For Teachers: Spicing up your Brainstorm activities

Most English teachers know the feeling:

You’re setting up an activity. The first stage is a brainstorm.  It seems like a simple enough task, but you’re already looking out at a sea of blank stares.  You’ve encouraged the students to be as creative as they want and you don’t feel that the prompt is too difficult, but a lot of students seem to be struggling for whatever reason. 

Sound familiar?

Instead of gently encouraging students to be creative, try spicing up the instructions to the brainstorms. By giving students more specific guidelines about your expectations, you provide them with a permission structure that allows for more interesting ideas. It’s no longer the student’s fault if they’re being weird, it’s yours. If you’re anything like me, you’re happy to take the blame for any weirdness that makes class more fun.  

Here are some ideas to help your students be more creative in brainstorms:

Quantity over quality

Usually it’s the other way around, but make it the goal to have the most ideas, not the best ones. You can set a minimum number of ideas per group, require each group member to contribute a certain number of ideas, or, to bring the energy up, make it a friendly competition and set a timer to see which group can come up with the most. Maybe they’re not feeling creative, but odds are that some of your students won’t be able to resist a contest.

“Yes, and...” 

One good thing the improv comedy community brought to the world is “yes, and…” Instead of just telling students “there are no bad ideas,” push them to explore every idea and prohibit them from using the word “but.” For every new idea, each group member should contribute a “yes, and…” idea to flesh it out. If you have any particularly ornery students, they’ll realize that their teammates will have to respond positively to even their wildest suggestions. 

Figure Storming

Nothing brings out the creativity like putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. Give your students one or several celebrities/personas (what would a pirate think?), and ask them to imagine what recommendations that person would come up with instead. If someone else’s identity is attached to a weird idea, it’s not so embarrassing as when it’s your own.  

Brainwriting

Do you have some introverted students in your class that you’d like to hear from?  One way you can help them out is by giving them the opportunity to put their ideas in writing first. Have each student write 3 ideas on a piece of paper with plenty of space between each idea. Every couple of minutes, ask the students to pass their papers clockwise within their groups to add bullet points building on their team’s other ideas.  In addition to giving your quieter students a voice, this strategy will also ensure that groups don’t just glob onto the first idea anyone said.  

If you have any other ideas, we’d love to hear them.  Comment below.