Imagination as an age feature of younger students. The development of imagination in younger students. Need help with a topic

In the process learning activities the student receives a lot of descriptive information, and this requires him to constantly recreate images, without which it is impossible to understand the educational material and assimilate it, i.e. recreating the imagination of a younger student from the very beginning of training, it is included in purposeful activities that contribute to its mental development.

For the development of imagination junior schoolchildren are of great importance representation. Therefore, the great work of the teacher in the lessons on the accumulation of a system of thematic representations of children is important. As a result of the constant efforts of the teacher in this direction, changes occur in the development of the imagination of the younger student: at first, the images of the imagination in children are vague, unclear, but then they become more precise and definite; at first, only a few signs are displayed in the image, and insignificant ones prevail among them, and by the 2nd-3rd class the number of displayed features increases significantly, and among them significant; processing of images of accumulated ideas is insignificant at first, but by the 3rd grade, when the student acquires much more knowledge , the images become more generalized and brighter; at the beginning of training, a specific object is required for the appearance of an image, and then develops a reliance on the word.

With the development of the student's ability to control his mental activity, imagination becomes an increasingly controlled process, and his images arise in line with the tasks that the content of educational activity sets before him. All of the above features create the basis for the development of the process creative imagination in which special knowledge of students plays an important role. This knowledge forms the basis for the development of creative imagination and the process of creativity in their subsequent age periods of life.

At every moment of his wakefulness, a person hears, sees, feels something, thinks about something or talks to someone, does something. Human consciousness is not able to grasp at the same time with sufficient clarity everything that affects it. He highlights what is of interest to him, corresponds to his needs, life plans. Mental activity cannot proceed purposefully and productively if a person has not focused on what he is doing. Imagine a child fascinated by the process of drawing. He is completely immersed in his work, focused on it, considering what color to choose, how to arrange objects on a sheet. At the same time, he may not hear what adults are talking about, not respond if he is called. In this case, it is said that focused attention on what he does, that he pays attention to certain objects, is engaged in them, being distracted from everything else.

Attention- purposefulness and concentration of human consciousness on certain objects while distracting from others.

Anything can be the object of attention - objects, phenomena, relationships, properties of objects, actions, thoughts, feelings of other people and your own inner world.

Attention in a person's life performs many different functions. It:

Activates the necessary and inhibits the unnecessary this moment psychological and physiological processes;

Promotes an organized and purposeful selection of information entering the body in accordance with its actual needs;

Provides selective and long-term concentration of mental activity on the same object or type of activity;

controls and regulates activities.

In a child, the imagination is formed in the game and at first is inseparable from the perception of objects and the performance of game actions with them. In children of 6-7 years of age, the imagination can already rely on such objects that are not at all similar to the ones being replaced. Vygotsky L.S. Imagination and creativity in childhood.

Most children do not like very naturalistic toys, preferring symbolic, home-made, imaginative toys. Parents who so love to give their children huge bears and dolls often unwittingly hinder their development. They deprive them of the joy of independent discoveries in games. Children tend to like small, unimpressive toys - they are easier to adapt to different games. Large or “just like real” dolls and animals do little to stimulate the imagination. Children develop more intensively and get much more pleasure if the same stick plays the role of a gun, the role of a horse, and many other functions in various games. Thus, in L. Kassil’s book “Konduit and Shvambrania” a vivid description of the attitude of children to toys is given: “Turned lacquered figures represented unlimited possibilities of using them for the most diverse and tempting games ... Both queens were especially comfortable: the blonde and the brunette. Each queen could work for a Christmas tree, a cab driver, a Chinese pagoda, a flower pot on a stand, and a bishop.”

Gradually, the need for an external support (even in a symbolic figure) disappears and internalization occurs - a transition to a game action with an object that does not really exist, to a game transformation of an object, to giving it a new meaning and representing actions with it in the mind, without real action. This is the origin of imagination as a special mental process. Vygotsky L.S. Imagination and creativity in childhood.

