Curated OER
Paper Bag Pilgrim Dolls
Stuents create paper bag versions of "pilgrim dolls" in this excellent Art lesson for the time just before Thanksgiving break. The plan uses staples or glue to attach dolls and includes a picture diagram and two "cut-out" templates to...
Curated OER
Mobility: A Green City, Past, Present, and Future
Pupils explore transportation systems through history. In this transportation lesson, students determine how modes of transportation affect quality of life and design transportation plans for cities.
Curated OER
A Haring Holiday
Young scholars create a holiday ornament. In this Keith Haring art instructional activity, students use paper mache to make 3-dimensional ornaments that resemble his work. Young scholars cut out felt shapes of babies, dogs and angels...
Curated OER
Take Action, Save the Past
Eighth graders use their creative and critical thinking skills to find useful solutions to current and future problems concerning the destruction of archaeological sites and artifacts.
Curated OER
TE Activity: The Boxes Go Mobile
Students create a mobile of boxes and cubes that they made in a previous lesson plan that can be accessed from this page. They design the mobile using method that an engineer would use to balance the items based on surface areas and...
Curated OER
Jin Soo Kim
Learners examine and discuss a sculpture by the artist Jin Soo Kim. They explore and identify basic sculpture techniques, and create a sculpture using found objects, plaster, and cardboard.
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: Pre K 12 Resources for New School Routines: Creative Problem Solving Bingo: Pre K and K
These weekly activities are cross-curricular but emphasize Social-Emotional Learning, Math, and Literacy development. This week (January 4th), we are working on problem-solving.m
Other
Litemind: Creative Problem Solving With Scamper
SCAMPER is a technique you can use to spark your creativity and help you overcome any challenge you may be facing. In essence, SCAMPER is a general-purpose checklist with idea-spurring questions - which is both easy to use and...
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: Creative Problem Solving With Ezra Jack Keats
Contains plans for eight 50-minute lessons that use Ezra Jack Keats books to teach predicting, comparing and contrasting, and problem solving. In addition to objectives and standards, this instructional plan contains links to PDF...
FNO Press
From Now On: Building Good New Ideas
An article, from the online journal From Now On, that discusses a wide range of issues related to originality of thought--the kind of thinking that leads to new ideas, innovation, and creative problem solving. Covers a variety of...
Writing Fix
Writing Fix: Showing Creative Problem Solving
After reading excerpts in which Buck solves a problem in Jack London's The Call of the Wild, learners write their own three-paragraph animal stories imitating London's style and word choice. Teacher and student instructions are provided...
University of South Florida
Fcat: Problem Solving Strategies
This page gives students a guide for problem solving. A list of strategies is presented, and each strategy has an example to demonstrate it.
Other
Sim Professional Development and Enterprise Learning: 3 Reasons Why Systems Thinking Is Important for Innovation
In a world where interconnectedness and complexity hold sway, systems thinking offers a disciplined approach to make sense of the world and find innovative solutions to problems. How can a disciplined systems thinking approach lead...
Council for Economic Education
Econ Ed Link: One Hen: How One Small Loan Made a Big Difference
The picture book One Hen: How One Small Loan Made a Big Difference, written by Kate Smith Milway, takes place in Africa. Here in a Ghanan village, young Kojo cannot afford to go to school after the death of his father. His resourceful...
Other
Emsl: The River Crossing Problem
The lesson plan for an interesting word problem concerning swimming and rowing across a river, being swept downstream by the current, and walking back up the other side. Basic arithmetic skills are all that are needed to approach the...
Other
Rube Goldberg
Get a look into the life of the wacky machine inventor Rube Goldberg. Includes a terrific biography, a gallery of his cartoon inventions, and a link to The Rube Goldberg Machine Contest.
Curated OER
Writing Fix: Showing Creative Problem Solving: Live Writing
Front cover of the book Live Writing by Ralph Fletcher.
Curated OER
Writing Fix: Creative Problem Solving: Show; Don't Tell! Secrets of Writing
Front cover of the book Show; Don't Tell!: Secrets of Writing by Josephine Nobisso
Other
Thinking Skills in Education: Methods to Improve Problem Solving
Containing many resources for further reading about thinking skills, this site provides a lot of good information about how to improve problem solving.
Other
Infinite Innovations Ltd.: Tutorial on Creative (Lateral) Thinking
Learn how to use creative-thinking techniques within a problem-solving framework involving problem definition, problem analysis, solution generation, solution analysis, solution voting, and next steps.
Other
Techniques for Creative Thinking
If you are stuck on ways to teach creativity in your classroom, you will find many various techniques on this site. Everything from mind mapping to fuzzy thinking is listed here. Each technique has a link to its description.
Other
Creating Systems to Reinforce Creativity
Although this article was written from a business perspective, the ideas throughout can easily be adapted to the classroom. The formula for creative output is explained and is a good way to encourage creativity among your students.
Other
Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy Creative Thinking
With humor and an easy to understand common sense approach, this article explains how easy it is to be a creative thinker. It provides good practical ideas that will enable you to find your creative side.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Mit: Media Lab: All I Really Need to Know (About Creative Thinking) I Learned in Kindergarten
This paper in pdf format focuses on how kindergarten students learn about creative thinking and emphasizes that their approach is ideally suited to the needs of the 21st century.