Episode 283: Unleash Student Creativity with SCAMPER Sessions

On this episode of the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast, your hosts, Caitlin, Jessica, and Megan sat down to discuss a fresh method to try with your students when trying to give their creativity a boost!

Tune in as they dive into the SCAMPER method and walk you through a unique example for you to see it in action.

SCAMPER stands for:

Substitute

Combine

Adapt

Modify/Magnify

Purpose/Put to other uses

Eliminate…and…

Rearrange/Reverse

You'll discover innovative ways you can incorporate this process into your next lessons to give your students a tangible way to develop new and creative ideas. As your students work through this method they are practicing problem-solving, critical thinking, and respectful group collaboration!

Jessica wraps things up by sharing two ways you could use this method inside your classroom this week!

Idea #1: Storytelling Techniques - This process would be perfect to try with traditional fairy tales for guiding students through how students could fracture them!

Idea #2: Character Development - These questions can be rinsed and repeated for any novel or short story as a way to think deeper and make connections! (Also try this with Socratic Seminars or Silent Debate questions)

To hear more about this fun concept, be sure to listen in!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey, teachers, we are super excited to bring you this episode because we cut right through the fluff and laid out a practical strategy that you can take and use in your classroom pretty much immediately. So we're breaking down the scamper method that's going to allow you to give students an easy guide to developing their ideas, making connections that ultimately lead to deeper, more complex thinking, and the best part is that it can be a fun and engaging group effort that even your most reluctant students are going to want to get involved with. That's always a win-win. All right, we can't wait for you to tune in. Let's dive into today's episode. Hi there, Caitlin here.

Speaker 1: 0:41

Our mission at EB Academics is simple Help middle school ELA teachers take back their time outside of the classroom by providing them with engaging lessons, planning frameworks and genuine support so that you can become the best version of yourself both inside and outside of the classroom. So if you think you might be ready to try something new, because you know you simply cannot continue the way that you have been that, I'd invite you to take a moment to check out the EB Teachers Club, the EB Writing Program or the EB Grammar Program by visiting the links in the description of the podcast. We hope to continue to support you within one of our programs in the future and in the meantime, we look forward to serving you right here on the podcast each week. All right, teachers, we are heading into the end of the school year. It is officially May. Jessica and I have celebrated our birthdays recently, which is exciting. Jessica, how old are you? Is that appropriate?

Speaker 2: 1:42

I'm not saying that on the air? No way, I'm not saying, you're not saying it, just like, put me on the spot.

Speaker 1: 1:49

Oh my gosh. So I'm going to be, I'm going to. I'm 38, right May 2nd I turned 38. And my someone at my gym was like, oh yeah, like you know, like the us in our forties, I was like I'm not in my forties yet she's like how old are you?

Speaker 1: 2:01

I'm like 37. Cause it was a couple months ago. She's like, oh my God. And then our trainer. She's like how old are you? He's like I'm 33. She's like I can't be around you guys, cause you just don't know, you know what I mean Age becomes like so irrelevant. I feel like as you get a little bit older, like I kind of forgot how old I was for a while there.

Speaker 2: 2:20

Well, and when you're in the classroom, especially when you teach younger kids like they have no concept. One day I remember and this was like she was a fifth grader, but she was on the like the road with her mom and later her mom told me she looked over and was like Ms Kanata can drive. I'm like wait, what do you mean? Like you're 10. Like I think you know I'm older than 16, but, that's hilarious.

Speaker 1: 2:42

That's really funny.

Speaker 1: 2:43

That's a great story. I love it. Well, if you guys have not heard the news yet, we are releasing a brand new app just for middle school ELA teachers. It's launching in July for the public and if you are an EB teacher, it is coming June 24th, which is EB's 10 year anniversary, which is incredibly exciting. Hard to believe that 10 years ago we sat in a coffee shop, jessica, and started EB academic camps, which was a summer camp company at that time. Very cool.

