Creative Journaling Skills

July 31, 2024
4:00 pm

by Celia Leanne Franzè

This month we review the PISA 2022 Results Volume III report, “Creative Minds, Creative Schools.” This report by PISA 2022 sheds light on the creative thinking skills of 15-year-old students across various countries.

The report also highlights the growing importance of nurturing creative thinking, a skill highly valued in today’s workforce that enhances learning outcomes and overall learning confidence. It provides valuable guidance on how we can effectively nurture creativity alongside academic achievement.

Key Discoveries

Diverse Performance: There’s a wide range in creative thinking performance globally. Some education systems that excel academically also lead in creative thinking, while others lag.

Socioeconomic and Gender Gaps: Disparities persist, with students from disadvantaged backgrounds and male students generally scoring lower in creative thinking.

Impact of Pedagogy and Beliefs: Certain teaching methods, school activities, and positive beliefs about creativity are linked to better creative thinking performance.

Insights and Connections

One actionable insight and connection is the power of creative journaling. This practice can transform your classroom by encouraging students to explore various perspectives, generate and evaluate ideas, and reflect on their thinking processes—core components of the creative thinking assessed by PISA.

Incorporating creative journaling into your teaching toolkit can help unlock your students’ creative potential, build their confidence, and equip them with the essential skills to thrive in an ever-changing world.

In fact, ThinkPlus’ How to Grow Your Mind Journal, written for students in Years 4-7, includes many activities aligned to recommendations in the report as outlined in Table 1 here.

To support students in developing their creative journaling skills further, we suggest the following:

Provide Diverse Prompts: Offer a wide range of prompts encouraging students to explore different perspectives, emotions, and problem-solving approaches. This could include prompts asking them to imagine alternative scenarios, reflect on their personal growth, or consider different viewpoints.
Model Effective Journaling: Demonstrate effective journaling techniques, such as using sensory descriptions, incorporating sketches or diagrams, and organising thoughts in a structured yet creative manner. This will help students understand the characteristics of high-quality creative journaling.
Encourage Experimentation: Emphasise that journaling is about exploration and self-expression, rather than perfection. Encourage students to try different writing styles, formats, and approaches to find the best.
Facilitate Peer Sharing: Create opportunities for students to share their journal entries with classmates in a supportive and constructive environment. This can help them gain new insights and inspire one another.
Offer Feedback and Guidance: Provide regular feedback on students’ journal entries, highlighting their strengths and offering suggestions for further development. This can help them refine their creative thinking and reflection skills.
Connect Journaling to Curriculum: Integrate creative journaling activities into various subject areas, allowing students to apply their skills to different contexts and make interdisciplinary connections.
Encourage Metacognition: Prompt students to reflect on their journaling process, such as how they generate ideas, overcome challenges, and monitor their learning. This can foster a deeper understanding of their creative thinking abilities.
Celebrate Progress: Recognise and celebrate students’ growth in their creative journaling skills, whether through public displays, awards, or other forms of acknowledgment. This can boost their confidence and motivation to continue developing their abilities.

By implementing these strategies, we can help our students become more confident, reflective, and innovative in their creative journaling practices.

Download our Creative Journaling Infographic

Mindsets and Emotions

We designed some creative journaling prompts that focus on specific emotions or experiences:

Explore a time when you felt overwhelmed or stressed. How did you work through those feelings, and what strategies did you find most effective?
Write about a moment when you experienced profound joy or happiness. What led to that feeling, and how can you cultivate more of it?
Reflect on a time when you felt lonely or disconnected. How did you cope with those emotions, and what did you learn about yourself?
Describe a recent experience that made you feel curious or intrigued. What questions did it spark, and how did you satisfy your curiosity?
Imagine a scenario in which you felt deeply empathetic toward someone else’s situation. How did you try to understand their perspective, and what insights did you gain?
Write about a time when you felt proud of yourself or a personal accomplishment. What factors contributed to that sense of pride, and how can you cultivate more of it?
Explore a moment when you felt frustrated or angry. How did you manage those emotions, and what strategies did you use to work through the situation constructively?
Reflect on an experience that made you feel a sense of wonder or awe. What elements of the experience evoked those feelings, and how can you continue to cultivate a sense of wonder in your life?
Describe a time when you felt deeply inspired by someone or something. What about that experience sparked your inspiration, and how did it impact your thoughts or actions?
Write about a situation where you felt a sense of belonging or connection with a group or community. What contributed to that feeling, and how can you foster more meaningful connections?

These prompts can help students delve deeper into their emotional experiences and explore how they navigate and make sense of their feelings through the creative journaling process. They also easily adapt across year levels as seen in Table 2.

