Creative thinking has become a buzzword – much has been said about it, with many strategies and frameworks shared, some applicable, others suited only for a parallel universe. So, I’ll keep the intro short: this post shares a twist on the See-Think-Wonder (STW) routine and a set of activities aimed at developing creative thinking for you to try with your students, with a touch of AI.
How to be creative?
There’s no simple answer to this question. Inspiration has no schedule. For me, it may come from a fellow ELT teacher or materials writer (watch our livestream on Creativity in the Digital Era for more on this). Other times, it’s triggered by something completely unrelated to the ELT world.
I was developing new classroom activities using multimodal input (here’s a little sneak peek) when this comic popped up on my X timeline (you can also find it on Facebook):
— Grant Snider (@grantdraws) September 16, 2024
Inspiration.
So simple, and so deep.
A seemingly straightforward concept – actions associated with water – transformed into a fantastically creative idea.
My immediate thought was that this could be a great project assignment for students.
- Choose an abstract concept or idea (e.g., hope, patience, courage, love, time, etc.).
- Come up with at least 5 verbs that represent the concept.
- Design a comic strip where each panel illustrates one of these verbs, along with a simple caption.
Good, but needs more
Let’s be honest, if you hadn’t seen the comic, would you have come up with those water associations on the spot? ‘How to be water? Be… wet?’ So, my second thought was that this whole process of brainstorming associations could be turned into a learning experience, helping students develop language skills, creative thinking, and come up with more imaginative ideas.
I decided to experiment a bit and combine an immersion and visualization technique I use for poetry activities (see some activities here When Emotions Find Their Words) with the See, Think, Wonder thinking routine, to guide students through the process of brainstorming related associations.
How to be creativity?
I put together a list of guiding questions for each pillar of the framework to serve as a starting point.
To add variety to the guiding questions, I used the framework in the Anti-Quiz Maker tool. Here’s how it works: simply enter the following in the ‘material’ field (+ your students’ age and proficiency level):
<Immersive See, Think, Wonder thinking routine. Students need to imagine themselves as the abstract noun – ‘hope’>,
The tool will then generate a range of questions to guide students’ thinking:
Some questions might seem tricky and need some imagination, but that’s where creativity comes in.
I hope this post gives you new ideas to experiment with!
