Critical Creativity: Combining Critical Thinking, Creativity & Problem-Solving

In the past, the Colorado Science Conference has been a mixed bag of useful and less useful resources, workshops and experiences.  This year, however, was a gold mine of ideas for how to make chemistry more engaging for my students.  One of the awesome things I learned about is the concept of "Critical Creativity", which involves challenging students to critically think and creatively problem solve in order to push their thinking to another level.  

Science teacher Pam McWilliams facilitated a workshop on strategies for integrating critical creativity into the classroom, which included creating Phrankonwords, (re)captioning comics, and sharing other ideas (Eg, birth announcement, baby book or eulogy for an element and blackout poetry).  It wasn't, however, until I was reviewing her presentation several days later that I realized her work and workshop had been inspired by a book, Intention: Critical Creativity in the Classroom.  I immediately ordered a copy from Amazon...and upon its arrival, I realized I knew one of the authors, Dan Ryder.  In fact, it was during EdCampWesternMaine that I'd first learned about SketchNoting during a mini-session that Dan facilitated! 

​I've only just started to dive into the book, but I've already used it not only for designing several creative challenges for my chemistry students.   Building on the idea of having students create an analogy or metaphor to represent a topic, I recently had my students create quick comics (they only had about 15 minutes to complete the task) using Storyboardthat.com to convey key concepts related to covalent bonding (student sample).  As a quick formative assessment, it was useful for helping me to see where students had misconceptions or had not yet solidified key ideas, and pave the way for a conversation about the common mistakes to clarify the differences between ionic and covalent bonding. For example, in this example, students highlighted the idea of sharing electrons, but were incorrectly attributing charges (partial or full!).  In another example, my student mixed up covalent and ionic bonding all together.   It also provided an opportunity to talk about the accuracy or limitations of analogies in representing specific science concepts.     

On a personal level, the idea of critical creativity resonates with my own teaching-to-learn strategies for targeting 21st century skills (6Cs) by getting students to creatively problem solve, to practice communicating their understanding using multiple modalities or media, and to make personal connections with the content we are learning.  Not only does the book provide ideas for having students show their understanding in a plethora of different ways, it also provides strategies for better assessing and providing feedback about creative products. Based on the assessment section, I recently modified our podcast rubric to a #SinglePointRubric format, and asked my students to use the rubric to provide feedback.  I think students had a clearer idea of what proficiency looked like and how to comment on what was exceptional or needed some love--and it was considerably less convoluted and bulky than our normal 4-scale rubric.  

If you haven't yet checked out this book, or Dan and Amy's work, I would highly suggest it--it is inspiring and FUN!  Every time I go exploring through their work, its a bit of an adventure down the rabbit hole--and while getting lost in the multitude of side-trips, I always find a variety of gems to immediately take back to my own students.

How are you integrating critical creativity into your own classroom?  What are your favorite tools and challenges?  And, how do you support students who are less comfortable with or confident engaging with creative challenges?

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