Jazz up Your Lesson

Creativity can be called an engine of success. Try these quick and easy-to-use activities to develop creativity in your students and…probably in yourself as well!
Creativity skills are truly important in everyday life and sometimes can make people world famous. Take Kasimir Malevich – no one drew a black square before him. There might be a lot of argument about his talent, but there is no doubt he was the first to introduce such vision of art to the public; or Kutuzov – he preferred to burn the capital of his beloved motherland in order not to give its symbolic keys to Napoleon. The decisions of those people might have been controversial, but they were new and fresh! And the last example to convince you of the usefulness of creative skills: in America an elderly lady managed to avoid robbery thanks to her wit. When a criminal attacked her, she started fixing his tie. In amazement the robber forgot about his cruel intentions!

Activity 1:
“Send Destruction Away”

In teams let your students help each other to delete destructive thoughts that prevent their bright ideas from forming and coming true. Divide the class in 2 teams and let every team make one list of things that prevent people from acting.

For example:
1. It’s impossible.
2. Nobody will follow me.
3. I lack resources.
4. I’m stupid… etc.

After they finish let one team read their “drawback” and the other team immediately makes a reply, reassuring the first team and stating the opposite.

For example:
1. I know people who did something like that – and it worked!
2. You never know until you try!
3. Try asking friends for help, banks for credits…
4. You are wrong – you’re smart and probably haven’t discovered all your talents yet! etc.

Activity 2:
“Easy Mind Clinic”

Let your students imagine that they are going to spend a day in such a clinic. Doctors there aim at making your life more colorful and help you to look differently at all the problems, so that troubles would seem easy to overcome.
Divide your students in groups of 4–5 people and let them invent procedures that can help people to think more easily.

For example:
1. Positive shower – you enter a room with positive and encouraging statements all over the walls.
2. Be another – you enter a special cinema, where you can replace any character you like.
3. Hammer-room – a room where you can destroy anything you do not like.
4. Crazy dancers – a room where you can dance as if no one is watching you.

Activity 3:
“City talks to you”

It’s a project task. Ask your students to make slogans that they would like to hang all over the city.

For example:
1. Dream, dare, do!
2. Do what you love and love what you do!
3. Impossible is nothing – keep going!
4. Smile to life and it will smile back to you!
5. Today is your day!

Check these slogans for any mistakes and discuss them in class. After that part of work is done, ask your students to write these slogans on posters adding any decorative details they want and hang them in class / at school / outside school / somewhere else in the city.