Speaker 1: 3:16

But we are putting together a priority list for you, so we're going to put a link into the show notes for today's podcast episode for the priority list. And what's great about adding your name to the priority list is that if you are one of the first 100 signups for when the brand new app releases in July, you're going to receive a 50% early bird discount. And we're doing something really fun where the very first registrant is going to win $100 cash, which is very exciting. And when you add your name to the priority list, you immediately get sent a free copy of our Amazon number one bestselling book called the empowered ELA teacher right to your inbox. You get the PDF version so you can start reading all about. You know, our EB lesson planning approach, our philosophy, all of that stuff. This summer it might be some good summer reading for you, because it's not like dry and boring and anything like that. You sprinkle in some stories. It's fun, totally. Yes, it's a fun book. So, anyways, that's exciting. It's called the EB Teachers ELA Portal. We have literally a core curriculum built for you. We have supplemental materials as well. We also have teacher facing videos that has a PD video for every single ELA skill that exists, which is a lot for the record Just a little FYI, as the curriculum team has been building those out and the whole platform. We're actually structuring it so that it's skills-based. While everything is still Common Core State Standard aligned, we're using skills to organize everything, because we know some of you are, you know, in Texas and use the TEEX, or in Florida and have the best or all of the different states, all of a sudden decided we're not doing Common Core or ELA anymore, even though the government tried to set that up to make it easy for us. You know the states just like to do their own little thing, let's be honest. So it's set in a skills-based approach, which is great.

Speaker 1: 5:03

The other last, best part, I think. I mean, I don't know, it's all pretty cool, but the really cool technology behind the new app is our custom lesson planning software. So the way that it's structured is, it allows you to seamlessly create a scope and sequence using our resources. With a couple of clicks here and there, it automatically populates the skills for you and makes it really easy to plan from a high-level overview that we teach at EB as well as on a week-to-week basis. So it's essentially making lesson planning. When we sat down with our developers, I was like look, I want to make lesson planning go from eight hours on a Saturday to 30 seconds in the app. And they're like okay, let's figure out a way to do that and that is what we are delivering this summer. So, anyways, I'll stop talking about it. I'm really excited, I know, are you guys excited about it too?

Speaker 2: 5:51

Holy cow and I just love how you explain that right now, Like come on going from hours of lesson planning to literally seconds, like what that's possible. It's like so exciting.

Speaker 1: 6:02

Yes, it's very cool.

Speaker 2: 6:03

And.

Speaker 1: 6:03

Megan has been a huge part of the development of that as our project manager of it. So you've seen the whole thing in the backend.

Speaker 3: 6:09

Like it's fascinating to watch something come from an idea to software, cause I have zero like tech knowledge whatsoever. So we're very much trusting our great team that we've. We we hired to kind of put this together, but it's fascinating to like watch it go from code to a thing.

Speaker 1: 6:25

It's fascinating, like zeros and ones and hyphens and stuff like symbols, things on the screen. It's wild. Um, anyways, we're going to dive into it. Today's episode we're talking about unleashing student creativity with scamper sessions is the acronym that we're using for um, today's method that we're going to talk about with you guys.

Speaker 1: 6:48

So if you've ever seen your students, you know they go off into a small group discussion or they're sitting down in a brainstorming session and then you are like, okay, this is going to be great. And then you're super underwhelmed because they have very surface level contributions. You might hear things like well, I don't know, whatever you guys think. Or maybe they're in the group and they say like let's just do the same thing as last time, or I don't know if that's a good idea. Maybe they're saying I don't understand what we're supposed to do. How many times have you heard that? Or we have students who are like I'm too tired to think of anything. I can't think of anything. I don't know what to say. Yada, yada, yada, yada. Well, if that sounds familiar, it might be time to introduce your students to this scamper technique, which Jessica is going to talk to us about how she came across this game and where we're sharing it from with you guys.

Speaker 2: 7:33

Yeah, and I want to clarify, I shouldn't really say game, it's more of like a technique or method.

Speaker 2: 7:38

You could turn it into a game. No, that's my fault, because it's fun. It could be considered a game, I guess. Anyway, so some of you might know we've mentioned it on the podcast before, but Patricia, who's also been on the podcast, our curriculum writer, patricia, and myself have been taking these continuing education classes through the University of Southern California and I actually just wrapped up about maybe a month ago and in the last course I was working on.

Speaker 2: 8:01

I mean, it's pretty intense. We're talking, like you know, I don't know 80 hours of my time watching videos, reading articles, writing reflection questions, doing projects, all that kind of stuff. And it gets a bit overwhelming, right. And sometimes like it's tedious. You know what college classes are like, right. And I have to say there were times where I was like, okay, yes, another thing on differentiation, right, like I get it. I'm good, like okay, let me just get through this exercise. But then I came across this one, and this was a short video we were assigned to watch on the scamper method, and I was like, oh my God, like my mind was just blown. I'm like I need to share this with our teachers. It was just one of those moments where I'm like this is why I'm here, like for these light bulb moments, so I'm so excited to tell you about it.

