When you won't take "yes" or "no" for an answer, you've posed questions that will stimulate thinking.

Help extend student thinking beyond the levels of knowledge, comprehension, and application most often used in the regular classroom.  The ladder (next page) lists all six levels and includes key words to insure that students analyze, synthesize, and evaluate, too.  Step up the ladder and construct some questions--start simply, and climb to the more complex!

Try these:

Is there something you have always dreamed of doing for a long time?  Why haven't you done it?

Would you rather play a game with someone more or less talented than you?  Would it matter who was watching?

Would you like to be famous?  In what way?

When did you last yell at someone?  Why?  Did you regret it?

When did you last read to yourself?  To someone else?

Does the fact that you have never done something before increase or decrease its appeal to you?

If you were able to wake up in the body of someone else, would you do so?  Whom would you pick?

If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one ability or quality, what would it be?

If you could take a one month trip anywhere in the world, and money were not a consideration, where would you go and what would you do?

Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?  As your close friend?

What would make a "perfect" day for you?  What is your most treasured memory?

*Adapted from The Book of Questions by Gregory Stock

Climbing the Question Ladder

EVALUATION
Judging according to some set of criteria and stating why;  

Editorialize	Rate	Grade	Decide
Find the errors	Defend	Verify	Evaluate
Choose why	Value	Dispute	Which is best?

SYNTHESIS
Combining elements into a pattern not obvious before;  

Write	Design	Forecast	Develop
Create/Build	Compose	Imagine	Tell
Hypothesize	Estimate	Predict	Invent
What If?	Make up	Solve

ANALYSIS
Breaking down into parts, relating parts to the whole;  

Distinguish	Separate	Dissect	Deduce
Categorize	Contrast	Arrange	Graph
Differentiate	Classify	Conclude	Plan
Investigate	Compare	Outline	Chart

APPLICATION
Using in situations that are new, unfamiliar;

Select	Demonstrate	Explain
Apply	What is the use for?	Show
Construct	What would result?	Illustrate

COMPREHENSION
Translating, interpreting, and extrapolating;  

Indicate	Select	Locate
Summarize	Define	Outline
Explain	Translate	Identify
Tell	Match	Example

KNOWLEDGE
Eliciting factual answers, testing recall and recognition;

Memorize	Where?	When?	Name
Reproduce	Label	Select	List
Describe	How?	Recall
Define	What?	Why?

Strengthening CREATIVE Abilities
 

It would seem quite apparent that there is no one creative process and there may well be as many creative processes as there are creative people.
    H. Herbert Fox

Parents often ask how they can increase their children's creativity.  While creativity is a product of both genetics and learning, there is no doubt that virtually everyone's personal creativeness can be enhanced.

In PACE we:

 1. Stress the personal importance of creativity to students.

 2. Teach the concept of creativity.
 
3. Teach creative techniques and skills.
 
4. Read and discuss the biographies and characteristics of
  creative people.

Many creative or divergent thinking exercises fall into these categories.

1. "What would happen if. . .
 For example, "What would happen if. . . 
    everyone looked alike?
    Plano became the North Pole?
    there were no schools?

2. "Think of an unusual uses for. . ."
    books, tennis balls, a plate.

3. "How could you change or improve. . .
    a bathtub?
    a shopping cart?
    a walkman?

4. "Design a . . ."
    homework machine, 
    safer car.

5. "Think of all the ways you might show it. . ."
    (Encourage fluency...many responses.)

6. "How else could you show it. . .?"
 "Try to think of a different way. . ."
    (Promote flexibility, change, seeing something differently.)

7. "Show us a way no one else will. . ."
    (Support original ideas.  Remember, it's easier to reduce an idea
     than to expand it.)

8. "Make it more complicated or fancier. . ."
    "Refine or make it elegant. . ."
    Provide time for elaboration and richness of detail.
 

Bohanca, Fogarty and Opeka in their Patterns For Thinking (1986) outline twelve explicit creative thinking skills. 

They are:  

  1.  Brainstorming
(coming up with many ideas)
 
2. Personifying
(giving human characteristics to inanimate objects)
 
3. Inventing
(coming up with original ideas)
 
4. Associating Relationships
(putting two unlike things together) 
 
5. Inferring
(drawing conclusions that aren't stated)
 
6. Generalizing
(making broad statements from specific details)
 
7. Predicting
(telling what will happen)
 
8. Hypothesizing
(asking "what if?")
 
9. Making Analogies
(making comparisons)
 
10.Dealing with Ambiguity and Paradox
(dealing with lack of clarity and realizing that what may at first seem untrue is true)
 
11. Problem Solving
(identifying problems and appropriate solutions)