Brainstorming Activities for Students Online
Brainstorming is a creative process used to produce new ideas for a piece of writing. To brainstorm, you need to write down your thoughts without any pressure or difficulty. You can then go back and edit them later on. By writing down your ideas, you get the feel of how the new concept feels in your heart and mind. This makes it easier to write about it in an organized way knowing what to say and where to start. Brainstorming activities for students bring out the creative side in any student making their papers more interesting and valuable.
Brainstorming is a form of creativity that draws on the experiences and unique background of each student involved, which also requires students to feel comfortable enough to share their ideas. These brainstorming activities for students will help teachers and parents support their children as they revise for exams.
Brainstorming is a proven method for developing creative solutions, generating new ideas, and sharing knowledge. Brainstorming is a form of group creativity that draws on the experience and unique background of each participant and requires everyone to feel comfortable enough to share.
There are also brainstorming activities for students to support the revision process. These should be used in conjunction with other types of tests and assessments.
Brainstorming Activities for Ideas
How can you be more creative? You can practice how with these 10 brainstorming activities.
Not only for teachers, but companies can use these brainstorming activities to tickle your creative juices.
Like all our worksheets, they are 100% free to print off and use.
1 Multi-purpose Items
First, the teacher gives the class an object, any object. Next, give the students a couple of minutes to think of all of the different uses for that item. After about five or six minutes, the teacher asks students to share what they have come up with.
For example, you can use forks to eat food, comb your hair, open cans, mix ingredients, and clean pans. Not so bad for a simple fork. The “Multi-purpose Items” encourages creativity and it’s fun to hear what they come up with.
2 Rhyme Time
First, put your students into groups. Next, hand out the Rhyme Time activity sheet. Now, bring out your stopwatch and get your students to think of as many rhymes as possible for each group. Finally, the group with the most rhymes wins.
Your students are poets and they don’t even know it. Review the rhymes and have a classroom discussion on rhymes. For example, when do you hear rhymes? How about in songs poems?
3 Talking Timebomb
One of the best parts about Talking Time Bomb is that you need practically no preparation time at all. Also, you can practice anything from rhyming to vocabulary to types of things.
First, the teacher comes up with a topic or idea. In the worksheet below, there are some ideas but it can be anything. Next, the teacher starts the music, and students have to think of as many words as they can for that topic.
Someone starts with a ball. When they come up with a word, they pass the ball to another student. This process continues but they can’t repeat something that has already been said.
When the music stops, whoever is holding the ball loses. And the punishment can be anything. For example, they must speak for one minute about a topic the teacher gives them.
4 Compound Words Game Board
This is an extremely fun way to teach compound words where they have to collect compound words through board game activity.
First, put students into pairs. Next, print off the compound word game board and provide dice for each group. After students roll the dice, they will write down the word they land on. As they continue to work through the board game, they will have to create compound words that they write down.
For example, “BLUE” matches with “PRINT” and “BERRY” to form compound words. If they land on these three words, they can earn 2 points – one for each set of compound words. And if they land on “FOOT”, then they can match it with “PRINT” for another point.
5 Pushy Salesperson
Have your students sell something that nobody wants to buy like a pushy salesperson. There are tons of ideas in the worksheet.
First, you can start this activity by showing any infomercial from your home country. Then, you can lead by example and try to sell a product to your students. Finally, it’s your student’s turn to become pushy salespeople.
6 English Shiritori
Shiritori is a popular Japanese game in which players have to think of a word beginning with the final letter of the previous word. In groups of two, players can improve their vocabulary and spelling by creating a long word chain.
If you can’t think of any more connecting words, then you lose the game.
7 No Subtitles
Have you ever watched a movie with no volume and pretended to be them? How about in another language? Let me tell you: It can be quite a challenge keeping up with flapping lips.
First, turn any English movie on mute with no subtitles. In groups of two, have your students re-enact the voices like voice-over actors. The purpose of this speaking activity is to get people speaking.
8 Like or Dislike
Can someone identify you by what you completely love or despise? Each student writes down their likes and dislikes. Next, the teacher collects everyone’s answer. After reading everyone’s answer aloud, can you identify who it is?
It’s a fun interactive guessing game that gets personal. There’s an element of intrigue in it. Best of all, it gets the whole class involved, you can learn about each other and usually gets some laughs.
9 Famous Foreheads
In this activity, all players sit in a circle. Give each student a post-it note and a pencil. Each player writes down the name of a famous person and passes the note face down to the player on the left.
Each player sticks the note on his/her forehead and everyone takes turns asking “Yes” or “No” questions to find out who they are. (Hence the title of the game “Famous Foreheads”)
The first player to guess the name on his forehead is the winner. But encourage students to keep on asking questions until they find out the famous person on their forehead.
10 Cultural Dictionary
If you’re teaching abroad, one of the best parts is the cultural exchange between you and your destination country. And don’t forget that culture exchange is two ways. Not only do your students learn about your culture, but you can learn about theirs.
Ask students to write down one culturally significant item about their country. Ask for volunteers to share. Once you collect all the student’s answers, you can compile everyone’s ideas in a culture exchange dictionary that you can keep in class.
Brainstorming Activities for Students
There are several tools available to make it easier for students to participate in brainstorming activities.
Pre-printed mindmaps, online mapping tools, and software such as Visio and PowerPoint provide a great structure for students.