In children of primary school age, the imagination has its own characteristics. The younger school age is characterized by the activation of the first recreating imagination, and then the creative one. The main line in its development lies in the subordination of the imagination to conscious intentions, i.e. it becomes arbitrary.

Here it should be noted that for a long time in psychology there was an assumption according to which the imagination is inherent in the child "initially" and is more productive in childhood, and with age it obeys the intellect and fades away. However, L.S. Vygotsky shows the untenability of such positions. All images of the imagination, no matter how bizarre they may seem, are based on ideas and impressions received in real life. And so the experience of a child is poorer than that of an adult. And one can hardly say that the child's imagination is richer. It's just that sometimes, not having enough experience, the child explains in his own way what he encounters in life, and these explanations often seem unexpected and original. Vygotsky L.S. Imagination and creativity in childhood.

The younger school age is qualified as the most favorable, sensitive for the development of creative imagination, fantasy. Games, conversations of children reflect the power of their imagination, one might even say, a riot of fantasy. In their stories and conversations, reality and fantasy are often mixed, and the images of the imagination can, by virtue of the law of the emotional reality of the imagination, be experienced by children as quite real.

A feature of the imagination of younger students, manifested in educational activities, is initially based on perception (primary image), and not on representation (secondary image). For example, a teacher offers a task to children in a lesson that requires them to imagine a situation. It can be such a task: “A barge was sailing along the Volga and carried in holds ... kg of watermelons. There was pitching, and ... kg of watermelons burst. How many watermelons are left? Of course, such tasks start the process of imagination, but they need special tools (real objects, graphic images, layouts, diagrams), otherwise the child finds it difficult to advance in arbitrary actions of the imagination. In order to understand what happened in the watermelon holds, it is useful to give a sectional drawing of a barge.

According to L.F. Berzfai, a productive imagination must have the following features in order for the child to painlessly enter the school learning environment:

with the help of imagination, he must be able to reproduce the principles of the structure and development of things;

have the ability to see the whole before its parts, i.e. the ability to create a holistic image of any object;

the productive imagination of a child is characterized by “above situationality”, i.e. a tendency to constantly go beyond these conditions, to set new goals (which is the basis of the future ability and desire to learn, i.e. the basis of learning motivation);

mental experimentation with a thing and the ability to include an object in new contexts, and, consequently, the ability to find a method or principle of action.

The creativity of the child is determined by two factors: Subbotina L.Yu. Children's fantasies: Development of children's imagination.

subjective (development of anatomical and physiological features);

objective (the impact of the phenomena of the surrounding life).

The most vivid and free manifestation of the imagination of younger students can be observed in the game, in drawing, writing stories and fairy tales. AT children's creativity manifestations of the imagination are diverse: some recreate reality, others create new fantastic images and situations. When writing stories, children can borrow plots known to them, stanzas of poems, graphic images, sometimes without noticing it at all. However, they often deliberately combine well-known plots, create new images, exaggerating certain aspects and qualities of their characters.

The tireless work of the imagination - effective method knowledge and assimilation by the child of the surrounding world, the opportunity to go beyond personal practical experience, the most important psychological prerequisite for the development of a creative approach to the world.

Imagination- this is the ability inherent only to a person to create new images (representations) by processing previous experience. Imagination is supreme mental function and reflects reality. However, with the help of the imagination, a mental departure is carried out beyond the limits of the directly perceived. Its main task is to present the expected result before its implementation.

Imagination and fantasy are inherent in every person, and especially these qualities are inherent in children. Indeed, the ability to create something new, unusual, is laid down in childhood, through the development of higher mental functions, which include imagination. It is the development of the imagination that must be given attention in the upbringing of a child between the ages of five and twelve. Scientists call this period sensitive, that is, the most favorable for the development of the cognitive functions of the child.