TABLE 2: Examples of how to adapt journaling prompts across year levels
Prompt	Year F-2	Years 3 & 4	Years 5 -7
Explore a time when you felt overwhelmed or stressed. How did you work through those feelings, and what strategies did you find most effective?	Describe a time when you felt worried or nervous. What helped you feel better?	Reflect on a situation that made you feel overwhelmed or stressed. What did you do to calm down and cope with those feelings?	Write about a time when you felt stressed or anxious. How did you work through those emotions, and what strategies did you find most helpful?
Write about a moment when you experienced a profound sense of joy or happiness. What led to that feeling, and how can you cultivate more of it in your life?	Describe a time when you felt really happy or excited. What made you feel that way, and how can you have more happy moments?	Reflect on an experience that made you feel joyful or content. What were the reasons for your happiness, and how can you create more of those positive feelings?	Explore a recent experience that brought you a deep sense of joy or happiness. What contributed to that feeling, and how can you intentionally cultivate more positivity in your life?
Reflect on a time when you felt lonely or disconnected. How did you cope with those emotions, and what did you learn about yourself in the process?	Describe a situation where you felt left out or alone. What did you do to feel better, and what did you learn about yourself?	Write about a time when you felt lonely or isolated. How did you manage those emotions, and what insights did you gain about yourself?	Reflect on an experience where you felt disconnected or alone. How did you work through those feelings, and what did you learn about yourself in the process?
Imagine a scenario where you felt deeply empathetic towards someone else’s situation. How did you try to understand their perspective, and what insights did you gain?	Describe a time when you tried to understand how someone else was feeling. What did you do to show you cared, and what did you learn?	Write about a situation where you felt empathy for someone else’s experience. How did you try to see things from their perspective, and what insights did you gain?	Explore a moment when you felt deeply empathetic towards someone else’s situation. How did you work to understand their perspective, and what did you learn in the process?
Reflect on an experience that made you feel a sense of wonder or awe. What elements of the experience evoked those feelings, and how can you continue to cultivate a sense of wonder in your life?	Describe something you recently saw or experienced that made you feel amazed or in awe. What was it about that moment that sparked your sense of wonder?	Write about a time when you felt a deep sense of wonder or awe. What aspects of the experience evoked those feelings, and how can you continue to cultivate a sense of curiosity and amazement?	Explore a recent experience that made you feel a profound sense of wonder or awe. What elements of the situation sparked those feelings, and how can you cultivate more moments of curiosity and amazement in your life?

Assessment for Learning

It is always useful to have simple assessment rubrics you can easily adapt to suit your students. Whilst Table 3 explores ten different Creativity Criteria including Creative Journaling, this rubric was designed with educators in mind as an example for you to explore, edit, extend and share with colleagues. If you do this, we would love to hear from you how it went in your classroom, school or for our homeschooling educators, your home!

TABLE 3: An example assessment rubric using creativity criteria
Criteria	Exceeds Expectations (3)	Meets Expectations (2)	Needs Improvement (1)
Creative Journaling	Consistently reflects on daily learning experiences, exploring diverse perspectives and evaluating thought processes using detailed, insightful prompts.	Regularly reflects on daily learning experiences, exploring different perspectives and evaluating thought processes using prompts.	Occasionally reflects on daily learning experiences, with limited exploration of perspectives and evaluation of thought processes.
Design Thinking Challenges	Consistently identifies problems, generates a wide range of creative solutions, prototypes effectively, and thoroughly tests ideas, demonstrating exceptional critical and creative thinking.	Identifies problems, generates solutions, prototypes, and tests ideas, demonstrating competent critical and creative thinking.	Struggles to identify problems, generate solutions, prototype, or test ideas, demonstrating limited critical and creative thinking.
Mind Mapping Exercises	Consistently creates comprehensive mind maps that organise thoughts on a topic in a highly structured and visually engaging manner, revealing diverse ideas and clear connections.	Creates mind maps that organise thoughts on a topic, demonstrating an understanding of the connections between concepts.	Produces basic mind maps with limited organisation of thoughts and connections between concepts.
Storytelling Workshops	Consistently creates and shares stories with well-developed characters, captivating plots, and vivid settings, demonstrating exceptional creativity and narrative skills.	Creates and shares stories with characters, plots, and settings, demonstrating competent creativity and narrative skills.	Struggles to create and share stories with coherent characters, plots, and settings, demonstrating limited creativity and narrative skills.
Reflection Circles	Consistently reflects on learning processes, discusses challenges, and shares effective strategies for overcoming them, demonstrating a strong growth mindset and collaborative problem-solving skills.	Reflects on learning processes, discusses challenges, and shares strategies for overcoming them, demonstrating a growth mindset and collaborative problem-solving skills.	Occasionally reflects on learning processes, with limited discussion of challenges and strategies for overcoming them, demonstrating a fixed mindset and limited collaborative problem-solving skills.
Art Integration Projects	Consistently creates highly effective visual representations of concepts that demonstrate a deep understanding and exceptional creative expression.	Creates visual representations of concepts that demonstrate understanding and competent creative expression.	Struggles to create visual representations of concepts, demonstrating limited understanding and creative expression.
Role-Playing Scenarios	Consistently explores different viewpoints and solves problems creatively in various contexts, demonstrating exceptional empathy and problem-solving skills.	Explores different viewpoints and solves problems in various contexts, demonstrating competent empathy and problem-solving skills.	Struggles to explore different viewpoints or solve problems creatively in various contexts, demonstrating limited empathy and problem-solving skills.
Innovation Stations	Consistently creates unique and highly effective solutions to problems using the provided materials, demonstrating exceptional creativity and problem-solving abilities.	Creates solutions to problems using the provided materials, demonstrating competent creativity and problem-solving abilities.	Struggles to create solutions to problems using the provided materials, demonstrating limited creativity and problem-solving abilities.
Digital Storytelling	Consistently creates engaging and effective multimedia stories or presentations that combine text, images, and audio in a highly creative and compelling manner.	Creates multimedia stories or presentations that combine text, images, and audio in a competent manner.	Struggles to create multimedia stories or presentations that effectively combine text, images, and audio, demonstrating limited creative and communication skills.
Peer Teaching Sessions	Consistently prepares and delivers exceptional lessons that demonstrate a deep understanding of the subject and highly creative and effective teaching methods.	Prepares and delivers competent lessons that demonstrate understanding of the subject and effective teaching methods.	Struggles to prepare and deliver lessons that demonstrate understanding of the subject or effective teaching methods.