106 101 Activities for Teaching Creativity and Problem Solving
101 Activities for Teaching Creativity and Problem Solving.Copyright © 2005 by John Wiley &
Sons, Inc. Reproduced by permission of Pfeiffer, an Imprint of Wiley. http://www.pfeiffer.comTime
30 minutesRelated Activities
- Picture Tickler [17]
- Ideatoons [26]
- Doodles [37]
- Drawing Room [59]
- Modular Brainstorming [62]
Procedure
- Distribute the Clichés, Proverbs, and Maxims Handout.
- Distribute the Say What? Handout and discuss it with the participants, answering
questions they might have. - After discussing a challenge to work on, instruct the groups to review the list of
Clichés, Proverbs, and Maxims and have each person select one that looks inter-
esting. - Tell the individuals to write down what they think is the intended meaning
behind the maxim or cliché they chose and to use as much detail as they can with
their descriptions. - Have the individuals in each group share their descriptions, in turn, with the
other group members. - Tell them to use the descriptions to brainstorm ideas as a group, write down ideas
on Post-it®Notes (one idea per note), and place them on a flip chart for evaluation.
Debrief/Discussion
This is an exercise in which the specific selections can determine the outcome. That is,
some selections might result in a higher quantity and quality of ideas than others. Some
people might be able to use the phrases more easily than others to trigger ideas, or some
may find this approach better than when using another technique using single words,
such as the PICLed Brains [16] approach.
Also consider having participants debrief using the following questions:- What was most helpful about this exercise?
- What was most challenging?
- What can we apply?
- How would you rate the value of this exercise to helping us with this issue?
- Will this exercise be helpful in the future for other sessions?
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