There is no doubt that imagination and fantasy are the most important aspects of our life. If people did not possess these functions, humanity would lose almost all scientific discoveries and works of art, children would not hear fairy tales and would not be able to play many games, they would not be able to learn the school curriculum. After all, any learning is associated with the need to imagine something, to imagine, to operate with abstract images and concepts. All artistic activity is based on active imagination. This feature provides the child with a new, unusual view of the world. It contributes to the development of abstract-logical memory and thinking, enriches individual life experience.

But unfortunately, training program primary school in modern school provides for an insufficient number of techniques, training techniques, exercises for the development of imagination.

It has been proven that imagination is closely connected with other mental processes (memory, thinking, attention, perception) that serve learning activities. Thus, not paying enough attention to the development of imagination, primary teachers reduce the quality of education.

In general, primary schoolchildren usually do not have any problems associated with the development of children's imagination, so almost all children who play a lot and in a variety of ways in preschool childhood have a well-developed and rich imagination. The main questions that in this area may still arise before the child and the teacher at the beginning of training relate to the connection between imagination and attention, the ability to regulate figurative representations through voluntary attention, as well as the assimilation abstract concepts which are difficult to imagine and imagine for a child, as well as for an adult.

In this regard, a number of methods can be used:

1. Technique "Verbal fantasy"(verbal imagination).

The child is invited to come up with a story (story, fairy tale) about some living creature (person, animal) or about something else of the child's choice and present it orally within 5 minutes. Up to one minute is allotted for inventing a theme or plot of a story (story, fairy tale), and after that the child starts the story.

In the course of the story, the child's fantasy is evaluated on the following grounds:

speed of imagination processes;
unusualness, originality of images of the imagination;
richness of imagination;
depth and elaboration (detailing) of images;
impressionability, emotionality of images.

For each of these features, the story is evaluated from 0 to 2 points.

0 points are given when this feature is practically absent in the story. The story receives 1 point if this feature is present, but is relatively weakly expressed. The story earns 2 points when the corresponding feature is not only present, but also expressed quite strongly.

If within one minute the child did not come up with the plot of the story, then the experimenter himself prompts him to some plot and 0 points are put for the speed of imagination. If the child himself came up with the plot of the story by the end of the allotted time (1 minute), then according to the speed of imagination, he gets a score of 1 point. Finally, if the child managed to come up with the plot of the story very quickly, within the first 30 seconds, or if within one minute he came up with not one, but at least two different plots, then the child is given 2 points on the basis of “speed of imagination processes”.

Unusualness, originality of images of the imagination is regarded in the following way.

The richness of the child's fantasy is also manifested in the variety of images he uses. When evaluating this quality of imagination processes, the total number of different living beings, objects, situations and actions, various characteristics and signs attributed to all this in the child's story is fixed. If the total number of the named exceeds ten, then the child receives 2 points for the richness of fantasy. If the total number of parts of the specified type is between 6 and 9, then the child receives 1 point. If there are few signs in the story, but in general not less than five, then the richness of the child's fantasy is estimated at 0 points.

The depth and elaboration of images is determined by how varied the details and characteristics are presented in the story related to the image that plays a key role or occupies a central place in the story. It also gives marks in a three-point system.

The child receives 0 points when the central object of the story is depicted very schematically.

1 point - if, when describing the central object, its detailing is moderate.

2 points - if the main image of his story is described in sufficient detail, with many different details characterizing it.

The impressionability or emotionality of images of the imagination is assessed by whether it arouses interest and emotions in the listener.

0 points - the images are of little interest, banal, do not impress the listener.

1 point - the images of the story cause some interest on the part of the listener and some emotional response, but this interest, together with the corresponding reaction, soon fades away.

2 points - the child used bright, very interesting images, the listener's attention to which, once having arisen, did not fade away, accompanied by emotional reactions such as surprise, admiration, fear, etc.

Thus, the maximum number of points that a child in this technique can receive for his imagination is 10, and the minimum is 0.

2. Methodology “Drawing”

In this technique, the child is offered a standard sheet of paper and felt-tip pens (at least 6 different colors). The child is given the task to come up with and draw a picture. This takes 5 minutes.

