ART LESSON PLAN

SUBJECT: CREATIVITY TEST

GRADE: ALL GRADES

OBJECTIVES:

1. Help students develop new ways of thinking.
2. Provide students with strategies to help them become more creative.
3. Evaluate creative skills of students.

MATERIALS:

Creativity test, pencils and erasures, markers, colored pencils.

MOTIVATION:

The students are accustomed to taking tests which measure knowledge attained over a certain period of time. They may be less accustomed to taking a test which is designed to measure a skill which is often thought to be genetic, and even more surprised to find out that a skill like creativity can be learned and improved. The original lesson plan came from an Arts and Activities, or possibly School Arts magazine. I have redesigned the tests because I got tired of seeing the same things over and over again.

PROCEDURE:

1. Explain to students that they will be taking a creativity test and give instructions:
   • The test is comprised of nine boxes. Each box contains some lines or shapes. The object of the test is to turn the shapes in the boxes into something, trying to fill all of the boxes.
   • Begin with pencils so that you can erase mistakes, then use markers or colored pencils to finish.
   • Students may use one entire class period to complete the test.

DAY TWO:

1. Place the following sentence on the board: "I was playing ping-pong and I hitch-hiked home to modify my combine."
2. Explain to students that the underlined words in the sentence are creativity techniques.
   • Ping-pong, refers to the idea of throwing ideas back and forth.
   • Hitch-hiking means picking up on one another's ideas and improving them..
   • Modify means to change for the purpose of improvement.
   • Combine means to discard any solutions that are unworkable and use better possibilities to come up with the final solution.
3. Students lay their tests on the table so that all can see and the retake the test. Teacher should stress neatness and bright colors.
4. A final class critique will be used in the evaluation.