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Create  involves putting elements together to form a coherent of functional whole.  Students make a new product by mentally reorganizing some elements or parts into a pattern or structure not clearly present before.  But, this is not completely free creative expression unconstrained by the demands of the learning task.   Create, here, includes objectives that call for unique production and refers to objectives calling for production that all students can and will do.  In meeting these objectives, many students will create in the sense of producing their own synthesis of information or materials to form a new whole, as in writing, painting, sculpting, building, and so on.  These do not necessarily relay on originality or uniqueness such as where students are expected to assemble previously taught material into an organized presentation.  The student must draw upon elements from many sources and put them together into a novel structure or pattern relative to his or her own prior knowledge.  There are three phases: 1) problem representation where a student attempts to understand the task and generate possible solutions;       2) solution planning in which a student examines the possibilities and devises a workable plan;  3)  and solution execution, in which a student successfully carries out the plan.

Generate: involves representing the problem and arriving at alternatives that meet certain criteria.  When the student moves beyond the boundaries or constraints of prior knowledge and theories, it involves divergent thinking and forms the core of creative thinking.  The goal here is divergent thinking.

SS:   An objective could be to learn to generate multiple usefull solutions for social problems and could be assessed by askinggg the student to “Suggest as many ways as you can to assure that everyone has adequate medical insurance.”  The teacher should construct a set of criteria that are shared with the students such as the number of alternatives, the reasonableness of the various alternatives, the practicality of the various alternatives, and so on.

ELA:

SCI: An objective could be to generate hypotheses to explain observed phenomena.  The students could be asked to write as many hypotheses as they can to explain strawberries growing to extraordinary size, again with clearly defined criteria for judging the quality of the responses given to the students.

Math: An objective could be to generate alternative methods for achieving a particular result with a corresponding assessment item “What alternative methods could you sue to find what whole number yield 60 when multiplied together?”

Assessment:  For each assessment, explicit, publicly shared scoring criteria are needed.  Typically, constructed response formats in which a student is asked to produce alternatives or hypotheses are used.  Two subtypes are consequences tasks and uses tasks.  In a consequence tasks, a student must list all the possible consequences of a certain event, such as “What would happen if there was a flat income tax rather rather than a graduated income tax?”  In a uses tax, a student must list all possible uses for an object such as “What are the possible uses for the World Wide Web?”  Multiple choice format is almost impossible to use for this process.

Plan:  involves devising a solution method that meets a problem’s criteria, or developing a plan for solving the problem.  This stops short of actually solving the problem.  Subgoals may be established.  Teachers often skip this step looking for what is to be produced, the final step of the creative process.  Planning is either assumed or implicit and is often done covertly by the student.

SS: An objective could be to be able to plan research papers on given historical topics.  The student might be asked to be able to , prior to writing a paper, include the steps he or she intends to follow to conduct the research.

ELA:

SCI:  An objective could be to learn to design studies to test various hypotheses.  Students could be asked to plan a way of determining which of three factors determines the rate of oscillation of a pendulum.

Math: An objective could be to be able to lay out the steps for determining the volume of the volume of a pyramid, a task not previously considered in class.

Assessment: Planning may be assessed by asking students to develop worked-out solutions, describe solution plans, or select solution plans for a given problem.

Produce involves carrying out a plan for solving a given problem that meets certain specification.  Objectives may or may not include originality or uniqueness as one of the specifications.  A student is given a functional description of a goal and must create a product that satisfies the description.  It involves carrying out a solution plan and involve producing novel and useful products that meet certain requirements.

SS: An objective could be to learn to write papers pertaining to particular historical periods that meet specified standards of scholarship.   Students to write a short story that takes place during the American Revolution.

ELA: An objective could be to learn to design sets for plays and students would be asked to design the set for a student production of Driving Miss Daisy. 

SCI: An objective could be to learn to design habitats for certain species and certain purposes.  An assessment would ask students to design the living quarters of a space station.

Math:

Assessment:  The specifications become the criteria for evaluating student performance relative to the objective.  A common task is a design task where students are asked to create a product that corresponds to certain specifications such as producing schematic plans for a new high school that includes new ways for students to conveniently store their personal belongings.