The analysis of the picture and the assessment of the child's fantasy in points were carried out in the same way as the analysis of oral creativity in the previous method, according to the same parameters and using the same protocol.

3. Method "Sculpture".

The child is offered a set of plasticine and the task, using it, in 5 minutes, to make some kind of craft, to mold it from plasticine.

The child's fantasies are evaluated according to approximately the same parameters as in the previous methods from 0 to 10 points.

0-1 point - for the 5 minutes allotted for work, the child could not think of anything and do it with his hands;

2-3 points - the child came up with and fashioned something very simple from plasticine, for example, a cube, a ball, a stick, a ring;

4-5 points - the child made a relatively simple craft, in which there are a small number of simple details, no more than two or three;

6 - 7 points - the child came up with something unusual, but at the same time not distinguished by the richness of fantasy;

8 - 9 points - the thing invented by the child is quite original, but not worked out in detail;

10 points - a child can get only if the thing invented by him is original enough, and worked out in detail, and has a good artistic taste.

Thus, having tested the students of the experimental and control classes, we can evaluate general level development of their imagination as follows.

25-30 - points - very high level;

19 - 24 points - high level;

10 -18 points - average level;

5 - 9 points - low level;

0 - 4 points - very low level.

Types of imagination

In children of primary school age, several types of imagination are distinguished. It may be recreating(creating an image of an object according to its description) and creative(creation of new images that require the selection of material in accordance with the plan). The creation of images of the imagination is carried out using several methods:

Agglutination

hyperbole

Schematization

Typing.

The basis for creating any images of fantasy is synthesis and analogy. The analogy can be close, immediate and distant, stepped. For example, appearance aircraft resembles a soaring bird. This is a close analogy. A spaceship is a distant analogy with a spaceship.

In the process of educational activities of schoolchildren, which goes into primary school From living contemplation, an important role, as psychologists note, is played by the level of development of cognitive processes: attention, memory, perception, observation, imagination, memory, thinking. The development and improvement of the imagination will be more effective with purposeful work in this direction, which will entail the expansion of the cognitive abilities of children.

Thus, one cannot but agree with the conclusions of psychologists and researchers that imagination is one of the most important mental processes and the level of its development, especially in children of primary school age, largely depends on the success of mastering the school curriculum.

Despite the high employment of primary teachers, the teacher needs to set the task of selecting additional material to the studied works provided for by the program, which makes it possible to most effectively combine the education of younger students with the development of their cognitive abilities, including imagination, and to make the most complete use of the specifics of reading as an academic subject.

Forms and methods for the development of imagination
in children of primary school age in reading lessons

The program content of reading as an academic subject consists of a number of sections:

oral folk art, which includes Russian folk songs, fairy tales, epics;
Russian classics (poetry and prose);
literary tales(and etc.).

The literary works presented in the textbooks, in my opinion, open up a wide scope for the teacher to select exercises and tasks for the development of imagination and creative fantasy in elementary school students.

Imagination is closely related to such qualities as emotionality, interest, and many personal qualities. Based on the relationship of imagination with the above qualities, I am working on the development of imagination in reading lessons.

Imagination and emotions

Every emotion has an outward expression. Each person has his own idea of the external signs of a particular feeling. The ability to correctly recognize the state of the hero of a literary work by the severity of feelings allows the child to penetrate deeper into the essence of the work, to feel the author's intention, to determine which of the characters is positive and which is negative.

In every reading lesson, the main thing for the development of imagination and emotions is the use of schematic representations of human emotions. The task of children is to choose as accurately as possible for this hero, for this particular situation emotional image. First, the children try to depict the selected emotion on their face and explain why they consider this particular emotion to be the most appropriate. For example, when studying the tale of Odoevsky V.F. “Moroz Ivanovich” I suggest that children find on the diagram an emotion that characterizes all the main characters, analyze individual episodes and show their emotional significance.

