by: Angela Maiers

SCAMPER Your Way to Success

I spend my most of days with gifted students and teachers in K-12 schools. I love helping them think critically and creatively — teaching them strategies and techniques to fuel their imaginations, sustain their passionate curiosities, and challenge them to persevere as they problem solve through difficult tasks and content. Tomorrow, I will be taking these Habitude-building conversations to the college classroom.

I will be sharing with University students one of my favorite strategies called  SCAMPERing.

SCAMPER was created by Bob Earle and popularized by Michael Michalko in his excellent book, Thinkertoys.to strengthen a learners ability to question, imagine,and adapt. See why it is one of my favorites?

SCAMPER requires learners to:

S – Substitute – components, materials, people

C – Combine – mix, combine with other assemblies or services, integrate

A – Adapt – alter, change function, use part of another element

M – Mix, Modify – increase or reduce in scale, change shape, modify attributes (e.g. colour)

P – Put to another use

E – Erase/Eliminate – remove elements, simplify, reduce to core functionality

R – RePurpose/ReverseReUse – turn inside out or upside down.