Art and creativity are closely linked in the minds of most people. When asked to explain why art should be part of the school curriculum, respondents commonly answer that art provides an opportunity for students to be creative and express themselves. As professionals who have worked with art education for years, the authors suggest a different…

A teacher describes how she uses storytelling in her fifth grade classes, because storytelling combines listening skills and imagination with the nuances of language, history, culture, and values. Resources are listed. Two insets discuss the benefits of storytelling and offer tips on becoming a storytelling teacher. (MT)

Suggestions for developing creative and original science fairs include trying new categories, issuing a challenge, and involving the community. (DF)

Defining creativity as a process that draws upon talents, education, skills, thinking and working styles, and inherent intelligence, and pinpointing motivation as the single most important ingredient in the creativity recipe, this book provides dozens of concrete, hands-on exercises and techniques that can help a parent or teacher keep creativity…

Uses a case-study approach to examine the role of belief as a catalytic quality in the artistic making and the thinking processes used by children. Describes the processes encountered by children when presented with artistic tasks. Discusses the relationship between belief and the three other main dimensions of artistic thinking and making: social…

This book is designed to be of assistance to primary school teachers who have had little training in arts and crafts and for use in teacher training colleges. Tested in Nigeria and Jamaica, this manual gives children an opportunity to develop their natural creativity, and also develops accuracy and manual dexterity in hand skills. Lesson plans are…

The classroom activities suggested in this resource booklet, proven successful by South Dakota poet Jack Kreitzer, are designed to spark or increase students' creativity by bringing the exciting language of poetry alive in the elementary and secondary classroom. Introductory comments present thoughts on what poetry is and how it should be taught,…

The book describes Learning to Read through the Arts (LTRTA), a curriculum combining art activities with writing and reading in small group workshops. The methodology of LTRTA has been applied and modified to work with different groups of students: perceptually impaired, reading disabled, and gifted students. Workshops are offered in mixed media,…

Describes a project for fourth graders based on a book by Shel Silverstein. After the teacher read and discussed the book with the students, they acted out the story and wrote original versions. Next, a professional painted an impressionist painting of the story. Finally, the students made their own paintings. (CB)

This article explains the difference between concepts and skills in music education. Concepts about music cannot be taught; they are acquired through meaningful experiences. These experiences are typically called musical skills and include singing, chanting, playing, moving, creating, improvising, and writing. Suggestions for organizing the school…

One of a series of resource manuals written by participants in the University of North Dakota teacher education programs to help teachers develop more open and responsive classrooms, this booklet focuses on the teaching of creative drama. Following an introduction by Vito Perrone, the titles and authors of the articles are as follows: (1) "'They…

This discussion of the need for learning activities which promote critical thinking skills, creativity, and affective growth in children uses Bloom's Taxonomy as a guide for designing such activities based on children's literature. Several examples of projects based on specific children's books are provided. (CLB)

Literary gaps were identified by Wolfgang Iser in 1974 as "vacant pages" that invite the reader to reflect and enter into the text thereby motivating students to experience the text as reality. Arthur Applebee, in 1979, identified three categories to distinguish children's types of interaction with stories: (1) the complexity of literary…

This 9-week curriculum unit on trees is designed for gifted students in grades 1-5. The lessons are designed for 40-minute classes meeting two or three times a week and stress the development of creative thinking skills, creative problem solving and decision making skills, and critical and logical thinking skills. Each of the 12 lesson plans…

This book identifies strategies for use by classroom teachers in grades K-8 to nurture the development of creativity. Section 1 offers general strategies to stimulate productive thinking. Section 2 examines personality, creative thinking, and appropriate teaching strategies. Section 3 is dedicated to teaching special groups. Section 4 focuses on…