Episode 1 The needlewoman was a smart girl: she got up early, herself, without a nanny, dressed, and getting out of bed, she got down to business: she stoked the stove, kneaded bread, chalked the hut, fed the rooster, and then went to the well for water.

Episode 2 Meanwhile, Sloth lay in bed, stretching, waddling from side to side…. As Sloth counts everyone, he doesn’t know what to start and what to do; she would like to go to bed, but she does not want to sleep; she would like to eat, but she does not want to eat; she would count flies to the window - and even then she was tired. She sits, miserable, crying and complaining about everyone that she is bored, as if others are to blame.

Episode 3 Here the old man woke up, asks for dinner. Sloth brought him a pan as it is, she didn’t even spread the tablecloths. Moroz Ivanovich tried it, grimaced, and the sand crunched on his teeth.

At the last lesson of studying this work, I suggest that students choose the episode they like the most and choose the appropriate emotion or emotion for it.

Emotions are closely related to intonations. In reading lessons I use the exercise “What does intonation mean”. This exercise develops the imagination for auditory images. Students read an excerpt from the work of A.S. Pushkin "The Tale of Tsar Saltan":

The wind walks on the sea
And the boat is urging;
He runs in waves
On raised sails
Past the steep island
Past the big city;
Cannons from the pier are firing,
The ship is ordered to stop...

with different intonations: “kindly”, “sadly”, “affectionately”, “angrily”, “indifferently”, “pitifully”. Each child should read with his own intonation, trying to give his own emotional coloring to the text.

A similar task can be used when reading prose work“What is the dew on the grass” L.N. Tolstoy.

... When you inadvertently pick off a leaf with a dewdrop, the drop will roll down like a ball of light, and you will not see how it slips past the stem. It used to be that you would tear off such a cup, slowly bring it to your mouth and drink a dewdrop, and this dewdrop seemed tastier than any drink.

In the course of studying the fables of I.A. Krylov “Monkey and Glasses”, “Crow and Fox”, “Mirror and Monkey” I use the game “Pantomime”. This game is developing and optimizing the emotional background by activating the imagination. All the children stood in a circle. In turn, everyone went to the middle of the circle and, with the help of facial expressions and gestures, showed some action from the fables. The rest of the guys had to guess which character and from which fable was conceived by the host. The winners were determined by those children who most accurately depicted the intended scene.

The exercise "Animation of the picture" is similar to the game "Pantomime", but with a complicated plot. This exercise develops figurative imagination well and was used in the study of the epics “Dobrynya Nikitich”, “Dobrynya and the Serpent”, “Ilya Muromets and the Nightingale the Robber”. I offer each row an envelope with the name of the epic, with a certain plot from it. Then the students showed a silent scene illustrating the plot of the picture. Opposite teams must explain what they saw, name the work. The team of artists then explained what they were portraying, after which the teams switch places.

Imagination and interests

It is no secret that the teacher should build the lesson in such a way, present the educational material in such a way that the work being studied arouses genuine interest in the children. To do this, you can use the following exercises and games:

Game "Archimedes".

Game Inventor.

folk tales

Game "Fan"

Game "Transformation".

Imagination and personality

It is well known that imagination is closely related to personality and its development. The personality of the child is constantly formed under the influence of all the circumstances of life. However, there is a special area of a child's life that provides specific opportunities for personal development - this is a game. The main mental function that provides the game is precisely imagination, fantasy.

Imagining game situations and realizing them, the child forms a number of personal properties, such as justice, courage, honesty. Through the work of the imagination, there is a compensation for the still insufficient real opportunities for the child to overcome life's difficulties, conflicts, and solve problems of social interaction.

Scenario game.

The opposite game.

In addition to the above work on the development of imagination and its relationship with emotions, interests and personal qualities, I widely use such techniques as verbal drawing, writing creative works, illustrating works.

To increase the emotional level of a literary text, to develop the imagination, you can use verbal drawing or illustration, which is carried out on questions or tasks of this type: “How do you imagine the situation at some point in the action? Imagine that all this is drawn in a picture. Tell it like it's all in front of your eyes."

