Career Readiness · Productivity · Lesson Plan
Brainstorming
A free lesson plan introducing brainstorming — the technique for generating new ideas on a topic, usually a problem that seems hard to solve. Students learn the rules that protect creativity (no judgment, encourage wild ideas, build on others’ contributions) and the core insight: from quantity comes quality. Free to read and reproduce.
What Students Learn
Learning objectives
- What brainstorming is — a technique for generating new ideas on a topic, usually a problem that seems hard to solve
- The brief history — invented in 1941 by Alex Osborn, an advertising executive, who wanted to encourage idea generation without inhibitions
- Osborn’s original definition: a conference technique by which a group attempts to find a solution by amassing all ideas spontaneously from members
- The rules of brainstorming — designed to help people be creative and spontaneous so that as many ideas as possible are generated
- The core insight: from quantity comes quality — the more ideas generated, the better the chance of finding useful ones
- Why wild or silly ideas matter — they spark off other ideas that turn out to be genuinely useful
For Teachers
How to use this lesson
Procedure: Print the lesson or work through it as a class discussion. The lesson has both a comprehension passage and an exercise worksheet that asks students to apply the rules to a real problem.
Live demonstration: the most effective way to teach brainstorming is to run one in class. Pick a low-stakes problem (improve the cafeteria experience, redesign the school day, plan a class trip) and run a 5–10 minute timed brainstorm with the rules visible. The honest version of the lesson includes a debrief on which rules were hardest to follow — usually “no judgment” is the first one to break.
Pairs naturally with Effective Meetings — brainstorming is the most common meeting type and the easiest to do badly. Also pairs with Project Management, where brainstorming shows up in the planning phase to generate options before committing to one.
Free Lesson
Brainstorming — Lesson + Exercise Worksheet
The complete lesson plan, comprehension passage, and exercise worksheet are free to read and reproduce on the legacy resources site.
The lesson plan and worksheet are free to read.
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