“Increasing creativity is now a priority – a driving force in the 21st century […] this requires us to have the necessary skills and imagination to envision the new” (Stadil & Tanggaard 2012/2014). As just quoted, in this century it is crucial to develop imagination as a starting point for being creative. For this reason, in the following post you will read about how Gianni Rodari’s creative writing exercises can help teachers strengthen their students’ imagination. WHO IS GIANNI RODARI? Gianni Rodari is an Italian writer of the 20th century famous for his children’s books. Rodari spent his entire career stressing the importance of fostering children’s imagination by actively involving them during the reading. In one of his most famous books called The Grammar of Fantasy, the author presents some exercises that support imagination through creative writing. CREATIVE WRITING: THE FANTASTIC BINOMIAL One example of these exercises is called The Fantastic Binomial. This activity ...

This blog stems from the idea that innovation is not something we just are, but something we must learn.  Therefore, you must work with different processes and with different people in order to be innovative. As a group of future teachers who firmly believe that we need real activities that can be easily put into practice, we consider this blog a tool for teachers who would like to teach their pupils to be innovative. As professors, we can model creativity through our own performing (Brinkman, 2010), as teaching creatively leads to creative learning among students. Nevertheless, not only has the teacher to be innovative, but they also should develop orientations and techniques that can be used by pupils in order to approach situations in new ways. Many teachers agree on this perspective, but they fail when trying to put it into practice in a classroom, and there arises the aim of this blog; providing teachers with activities which can be used to teach innovation, so that t...

Brikman, J. (2010). Teaching Creatively and Teaching for Creativity. Arts Education Policy Review, 111, 48-50.