Guidelines to foster creativity in elementary/middle school students are discussed. These include understanding the creative process, freeing the classroom from constraints, rewarding creative behavior, modeling creative behavior, deferring judgment, choosing appropriate subject matter/materials, and using activities stimulating creativity.…

Proposes five "creative comprehension" strategies designed to challenge both gifted as well as average students. (FL)

The author describes a group of nine talented, creative third graders with whom she experimented with exercises designed to develop and enhance creativity. Included is a list of creative writing ideas. (KC)

This article describes a seventh-grade physical education class project that called for definitions of 21 terms such as human movement, dance, rhythm, time, space, etc. Individual projects included booklets, movies, photomontages, scrapbooks, and posters. (JMF)

Three studies suggest that students involved in observational activities increase the level of specificity in their writing after only 10 to 15 days of instruction and are judged to be more creative. (DD)

Conventional instruction in critical thinking may ignore the creative and intuitive functions of rationality, thereby encouraging a mechanically rote approach to textual analysis, problem solving, and problem construction. Such an overemphasis upon logical "calculus of justification" functions has epistemological weaknesses and pedagogical…

This bibliography lists and annotates 10 references on gifted education, including journal articles and book sections. The references deal with curriculum content, creativity, moral reasoning, mathematical problem solving, cooperative learning, minority students' standardized test scores, and minority students' under-representation in gifted…

This study evaluated the use of guided imagery practice to enhance creative writing with 43 academically gifted students (stratified as either high or low creativity) in grades 3 and 4. Groups receiving the guided imagery practice (regardless of original creativity level) generated more original writing, which contained more sensory descriptions…

Suggests that teachers should consider which questions to ask as a part of instructional preparation. To ensure that diversity and critical thinking are involved, a teacher should use a taxonomy for a template when writing questions. Presents and discusses Bloom's taxonomy, Gagne's levels of learning, and a taxonomy for general science process…

This panel paper includes discussions from professional artists on pivotal stages and forces in their artistic and career development. Factors identified and recommended for emphasis in curriculum development are motivation, confidence, discipline, basic skills, structure, and studying with gifted teachers. Numerous possible roles for the art…

Proposes a change in the way creativity is taught in journalism design classes. Suggests pedagogical strategies that incorporate creativity research into the journalism design curriculum. Proposes a curriculum that is empirically based rather than anecdotal, and one that demystifies creativity and offers students specific techniques and practice…

Takes issue with the assumed antithesis of processes of the irrational (imagination and creativity) and those of the rational (reasoning and argumentation). Argues that numerous philosophers suggest richer ways of imagining the processes of argumentation. Explores various classroom practices that enable teachers to weave the creative and critical…

Creativity requires application and balancing of three abilities--the synthetic, the analytic, and the practical. Teachers should serve as creativity role models, encourage questioning of assumptions, allow mistakes, encourage sensible risk taking, design creative assignments and assessments, let students define problems, and reward creative ideas…

This article argues that individuals are creative by virtue of a set of decisions and presents 10 decisions that people can make to decide for creativity. Included are teaching examples of these decisions as well as teaching activities to facilitate students' learning how to make these decisions. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)