Place the topic or concept in the middle and branch off of ideas as primary or secondary thoughts. These brainstorming activities for students are probably the most tried and tested that you remember yourself.
Just as effective is to use a free-form style. Instead of adding a level of categorizing offered by a mindmap, have students list ideas as they come on the board or a piece of paper. These ideas can be organized later.
Whether creating a mindmap or a list, remember the goal is to come up with ideas and worry about how usable they are later. Sometimes the most outrageous or unique idea is the most useful.
So grab some paper and highlighters and practice those brainstorming skills for students.
1. Multi-purpose Items
This is a simple, straightforward game that is good to play to encourage creativity and brainstorming activities for students.
This creativity is a really important skill when brainstorming, as the idea is to create as many ideas as possible in quick succession, no matter how odd they might be.
The game works as follows: give a student an object, any item will do. Then, ask them to list as many different uses for that object as possible, whether typical of the object or more off the wall.
For example, if you were to suggest ‘wellington boots, the student would be expected to write ‘shoes’ as a use, but also more creative ideas such as ‘container for soup.’
While the game is a little odd, it encourages off wall, creative thinking – really important in brainstorming. This is one of the best brainstorming activities for students as it develops lateral thinking.
2. Famous Foreheads
This is a particularly famous game which you’re sure to have heard of, if not played yourself.
The idea of the game is simple, and it works best with a larger group. In that situation, students would be given a post-it note and asked to write the name of a famous person on the note.
Then, they would pass it – face-down – to their partner and would ask yes or no questions to determine the identity of the person on the note.
This is a great activity to encourage critical thinking, as you start with a really long list, only to have to keep coming up with shorter and shorter lists of ideas.
This skill is particularly helpful when trimming down a brainstorm after it’s completed.
3. Talking Timebomb
This is a simple game, and it needs essentially no preparation.
The game works as so: a group of students is given a theme, and then told that whenever they’re chosen, they’re to say a word that fits with the theme.
For example, if the theme was countries, the first student could say ‘Canada’, and then pass the game on to the next person.
The passing system works best with a physical object like a ball that could be thrown around, though it can also work if students simply point each other out.
This game works well to develop the skill of quickly coming up with many ideas that link to a core theme – this is, of course, the core skill set in brainstorming.
4. English Shiritori
Shiritori is a popular game in Japan that is often used to teach language and cognitive skills.
The aim of the game is to think of a word that begins with the letter that the previous word ends with. For example, a sequence could be ‘Bottle, Elephant, Tap’.
This game is great to teach simple association skills that transfer well to brainstorming activities.
5. Compound Words Game Board
This game is a fairly simple one that helps students to learn how best to connect two ideas in a brainstorming session.
The idea is simple. A teacher writes out a list of words, and a student randomly selects their words from that list – typically by selecting a random number within a predetermined range.
The student then makes a note of their words and try to combine them into as many compound words as they can within, say, thirty seconds.
This game teaches students skills transferable to brainstorming. Namely, it teaches students to combine two similar fields to create an entirely new one.
This could be useful if several branches of a brainstorm could do with being connected to form a sub-storm.
6. Cultural Dictionary
This game is particularly helpful if you’re teaching abroad, though that doesn’t need to be the case.
While this is obviously helpful in a classroom that contains multiple cultures, it could also be done in any group of people who have dissimilar interests.
Asking a set of students for words that are important or relevant to them can be great for adding to brainstorm in several places. For example, ‘ink’ could be added in two places on a brainstorm – writing and reading.
7. Rhyme Time
This is a great activity to teach students how to pick linked words and phrases that would go well together on a brainstorm.
The idea of the game is simple: the teacher picks out two or three words, and then the student has thirty seconds per word to write as many rhyming words as they can think of.
This is a great opportunity to teach students ways to think of separate but related topics that can be useful and handy for brainstorming around a central theme.
8. No Subtitles
A particularly difficult part of brainstorming is being able to keep up with the pace that the activity requires, especially if you’re working in a group.
To teach kids to think more quickly and efficiently, this activity is ideal.
A great way to do it could be to pick a simple scene or sequence from film or tv that’s roughly a minute long, and then play it with the sound and subtitles off.
While it’s playing, ask the students to say what they imagine the characters on screen to be saying, no matter how silly or creative the ideas get.
This is a great way to teach kids to think quickly and creatively, and can be great fun!
9. Pushy Salesperson
This is a great game to help develop creative thinking skills in students. The idea is that a teacher presents them with an item or two that is, on the surface, useless. For example, one such item could be a leaky umbrella.
Give the students a little thinking time, and then they must try to sell the useless item to either the teacher or to another student.
This activity encourages out-of-the-box thinking and lets students begin to consider items or ideas in ways that may not have been done beforehand.
This is a critical skill in the process of brainstorming and can be really helpful for students to learn. Amazon Web Services
10. Like or Dislike
This game is a simple one that helps to hone students’ observational skills.
In this game, the idea is that every student has to write down a list of the things that they like, and a list of things that they dislike.
The post title is brainstorming activities for students examples, virtual brainstorming activities. Brainstorming is the process of generating a group of a sufficient number of ideas or concepts that can be used to solve problems, develop new products or processes. Brainstorming sessions are pre-planned meetings in which participants form a group to generate ideas about a specific issue or topic.
The Internet is full of information about activities for students, but most of it is directly connected with schoolwork. That’s why I’ve decided to come up with an article that would help you find activities that can be done outside the classroom.