Speaker 2: 8:46

So, basically, the scamper technique is a creative brainstorming method used to develop or improve products or services. So, like big corporations, big companies are using this, but it can absolutely be used in the classroom. So scamper is the acronym and it stands for substitute, combine, adapt, modify or magnify, purpose or put to other uses, eliminate, and then rearrange or reverse. So you might want to rewind and write those down really quickly, but that's scamper. I want you to think of it as a checklist students go through when they're discussing a particular topic or they're coming up with fresh ideas. So it really is a brainstorm method, and when they use the scamper technique or the scamper method, they can't help but come up with really new and, like, frankly, better ideas as they unleash their creativity. And I want to illustrate how scamper works. So we're going to look at a really fun example and we're going to use it through the lens of Oreos, like, literally, the cookies you probably have in your cabinet right now, and I want you to notice how many different Oreo products we can come up with when we use the scamper method. So S is for substitute right.

Speaker 2: 10:08

And if we substitute something in an Oreo for something else, what might you get? Well, the Oreo corporation or the Oreo company, has done it by substituting flavors for the basic cream filling. So if you just Google different kinds of Oreos, you're going to find a birthday cake flavor, a peanut butter one I just saw that actually at the store the other day. My son, davey, wanted to buy it. There's a toffee crunch one, a Java chip one, there's chocolate cream, red velvet, dark chocolate and mint. And then what else has Oreo done? Well, they've substituted the chocolate cookie part, and we have golden lemon Oreos, which I've never tried. Have either of you guys tried any of these other?

Speaker 1: 10:48

flavors I've never even seen those.

Speaker 3: 10:50

Okay, so I have a story, so I was subbing at my old school last week and they were doing an Oreo sweet 16 bracket so I got to sample several of these flavors. So I can tell you I love the golden Oreos. The Java chip I thought was decent, the peanut butter was delicious.

Speaker 2: 11:09

Okay, well, maybe I should have bought those. But don't you love how, like just by thinking, okay, what could we substitute with this seemingly like basic product, and we come up with all these different ideas. And then here it goes to a next level of a March Madness bracket idea, like how fun is that?

Speaker 3: 11:23

It's a whole market, yeah, so this is a brilliant technique, so we'll keep going. So C is for combine, so think about combining Oreos with ice cream. This happens to be my third favorite ice cream flavor, so you're pretty much wait, hold on. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:37

What are the?

Speaker 3: 11:37

top two Mint chip. Yes, hands down. It's my fave Strawberry. I love it, just a good classic strawberry and then cookies and cream.

Speaker 1: 11:46

Okay, I love cookies and cream. Megan, when you came and visited me, did I ever take you to Scoop?

Speaker 3: 11:51

We did yes, and I had their delicious like blueberry flavor. That was there in the summer. That's right, it was lovely. Jessica, have you had an ice cream? I had an ice cream with you.

Speaker 1: 11:58

Yes, okay, so Scoop is a local ice cream shop. Anyways, side note, great place.

Speaker 3: 12:02

So yeah, so my third favorite ice cream flavor right Cookies and cream you can find pretty much in every ice cream shop. But the point is here that they took this idea C combine, and they combined Oreos with ice cream and it's delicious. You'd also think about cake mix. So Betty Crocker has an Oreo white cake mix and they also have an Oreo brownie mix, and then Pillsbury has a funfetti Oreo cake mix.

Speaker 3: 12:32

So again, we're taking this one thing and combining it with other things to make something new. You can also think about candy bars. So the next time you're at CVS or any drugstore, you could pick up a basic Oreo candy bar or a Hershey's white chocolate Oreo bar, or even an Oreo big crunch bar, which sounds fantastic. So that is C. So you're taking that one object, combining it with other things to make something new. A, then, is for adapt. So Oreo has also adapted its product to suit different cultural preferences and then cater to international markets. So this is really fascinating. Did you know that there are green tea flavored Oreos sold in China and Cadbury Oreo bites that you can buy in United Kingdom? And I happen to love Cadbury chocolate, so I'll also look into that.

Speaker 3: 13:17

I didn't know that.

