Smart Thinking Toolkit – December 2004

Apollo Thinking

Smart Thinking Tool: / Apollo Thinking
Thinking Skills: / Creativity; Synthesis, Decision Making

What is it?

The crew members of Apollo 13 were saved by the creativity of a group of scientists and engineers. Under time pressure, they worked with limited resources to produce a life-saving solution to the problem of a damaged space craft. Apollo thinking does not require your pupils to be launched in to space (no comment), but it does give curriculum linked opportunities to solve problems with restricted resources.

How does it work?

Define your learning objective

e.g. to know the key features of a non-fiction text

Choose a place/scenario linked to the learning objective

A company which designs and prints books

Create a problemand desired outcome linked to your scenario

The person who designs the non-fiction books always makes them look like fiction books and then no-one buys them. This needs to change because the company is loosing money!

List 10 random objects (maybe with a few linked to the learning objective)

a piece of string, a bag of crisps, a calculator, a mouth organ, a dog, a digital camera, a football, a bottle of ink, a mobile phone, a dictionary, a candle

Ask learners to choose 5 of the 10 objects with which to solve the problem

a digital camera, a bottle of ink, a dictionary, a piece of string, a dog

Set time limit

10 minutes

Learners use some of or all five objects to solve the problem

Use the digital camera to take photos of non-fiction texts. In the dictionary, look up all the words related to non-fiction texts (caption, sub-heading, contents, index etc.) and mark each page and word with a blob of ink. Tie the camera and the dictionary to the dog and make it walk to the designer. The designer will be so surprised and overwhelmed by this show of creativity, that she will immediately understand and change her style.

Evaluate solutions against set criteria

Select criteria for evaluation such as: simplicity; off-the-wallness, believability, ease of implementation, original thinking, number of objects used…

Possible Uses

Education – Examples of L.O., scenario, problem
ICT / To be able to use the record and playback features of a camcorder
A family holiday by the seaside
A thief is stealing ice-creams, buckets and spades
Literacy / To be able to spell high frequency words
A TV game show requiring spelling skills
You need to remember 10 words correctly to win the star prize
DT / To select appropriate tools
A automated car factory
The workers have to show that they are better than the robots
Music / To compose a short piece using untuned percussion and voice
A concert hall
The show starts in 15 minutes, the orchestra has arrived but the instruments have not
P.E. / To practice and perform a sequence of at least 5 gymnastic moves
The Olympics
A blind member of the audience needs to know what the gymnasts are doing
Humanities / To chronologically order historical events
A secret laboratory housing a time machine
The time machine is unreliable – it muddles up the digits in years (e.g. 1921 – 1219)
Arts / To emulate the style of a well known artist
The art fraud department of the police force
The chief ‘fake art’ investigator has been missing in Prague for 2 months
PSE / To understand how the actions of individuals affect others
A party
Someone has removed all the music equipment (CD players)
Management/Leadership
To implement the Primary Strategy
A school
Time allocated for ‘re-creating’ the curriculum is severely limited
Personal
To make and keep two New Year’s resolutions
Your house
You’ve not yet kept a resolution past the end of January
Parents/Homework Support
To complete homework on time with the minimum of fuss
You child/childrens’ bedroom(s)
Children are hiding

Name: Date:

We are learning to:type learning objective here
Scenario:type scenario/place here
Problem:type problem and desired outcome here
10 Items:type random items here (some linked to L.O.)
Choose 5:learners write their choices here
Your solutions:learners write and/or draw their solutions here

©2004 Mike Fleetham. Permission granted to photocopy.