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*This lesson coincides with pages 14-21, what is creative thinking, from A Whack on the Side of the Head by Roger von Oech.

Lesson written by: Kris Bensmiller and Bonnie Benson

Grade level range:  K-12

Length of time to teach lesson: 10 minutes +

Overview of lesson:  Students will be given pictures to look at and discuss/ record the different things they can see in each picture. They draw a question card from the stack and answer it alone or with a partner.
After discussing and working on pictures, they fill out the advance organizer with the teacher at the station.
 
Objectives (Learning targets) of this lesson:  I can think about things in a new way to build my creativity by approaching pictures with different perspectives.
Resources/supplies/handouts are needed to teach this lesson: Rubric, ambiguous pictures, advanced organizer, perspective suggestions
 
Step-by-step teaching instructions for the lesson: 

1)  Students will be given pictures to look at and discuss/ record the different things they can see in each picture.
2)  They draw a question card from the stack and answer it alone or with a partner.
3)  After discussing and working on pictures, they fill out the advance organizer with the teacher at the station
Answers to the Advanced Organizer:  creative people have faith that eventually new ideas will form from the combination of other things they know about
the key to being creative lies in what we so with our knowledge, so we need to try different approaches
since an idea takes its meaning from the context you put it in, changing the context is a way to discover the possibilities of your resources
by changing perspectives and playing with knowledge, we can make the ordinary extraordinary
Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and then thinking something different
 

Assessment: The desktop “teacher”  will assess students as they complete the activity.  Student also completes the rubric as a self-assessment.  Students can compare, or turn both sets of rubric in to the classroom teacher.