual exercise: Compose images from paper geometric shapes that vary in size.
5 Finding as many common features as possible for a pair of completely different objects (Cow - skates)
6 Creating instructions for any unusual object or action.
7 Search for unusual reasons for ordinary situations (The dog ran down the street in one direction, then stopped, turned sharply)
8 Inventing a story, relying on one unrelated set of words (Kitchen, Summer, Cat, Construction).
9 Inventing exotic names. A very simple and fun exercise, the essence of which is to come up with non-existent names, both female and male.
10 Solving puzzle puzzles. They can be both text and graphic.
Throughout the world, graphic mysteries are known as Droodle and the author of this direction is comedy writer Roger Price. Riddles were very popular in the middle of the last century and now audiences are again becoming interesting. Drudle is a concise drawing from which it is impossible to accurately determine what is depicted on it and the more options you come up with, the better. Use our riddles to train divergent thinking. 5 days of Dream. A very pleasant exercise for training creative thinking, associated with inventing within 5 days your desires related to a particular life sphere.
1 day - dreams related to personal life;
2 day - with a career, work;
3 day - with the family;
4 day - dreams related to new knowledge and skills;
5 day - global dreams concerning your city, country, planet as a whole.
Divergent thinking is the basis of creativity, so by developing it, students also improve their creative potential and ability to think outside the box. (Fuel Creativity in the Classroom With Divergent Thinking)
Blum's Rose
The method that is most suitable for teaching English in my experience is Bloom's Rose. This is a simple method of understanding and assimilating information by drawing up questions of different levels and answering them. American psychologist Benjamin Bloom has created a convenient and clear classification of questions (Bloom's taxonomy):
1 Simple questions (test the general knowledge of a task or text and imply clear unambiguous answers).
2 Clarifying questions (determine the understanding of the task and require yes or no answers).
3 Explanatory questions (used to analyze information, usually begin with the word "Why" and imply a detailed answer based on causation, a new one that does not contain the previously mentioned information).
4 Creative questions (asked in the form of a forecast, fantasy or sentence, contain a particle "would" and imply a generalization of available information).
5 Evaluation questions (help to understand the assessment of facts and phenomena mentioned in the task).
6 Practical issues (focus on the application of the information received, conclusions and the search for the relationship between theory and practice).
Bloom's Rose helps teach children how to ask questions. "Rose" consists of six petals, each of which contains a certain type of question. Thus, six petals - six questions:
1. Simple questions - questions, answering which, you need to name some facts, recall and reproduce certain information: "What?," "When?," "Where?," "How?." The question should begin with the word - name...
2. Clarifying questions. Such questions usually begin with the words: "That is, you say that...?," "If I correctly understood, then...?," "I can be mistaken, but, in my opinion, you said about...?" The purpose of these questions is to provide the student with feedback regarding what he just said. Sometimes they are set in order to obtain information that is not in the message, but implied. The question should begin with the word - explain...
3. Interpretive (explanatory) questions. Usually they begin with the word "Why?" And are aimed at establishing causal relationships. "Why do leaves on trees turn yellow in autumn?" If the answer to this question is known, it turns from interpretive to simple. Therefore, this type of question is "triggered" when an element of autonomy is present in the answer.
4. Creative questions. This type of question most often contains a particle "would," elements of convention, assumption, prediction: "What would change...," "What would happen if...?," "How do you think the plot will develop in the story after...?"
5. Practical issues. This type of question is aimed at establishing the relationship between theory and practice: "How can you apply...?, " What can be made of...?,
"Where can you observe in ordinary life...?, "How would you do in the place of the hero of the story? "
6. Evaluation questions. These questions are aimed at clarifying the criteria for assessing certain events, phenomena, facts. "Why is something good and something bad?," "How does one lesson differ from another?," "How do you feel about the action of the protagonist?" And so on. The question should begin with the word - share…
(Master class: "Application of the Trash of Ideas," "Bloom’s Rose" in English lessons for the development of critical thinking ")
And it seems to me that International Baccalaurate has all principles to be the best educational system for me to follow my purposes in teaching.
References
A lesson in FL. Requirements for a modern lesson
https://goaravetisyan.ru/en/urok-iya-trebovaniya-k-sovremennomu-uroku-sovremennyi-urok/
Fuel Creativity in the Classroom With Divergent Thinking
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/fueling-creativity-through-divergent-thinking-classroom-stacey-goodman
Bloom's taxonomy
https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/
Master class: "Application of the Trash of Ideas," "Bloom’s Rose" in English lessons for the development of critical thinking "