Brainstorming By Hall Houston & Gerhard Erasmus
The concept of brainstorming was originally invented by Alex Osborne, an advertising executive in the 1950s. His goal was to guide his employees in developing a greater number of unique ideas. A brainstorming session follows several rules, many of which are probably familiar to you:
Create a large number of ideas.
Write everything down.
Don’t judge the ideas.
Employ the ideas of others to make better ideas.
Brainstorming is a fantastic way to generate a lot of useful ideas quickly and easily. It’s now a well-known creative activity that is popular in many fields, such as business, art and education.
In this book, we’re going to share some simple brainstorming activities that you can use in your classroom today. These activities can be used in a myriad of ways: to expand on a topic that came up in class, to give students extra fluency practice, to use as fillers when your lesson doesn’t go as planned, or to provide a change of pace.
In the next section, we provide a few guidelines to successful brainstorms, as well as tips for avoiding problems that sometimes accompany idea generation exercises. We also list some useful problem statements that will get your students brainstorming fast.
Tips for using brainstorming in class
It can be helpful to divide your brainstorming session into clear parts. This allows you to follow a prepared lesson plan or incorporate it into your lesson with ease. Here are some ideas for accomplishing a successful brainstorming session.
1. Set the stage
Make sure the atmosphere is relaxed and conducive to brainstorming. Your students are unlikely to come up with many ideas if they are stressed, or if the atmosphere in the classroom is too formal.
2. Define the problem
To ensure that the activity is focused, be sure to define the problem clearly. Make sure there are clear criteria that guide students towards successfully defining the problem statement.
3. During the ‘idea generation’ stage
Be sure to avoid any form of negative feedback during the brainstorming process. The aim of this part is purely to generate as many ideas as possible. Decide whether the generation of ideas will be done in groups, individually, or both.
4. Guide the discussion
Decide how much you, as the teacher, will be involved in the brainstorming. Will there be a group leader? How will you guide the brainstorming and subsequent discussion, and how will you help students to move towards an outcome?
5. Remember the objective
Be sure that you are not just brainstorming in class for its own sake, or because you are going along with some kind of fad. Make the activity purposeful and meaningful. We brainstorm to generate ideas that we then use to solve real-world problems. Remember to always have an objective. Make sure the activity has some practical application, and allow students to explore solutions. Again, be sure to decide whether they will be working individually, in groups, or both.
Problem statements
One central element of a brainstorming session is the problem statement, that is, a clear description of the situation that students will address (for example, ‘How can I improve my ability to network?’). Sometimes it’s a dilemma, sometimes it’s a situation that could be improved on. The best problem statements are easy to understand and motivate students to generate lots of ideas.
VOCABULARY
- executive - руководитель
- field - поле
- come up - подойти
- pace - темп
- ease - легкость
- accomplishing - достижения
- sake - ради
- fad - прихоть