Developing Creativity and Cognitive Skills

Posted by steveth268 on September 10th, 2014

In today’s competitive environment, one can remain ahead of others only if he is different from others. Creativity has become an essential skill for achieving success. Many thinkers have stipulated that creativity is an innate quality and it cannot be learned or taught. But, it has been proven now that creativity can be learned, taught and enhanced with time. Creativity can be best developed in small kids. To be creative it is very important to learn unlearning fast. Small kids have lesser exposure to the outer world and its conventions. They therefore, do not need to unlearn much. Small kids have natural ability to try out different ways of doing the same thing. But, unfortunately, scripted lessons and merit culture is gradually take them away from the path of creativity.

Children can learn best from their teachers. For children to learn creativity, it is important that their teachers teach them creatively. Creativity cannot be inculcated in kids with regular instructions. It needs to be developed cognitively in students. Cognitive skill development in children consists of the progressive construction of learning skills, such as attending, memorizing and thinking. These skills help them in processing the sensory information that they have in the form of knowledge and experience and evaluation of that information in problem solving. These skills of learning and thinking can be improved with practice and training. Unfortunately, schools in Singapore have proven inefficient in fulfilling the need of cognitive skill development in kids. Tuition centers in Singapore also repeat the same stories of schools.

Primarily, cognitive development focuses on three areas –attending, memorizing and thinking. Teachers can help kids in developing their ability to concentrate on a subject or topic. Simple things like asking questions about the visuals they are exposed to help them in paying closer attention to things and also pose in front of them a challenge of describing their experience in words.

When a certain topic or subject is taught in an unusual way like through rhymes, songs or plays, kids tend to remember them for long. Teachers need to work on presenting their subject in a creative manner. Audios and videos are helpful tools in helping them remember.

The cognitive skill of thinking helps students in finding solutions to problems on their own by assessing their abilities. This skill helps them in becoming more and more aware about their own thinking. They are able to clearly understand what they want to accomplish by doing something and whether they need help for doing it. For example, when a kid reads a story, his thinking ability permits him to read the portion he doesn’t understand again. He takes decision for himself whether he is able to understand what he is reading or he needs help in understanding. If he doesn’t understand it, he decides to take some clue from the pictures and connect with it or he asks someone to better grasp its meaning.

It is the prime responsibility of the parents, schools and tuition centers to focus on the cognitive skill development of the kids. In the top tuition centers in Singapore do not focus on it. If we want our kids to achieve success in their respective fields in future, we should focus on developing creativity and cognitive skills now.