This is a brainstorming lesson plan. It helps students discover the merits of the brainstorming technique to generate new ideas.
What is the brainstorming technique?
Brainstorming is a tool that uses a relaxed, informal atmosphere combined with lateral thinking to solve problems.
When faced with a new topic, challenge, or problem, we use the brainstorming technique to generate ideas and find a solution “outside the box” (i.e., creatively.)
This is a technique that encourages people to remove inhibitions and produce new ideas and solutions around a given subject of interest. People are encouraged to think more freely and come up with as many fresh ideas as they can. All of the ideas are written down without being judged. The ideas are evaluated after the brainstorming session.
How to teach students to brainstorm (lesson plan)
In spite of its importance in the generation of new ideas, many students do not have enough training to use it. This activity will teach students to brainstorm effectively. It can be carried out in a one-period session. No materials are required apart from a pen or pencil and sheets of paper.
- Materials: Pen or pencils and sheets of paper.
- Timing: 50 minutes
- Level: all levels
- To be able to identify the merits of the brainstorming technique in generating ideas.
- To practice this technique to find new solutions or to generate ideas about a particular problem or topic.
The brainstorming lesson plan
This lesson plan teaches students to brainstorm effectively. The students are divided into two groups.
The teacher appoints a leader in each group. Group one is instructed to brainstorm ideas wrongly. The leader is not encouraged to accept ideas he/she doesn’t like. The leader in group two is invited to accept all the ideas without criticism.
After the two groups report the ideas they generated, the class decides about which group used the brainstorming technique more effectively. Other activities are then eventually assigned to each group to practice this technique.
This is a description of the brainstorming lesson plan:
- Elicit from students different ways to generate new ideas.
- Tell the students that they are going to try an activity called brainstorming to generate ideas.
- divide the class into two groups.
- Assign one student in each group to be a leader. Give the group leaders the following tips:
- First group leader:
Encourage other students to contribute ideas on how to improve this English class. But, you do not want to waste any time. If a student states an idea that seems useless, tell the student “That’s no good” or “bad idea”, then move on to another student.
- Second group leader:
Encourage the other students to contribute ideas on how to improve this English class. Ask one student in the group to write down all ideas. Praise students’ contributions and don’t criticize any of the ideas. Make sure all ideas are accepted and written down.
- First group leader:
- Give students ten minutes to do the brainstorming activity.
- Get feedback from students about the brainstorming. Ask which group produced more ideas and which group enjoyed the activity more.
- Group leaders read out their slips of paper.
- Students guess which group was brainstorming the right way.
- Write these rules of successful brainstorming on the board:
- All ideas are accepted and written down.
- Generate as many ideas as possible.
- Unusual, even seemingly irrelevant ideas are welcome
- You may use other students’ ideas and expand on it
- Criticism is banned at this stage.
- Using these rules students brainstorm other topics (e.g., choose a topic you want your students to write about.)
- When they finish, groups choose their three best ideas and write them up on the board.
Students write an essay about the topic they brainstormed. They follow the Process Writing steps:
- Making decisions about the number of paragraphs they have to write.
- Identifying which ideas they collected from the brainstorming stage go with which paragraphs.
- First draft:
- Writing the first version of the essay.
- Examining the text’s overall organization, determining whether the ideas are useful, eliminating those that do not, and adding more if necessary.
- Tidying up the draft, checking the choice of words, grammar, and mechanics.