Exclusion brainstorming introduces students to terminology and concepts before reading a text or learning a subject, according to Kentucky's Midway College. It is valuable for all levels of education, including fourth grade.
To perform exclusion brainstorming, create a list of words, half of them relating to the subject or text you want to teach. The other half should have no direct relationship to the subject. Instruct your students to point out which words relate to the subject. Continue with the unit. After you teach the unit, review the word list with the students, determining which words actually related to the topic and which did not.
You can use the Rorschach ink blot test (or other non-representational images) to help your students brainstorm for creative writing or art projects.
To do this, place an image in front of the students. Make sure the image is purely non-representational. Ask the students to write down one or two words that describe what they see. Repeat this several times. At the end, instruct each student to pick the word he wants to use to write his story or create his art.
You can perform another variation of Rorschach brainstorming by choosing a different part of the narrative with each blot. For example, the first represents the main character, the second represents the main action and the third represents the main location.
In fourth grade, students begin to develop their critical-thinking skills, which they use to solve math problems, understand literary conflicts and think of ideas for resolving scientific or social issues. One way to help develop these methods of critical thinking is to introduce brainstorming discussion groups.
To hold a brainstorming discussion group, introduce a problem to the class, such as: "How can you split three bananas between 10 students?" Allow each of the students to suggest methods of division and comment on other students' methods. Although this may seem simple, regular sessions encourage students to think critically.
Some educators spend a great deal of energy showing students how to think in formulas, rather than creatively. In order to break students of the habits of narrow-minded thinking, use a "flip the switch" method of brainstorming.
To do this, write a main problem on the board. If you want to design a scientific flying machine, for example, write: "People can't fly." Change all of the words around in the sentence. In this case, "fly can't people." Ask the students if this gives them any ideas. One student might suggest that you look at merging the biological mechanisms of a fly with those of a person. Then reverse all of the words (be as creative as you want). For example, "people can't fly" could become "aliens can't swim." This leads to interesting discussions on alien flight and flying as swimming. Continue doing this until the class has enough ideas to continue with its project.