Speaker 1: 13:18

But McDonald's, I think, does the same thing to adapt to different markets as well. For sure, when we were in Italy, when I lived in Italy, the McDonald's there right near the Pantheon, jessica in Rome, in downtown Rome, had like the best seats view of the Pantheon in like all of Rome, this McDonald's, and they didn't have like the normal McDonald's stuff. It was not like going to McDonald's Anyways.

Speaker 2: 13:40

Maybe they used a scamper method.

Speaker 1: 13:42

I'm thinking, maybe it seems like maybe it's a thing that these big corporations do because it's genius. Okay, moving on to the next one is M. So M stands for modify or magnify, magnify. So think about how Oreo has modified the size and texture of their cookies to cater to different preferences. So, for example, when they introduced the Mega Stuff Oreos for those who love like the creamier cookie experience, I actually don't like the creamier cookie experience. I actually don't like the cream on the inside. So when they did that, I didn't, I was like, not into that, I liked the thin ones. Yeah, only a little tiny bit, right? Yes, fascinating.

Speaker 1: 14:20

So you can modify or magnify certain aspects of the product or the thing that students are looking to analyze certain aspects of the product or the thing that students are looking to analyze. The next letter is P, and P is for purpose or put to other uses. So perhaps you've seen pre-filled Oreo Easter eggs that are filled with mini Oreos. Or there are those no-bake Oreo pie crusts. Or even the Create a Treat Easter Fun cookie decorating Kit that has egg-shaped Oreo cookies that kids can decorate with the cream frosting. Or there's even Oreo popcorn. Or there's breakfast items there's Oreo O's cereal and Oreo Pop-Tarts. It's like there are. Their Oreos have basically infiltrated every single aspect of the food that you eat on any given day, and it's just a very interesting way to like expand your market. Reach right, oh for sure, okay.

Speaker 2: 15:19

So E is for eliminate. And, caitlin, you said that you hate the cream part. I cannot stand it Like I scrape it off every single Oreo I ever have. So Oreo thought, okay, well, let's just eliminate that for the people who don't like it. So they have the Oreo wafers that you can buy without cream, and I feel like you can only find them sometimes in the stores, but on Amazon you can literally buy like bags of just mini Oreo wafers and I'm like that's kind of dangerous to know about.

Speaker 1: 15:44

Cannot come in the house Right.

Speaker 2: 15:47

And then, of course, oreo has also eliminated gluten from some of their Oreos or some of their cookies, so you can get those as well. And then R is for rearrange or reverse. So consider, like what if the cream was on the outside of the Oreos? Well, you've probably guessed it by now, but there are white chocolate covered Oreos. So, like the fudge is on the outside, the cream is part of that, and then it's just the cookie in the middle. So it's really cool to see how, applying the scamper technique in various ways, the Oreo brand, the food industry as a whole, can continuously innovate. They can expand their product offerings and reach, like you said, caitlin, a wider audience. Like it's just fascinating to me.

Speaker 3: 16:31

So you all might be thinking this is a great conversation about the nutritious Oreos, but how in the world does this relate to a DLA class? But there are so many benefits to actually using the scamper method in your class. So first, it encourages creativity, because students need to think outside of the box as they generate innovative solutions or come up with fresh ideas. Right, all of these ideas with these Oreos are completely new and it's totally expanded their market, so the same thing could apply in your ELA class. It also provides a structured framework for brainstorming, and that not only helps students organize their thoughts and their ideas more effectively, but then it keeps their discussion focused.

Speaker 1: 17:10

Yeah, the SCAMPER technique also encourages critical thinking skills, obviously, as you can tell right when all the examples that we went through and this allows students to really learn to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses of themselves, their classmates, different ideas, different perspectives. So I love, like the outside of the box thinking that scamper really promotes, because I mean, let's be honest, in school I feel like a lot of the times we sit inside the box it's like the answer is a. Well, what if the answer was literally infinite? Infinite, like there were multiple. You know just what's the word I'm looking for. Possibilities are endless, right, just endless possibilities for anything that students respond to. So what I love about this is this encourages group collaboration, because students are going to work together to apply this technique to a particular topic or a question that you give them. So think about the ideas that will flow from every single step in SCAMPER. So there are what is that? Seven different aspects to SCAMPER, to this acronym, to this technique, and then how students will need to learn to listen to each other's perspectives, opinions. They need to respect each other's ideas while they build upon them. That's going to help them generate even more creative solutions or answers.

