Ways To Develop Creative Thinking In The Common Core

By Amy Benjamin

The Common Core emphasizes analytical thinking: close reading of complex text, writing argumentation and explanation, and academic vocabulary. Creative thinking involves being able to make new combinations (synthesis) and to be flexible with traditional concepts (divergent thinking). How do we integrate the analytical thinking skills of the Common Core with the creative thinking skills that are also necessary for college and career readiness?
First, let's thumbnail the Common Core. Its literacy standards cluster around three main ideas: 1) Text-based answers to reading comprehension questions, 2) Source-based writing, and 3) Academic vocabulary.
Where is there room, then, for creative thinking? Although the Common Core decidedly calls for less narrative writing, it certainly does not eliminate the classroom staples of having students write stories, either fiction or memoir. At the elementary level, we are working toward a 50/50 balance between informational and narrative writing; at the secondary level, English language arts classes retain the narrative writing component for about 20% of the writing curriculum. And the few secondary teachers who have always used creative writing as a means for learning content outside of English class, there's no reason for them to discontinue that practice. Excellent teachers in all subject areas have long recognized the value of having students process, extend, and remember facts and figures by creative language activities such as skits, creative writing, and word play.
Academic vocabulary, foundational to both comprehension and production of academic text, offers lots of opportunities for creative thinking. Here are three tools for accelerating language acquisition:

1. Word games: Word games are great for generating language profusion, flexibility, and the repeated exposure that is so necessary moving words from receptive ("I know it when I hear or read it.") to productive ("I use it in my own speech and writing.") On my website you can find (free) classroom-ready puzzles that recruit the words from the Academic Word List (Coxhead).

2. Synthesis: Some teachers present a handful of generic academic words (Tier II), and simply ask students to put these together in a sentence that expresses something that they've recently learned in class. This valuable activity synthesizes Tier II and Tier III (domain-specific) words and is an excellent, low-maintenance way to solidify learning.

3. Metaphorical thinking: "It is the greatest thing by far to be a master of metaphor." So said Aristotle in his Poetics (350 B.C.E.). Metaphor-making is the embodiment of creative thinking, as a metaphor is, by definition, a new combination, a new perspective that ingeniously brings together the salient elements of two disparate things. We can ask students to explain, in speech or writing, their understandings of newly learned concepts and definitions by devising a metaphor and then explaining its aptness.
Creative and analytical thinking are not mutually exclusive. We should work to make them mutually supportive to engage the whole brains of our students.