SoWashCo Young Scholars

Welcome back to a brand new school year and a new edition of the SoWashCo Young Scholar Newsletter. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to work with your Young Scholar and am looking forward to many learning adventures ahead.

Throughout the year, this newsletter will focus on various resources, tips, and strategies to help your Young Scholar build their thinking skills while also working to increase access, affirmation, and advocates for you and your Young Scholar.

Please feel free to reach out any time with questions, concerns, thoughts, or ideas. SoWashCo Young Scholars is here for both students and families, so let me know how I can best support you and your Young Scholar!

This month we will be focusing on Divergent Thinking.

• Building Flexible and Original Thinking with Brainstorming

• Increasing Access with Fall Enrichment Opportunities

Encouraging divergent thinking through brainstorming is a fun and easy way to grow your Young Scholars' creative side and stretch their brain.

Brainstorming builds thinking in four main areas: Fluency, Flexibility, Originality, and Elaboration.

Fluency has to do with the number of responses to a prompt. The more the better!

Flexibility is all about responses seen from a variety of perspectives.

Originality comes from those unexpected responses that make you say, "Hey, I never thought of that!"

Elaboration involves adding detail and expanding on ideas often in unique and off-beat ways.

1. Pick a topic.

2. Everyone shares as many ideas as they can think of about that topic. (1-2 minutes works nicely as a time limit.)

3. Reflect on the ideas shared. Try asking questions such as these:

• "How many different ideas did we have?" (Fluency)
• "Do any of the ideas connect to each other? What categories could we create?" (Flexibility)
• "Were there any ideas that stood out as especially creative or unexpected?" (Originality)
• "Which ideas have a lot of detail?" (Elaboration)

4. Try a second round with the same topic to see how ideas change and improve over time.

Try out some of the brainstorming ideas below and have fun helping your Young Scholar practice their Divergent Thinking!

Click on the image below to access online copies of

previous SoWashCo Young Scholar Parent Newsletters.

Hello!

My name is Colleen Redmond, and I am honored to work as Coordinator for SoWashCo Young Scholars.

I'm a mom, a wife, small business owner, avid biker (the pedal kind), book enthusiast, and beekeeper.

I've been lucky enough to teach in South Washington County Schools for over twenty-five years and have had the incredible opportunity to be a part of the lives of so many students and families over the years.

Now, as part of Young Scholars, I have the honor of working with the amazing staff, students, and families throughout SoWashCo to implement and grow the Young Scholars program.

I am so very excited to work with and support you and your Young Scholar. I can't wait to see where the journey takes us!

Please don't hesitate to reach out with any questions, thoughts, or needs!

Colleen Redmond

651-425-6212

credmond@sowashco.org