Speaker 1: 18:25

And then, finally, incorporating SCAMPER sessions into your ELA curriculum helps prepare students for real-world problem solving Like, let's be real, this is what the real-world job market is going to be like, for a lot of them is solving problems. You know, nine times out of 10, I feel like that's what my job is at EB is solving problems right, and we all know that. The ability to think critically, to think creatively, to be collaborative those are all essential life skills for success in the real world. And by teaching and modeling this method for your students, you're equipping them with this awesome problem-solving approach, these incredible problem-solving skills that they can apply across other subjects and then, hopefully, later in their personal and professional lives. So, even if they don't remember, like the scamper quote, unquote method or technique, you are teaching them how to think in a different way.

Speaker 2: 19:18

Absolutely so. We want you to try this in your classroom and we want to give you some ideas to get started in the context of your ELA class. There's so many different ways you can use it. So if you don't like the two that we're going to share, like, definitely go on ChatGPT and ask it to come up with scamper ideas for you for whatever lesson you want to try it with. So here's the first idea. You can use it with storytelling techniques. So this would be really fun, I think, to try with traditional fairy tales and then see how students can fracture them.

Speaker 2: 19:50

I used to do this with my fifth graders. It was always a narrative unit that we did. We'd read, you know, a variety of diverse fairy tales and then they'd have to fracture them, and it was so much fun. But I wish I would have known about this method back then, because I feel like what they created would have been even more creative. So here we go Scamper substitute what alternative narrative perspectives could we explore?

Speaker 2: 20:14

Combine how can we combine different genres to create a unique story? Adapt how can we adapt a classic tale to a modern setting? Modify magnify how can we magnify the emotions or conflicts in our story? Purpose? What new moral or thematic elements can we incorporate, eliminate or minimize? What cliches or overused plot devices can we eliminate and then rearrange, reverse? How can we rearrange the story structure or reverse the chronological order for a fresh perspective? So think about, like providing your students as they brainstorm with those letters, right with that acronym, and seeing what they come up with. Oh, my goodness, they're going to have so many more ideas and then you can really like hone in on what their strongest one and go from there, and I think, like I mentioned, their narratives or whatever stories they're telling are going to be so much stronger.

Speaker 3: 21:12

Yeah. So I'm going to give you guys some ideas to use scamper with character development. So these are questions that you can definitely rinse and repeat for any novel or short story and they would also make great Socratic seminar or silent debate questions. So S again is for substitute what alternative character traits or backgrounds could our protagonist have? C for combine you could ask how can we combine traits from different characters to create a dynamic protagonist?

Speaker 3: 21:39

A for adapt how can we adapt a historical figure or literary archetype into a modern character? For modify or magnify, you could ask how can we magnify the internal conflicts or growth of our character? For purpose what new motivations or goals can we give our character? For eliminate or minimize, you could ask what stereotypical characteristics can we eliminate to create a more nuanced character? And finally, for rearrange or reverse how can we rearrange the character's backstory or reverse their character arc for a surprising twist? So you can see how using that method would literally apply to any story, any novel you're reading. Just a great idea to rinse and repeat again throughout the school year.

Speaker 1: 22:29

And, as we're saying, these questions or these concepts for each of these storytelling techniques and character development, we can actually take these and put these into the show notes so that you guys can easily grab them. You don't have to write it down on a pen very fast to get them.

Speaker 2: 22:44

Perfect. So I hope you all see why I was so excited about this method and I couldn't wait to share it with you, because I really think it has the potential to elevate class discussions, creativity and collaboration, and so I would love it if you give it a try, like please reach out to us, let us know how it goes, let us know what topic you used it with, how you came up with your questions, so that we can create new ideas together and we can maybe even scamper those ideas. Love it.

Speaker 1: 23:10

Absolutely so. If you are an EB teacher, let us know in our Facebook group and if you are not an EB teacher, let us know over on Instagram at EB academics, whether or not you use this, because the team reads your comments, we do and we respond, and we love to hear from you. All right, you guys. Thanks so much for listening this week. Make sure you come back. Next week we're going to be sharing 10 easy to implement grading tips that you can use at the end of the school year, when the last thing that you want to be doing is grading student work. It's going to be a great episode and we will see you guys then. Bye, everybody, bye, bye guys.