Zig Zag: the Surprising Path to Greater Creativity

"Zig Zag: the Surprising Path to Greater Creativity" by Keith Sawyer

I loved this book! So much so that I'm thinking of buying the paper version even though I own it on my Kindle.

Keith Sawyer, PhD, is the Morgan Distinguished Professor in Educational Innovations at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. His 2013 book Zig Zag identifies the 8 stages of the creative process, and contains over 100 techniques to enhance your own personal creativity. It is mainly research based. 

The eight stages he outlines are:

1. Ask  - finding the right question for your problem

2. Learn - practise deliberately

3.  Look - notice different elements connected to your problem from different contexts

4. Play - relax to allow your brain time to incubate your ideas

5. Think - try different techniques to vary your approach to the problem

6. Fuse - mash up your ideas

7. Choose - having generated a heap of ideas it is time to evaluate them to find the best ones

8. Make - draw it, link it to images, build it, make it concrete in someway and reflect on it

I found a lot of food for thought in this book, especially for teaching problem solving and writing. One part that I was very interested in was in the Make section where he talks about "Thinkering", which is thinking with your hands while model making. We had had a puppeteer in to work with the children with making shadow puppets. When we were doing our end-of-term learning showcase some of the children wanted to use shadow puppets as a way of demonstrating their learning; it was a real delight to see them working through their ideas and talk about how they could use them for their presentations. 

Having read the book, I am thinking for next year of using plasticine, model making and construction toys as an alternative to drawing or mind mapping to help pupils work through their ideas. So, watch this space! 

Higher Order Questions to Review History Topic

Towards the end of our Scottish History topic for my P4 and P5 pupils I was struggling to come up with higher order thinking questions to review their learning. One problem was that at their age and level of understanding many of the higher order tasks would be superficial.

Eventually, we came up with the idea of a photo quiz: the pupils would have to come up with a connection between photographs of things that you can see today with their link to the past.  I think that this would be an example of Application (Transferring) in the Bloom's taxonomy as the pupils had to apply their learning to a context different from the one in which it was originally learned.

It worked out well as the children enjoyed the photo quiz activity and then they chose one of the photos to do more personal research on and write a report on; these were then put into folders with the pictures on the cover for a photo quiz for the parents as part of our Scottish history exhibition at the end of our topic.

Answers below, in case you were wondering:














Wall is part of Hadrian's Wall - links with Roman invasion and retreat from Scotland.
Stone is a Pictish Stone - links with the Picts and their developing organization after the Romans retreated.
Sign is from the Shetlands and the name has a Norse origin, as many places around the coast do, as it was founded by the Vikings.
Song "Flower of Scotland" is sung at rugby matches as an unofficial national anthem and is about Robert the Bruce's victory over the English at Bannockburn in 1314.
Song "Skye Boat Song" is about Bonnie Prince Charlie's escape over to Skye after Culloden in 1746.
The ruined croft house links with the Highland Clearances which took place in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The photograph of George Street and the Newtown architecture link with the Georgian extension of Edinburgh and the Scottish Enlightenment.
The last photo shows a Tartan Day Parade in New York and links with Scottish emigration during the time of the Highland Clearances.