УДК 159.955:37.091.3 The formation of creative thinking skills in primary school learners in the English lessons

Abstract

The article tackles the issue of the formation of сreative thinking skills in primary school learners in the English lessons. The authors identify the main creative thinking skills to be developed in primary school learners; analyse the ways of the formation of creativе thinking skills in the English lessons; and suggest sample activities for developing creative thinking skills in primary school learners in the context of teaching English. Researching the issue of the formation of сreative thinking skills in primary school learners in the English lessons in the context of teaching English id based on  understanding creativity as thinking outside the box, as moving in «a creative field». In the English lessons, such a creative field is made up, first and foremost, by means of educational creative games which are designed around a communicative situation, with its own plot and roles. Constructing such a situation ensures multiple repetition of a speech-pattern under the conditions of approximated real-life communication featuring emotions, spontaneity, and purposefulness of an utterance. The results of the experimental verification of the suggested methodology, that was conducted in 2018-2019, testify that the integration of educational games with various types of creative activity: arts, music, artistic speech, and drama in the process of teaching English leads to more effective development of communicative skills within the topics under study, as well as the formation of сreative thinking skills due to the orientation of game-like activities on autonomous problem solving under the conditions of real-life communication in the target language.