Creative or Productive Thinking

Creative or Productive Thinking is exceptional capability or potential recognized through mental processes (e.g., critical thinking, creative problem solving, humor, independent/original thinking, and/or products). Creative or productive thinking is demonstrated by advanced level performance, 95th percentile and above, on standardized tests of creative/critical skills or creativity/critical thinking.  

Creative students can be recognized by their imaginative thinking ability, and their ability to come up with many, varied, and unusual responses to problems or questions. They solve problems, see problems others do not see, see connections among seemingly unrelated concepts and ideas, find humor in many situations, are imaginative, and/or make adaptations or improvements on ideas and things. They are non-conformists and take intellectual risks. This area is more related to divergent, ‘outside the box’ thinking, NOT artistic ability. Evidence of Creativity (Spanish)

Identification Process for Creative or Productive Thinking

• Your child’s school will likely offer one testing date per academic school year. Please contact your school’s GT Coordinator for this information. Your child may take part in cognitive testing and/or other Creativity assessments for gifted identification in Creative or Productive Thinking.

• The gifted identification process begins with either a recommendation from the parent, teacher, or student. The parent will download, print, and complete the GT Identification: Parent Form (Spanish). The teacher will complete the GT Identification: Teacher Form. The completed forms will then be submitted to the school’s GT Coordinator. In order to be tested on the school’s testing date, the student is required to have a completed parent form, which serves as the permission to test. Parents and students have the opportunity to provide more input through the Parent-School Partnership (Spanish) and the Student Interview (Spanish). 

• The GT Coordinator will collect a complete Body of Evidence (BOE) for each student being recommended for gifted identification. The BOE may include achievement data, cognitive assessment scores, behavior scales, work samples, or other evidence of advanced performance in the Creative Domain.  

• In order to identify a student as Gifted in the area of Creativity, we need to have evidence of Creativity included in the Student Portfolio, this includes product(s) or project(s) the student has produced inside or outside of school, which addresses the criteria found on the Creativity Rubric. The product or project should exhibit the characteristics of creativity such as:

  • Fluency- generating ideas through brainstorming

  • Uniqueness/Originality- original, unique ideas, phrases, or products

  • Flexibility/Adaptability- reacting and responding to change

  • Self Reflection- student must fill out the Creativity Reflection Sheet

  • Intrinsic Motivation- the self-satisfaction of participating

• Evidence for Creativity could either be the product itself, a picture or other record/documentation of the product, or a video. Multiple pieces of evidence may be submitted and the student must complete one Creativity Written Response Sheet for each product submitted for evaluation.

• Once the testing is complete, the Advanced Academic & Gifted Services Department (AAGS) will review the complete BOE and make a gifted identification determination. Based on the BOE, the student may be identified as gifted in Creative or Productive Thinking. The student may also be placed in the Talent Pool, which means more data needs to be collected over time. The AAGS Department may determine that the student is not gifted at this time.

• Once an identification determination has been made, a letter is sent home to families. If the student is identified as Gifted, an Advanced Learning Plan (ALP) will be created in Infinite Campus (IC). For more information on ALPs click here.