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Over the years, creativity has become one of the essential skills we should have as part of our personal development and success.
Due to the stringency and restrictions of the education system, students do not have as many opportunities to foster their creative thinking.
This is harmful, as they will become closed-minded individuals who do not think outside the box when solving problems.
However, do not fret, as we have listed some strategies to foster creativity in your students during lessons in this article.
Foster a Supportive Learning Environment
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First and foremost, there should be a supportive learning environment to nurture their creativity during lessons.
This means that as an educator, you have to remove any constraints that prevent them from expressing their creativity, welcome all different perspectives and ideas with no judgment, and value them.
Your students will then feel more comfortable expressing what they think and will be encouraged to be more open.
Encourage Curiosity and Exploration
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Encourage your students to be curious and ask questions.
Only by getting them to really use their brains and think for themselves will they learn more from the successes or failures they experience.
For example, student A will learn more by thinking and getting their question answered as compared to student B, who isn’t engaged in the lesson and just listens.
Teach them to not be afraid of failures or whatever outcomes they may bring, and get them to explore the unknown.
Incorporate Activities That Encourages Creativity
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Allocate time during lessons to have interactive and hands-on activities.
You can include activities that involve physical interactions with objects, or just activities that require them to use the right side of their brains more.
For example, you may bring in a specimen relating to what they are currently studying and get them to explore it by themselves, or you could choose a topic and get them to think and write about anything related to it.
This sparks their imagination and gets their creative muscles working, making the lessons more fun and interesting for both you and them.
Foster Collaborative Learning
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If you have group classes, even better! Include more group activities and projects and ensure all of them are involved, with no one left out.
In group activities, everyone will be able to share their own ideas as well as learn from one another, opening their minds to different perspectives.
This inspires them to come up with more innovative ideas as they think about the rich ideas their classmates have.
Integrate Arts and Creativity into Lessons
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It would be ludicrous to want to increase creativity without including the arts, they are the epitome of the element of creativity.
Integrate activities like drawing, storytelling, and drama performances into your lessons.
This can help your students understand difficult concepts easily with a better way of explaining them and, even better, something they can relate to.
For future problems, they will remember them and be able to solve them quickly.
Incorporate Real-World Problem-Solving
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Another way is to bring up real-world problems in the lessons.
This challenges your students to think critically and apply what they learned to those problems to solve them.
They will put more effort into racking their brains since those problems are real and are affecting the world we live in.
Conclusion
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By implementing all the strategies in this article, you will create a supportive environment that nurtures your students’ creativity.
This is basically killing two birds with one stone, as this prepares them for their futures as well as enriches their lives.
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