4 Completing a brainstorm

Once the ideas have been generated, you need to think about how to use them. Simply generating the ideas might be enough and you can put the results of the brainstorm on the wall so your students can to refer to them. However, as you saw in Activity 1, using the ideas can lead to further creativity. During that activity, you were asked to use your brainstorm to design a homework activity and a demonstration to enhance your teaching.

There are many other methods that you can use to finalise the brainstorming process. You can ask your students to:

  • pick out the three (or five, or ten) most sensible (or important, or significant) ideas
  • look for patterns or connections
  • discuss accuracy (you may need to correct some ideas if they are scientifically incorrect)
  • write a list (the easiest but possibly the least imaginative option)
  • create a mind map or a concept map (refer to the relevant units)
  • draw a poster
  • record a voice clip (you might use a phone to do this)
  • create a cartoon to represent their final agreed selection.

If you want your students to make a mind map, for example to summarise a topic, a brainstorm can provide a useful starting point. Gather ideas on the blackboard, then ask your students to work in pairs to organise the ideas into a mind map.

3 Brainstorming responses

5 Running a brainstorming activity in your classroom