Verbal pictures (mainly - oral, less often - written) are “drawn” to those episodes that are most significant in understanding the ideological intent of the work; descriptions of nature in poetic works, portraits of heroes were also illustrated. For one story, “draw” two or three pictures - illustrations, thus, a picture plan is obtained that reflects the most important moments of the work.

A variant of verbal drawing is the so-called imaginary film adaptation: students can be asked to verbally draw a series of frames, imagining that the story is passing before their eyes on the screen. An imaginary film adaptation can be carried out with the participation of almost all students.

One of the complex but interesting forms of creative restructuring of the text, in my opinion, is its staging. The transition from ordinary reading to dramatization is reading by roles. When retelling, the children transmit only dialogues, and the leader (child) briefly describes the situation against which the action takes place.

Imagination plays an important role in mental development younger student. It supplements the perception with elements of past experience, the child's own experiences, transforms the past and present through generalization, connection with emotions, feelings, sensations, ideas. Thanks to the imagination, planning and goal-setting are carried out, in which the future result of the activity of a younger student is created in the imagination, exists in his mind and directs his activity to obtain the desired result. Imagination provides anticipation, modeling and creation of an image of the future (positive or negative consequences of certain actions, the course of interaction, the content of the situation) by summarizing the elements of the child's past experience and establishing cause-and-effect relationships between its elements. If a younger student is deprived of the opportunity to really act or be in a certain situation, then by the power of his imagination he is transferred there and performs actions in his imagination, thereby replacing real reality with an imaginary one. In addition, imagination is an important basis for younger students' understanding of other people and interpersonal communication, contributing to the representation of emotions and states experienced by others at a given time. Thus, imagination occupies an important place in the structure of a child's mental activity, being included in its cognitive emotional-sensory and behavioral components; is an integral part of educational and other activities, social interaction and cognition of younger students: participates in the arbitrary regulation of cognitive processes and mental states of the child, affects the nature of the flow of emotional and volitional processes, provides targeted planning and programming of various activities.

At primary school age, a recreating (reproductive) imagination is developed, involving the creation of images according to a verbal description or a conditional image, and a creative (productive) imagination, which is distinguished by a significant processing of the source material and the creation of new images. The main direction in the development of imagination in primary school age is a gradual transition to an increasingly correct and complete reflection of reality based on accumulated knowledge, from a simple arbitrary combination of ideas to their logically reasoned combination.

A distinctive feature of the imagination of a younger student is also its reliance on specific objects, without which it is difficult for them to create images of the imagination. In the same way, when reading and telling, the younger student relies on an image, on a specific image. Without this, students find it difficult to imagine, to recreate the described situation. At the beginning of primary school age, the imagination relies on specific objects, but with age, the word begins to come first.

In the process of learning, with the general development of the ability to self-regulate and control one's mental activity, imagination also becomes an increasingly manageable and controlled process, and its images arise within the framework of learning objectives associated with a certain content of educational activities. Educational activity contributes to the intensive development of the recreating imagination. In the process of learning activities, younger students are given a lot of descriptive information, which requires them to constantly recreate images, without which it is impossible to comprehend the educational material and assimilate it, i.e., the recreating imagination of a younger student is included in purposeful learning activities from the very beginning of training. The basis for the imagination of a younger student is his ideas. Therefore, the development of imagination largely depends on the system of thematic ideas formed in the child about various objects and phenomena of the surrounding world.

Practical example: To activate and develop reproductive imagination in literary reading classes, the game technique “Composing images of objects” is used, in which children are read a description of the appearance of a hero, object and then are asked to draw a hero or object according to the description.

The junior school age as a whole can be considered the most favorable, sensitive period for the development of creative imagination and fantasy. Games, productive activities, communication of younger students reflect the power of their imagination. In their stories, conversations, reality and imaginary images are often mixed up, and the unreal phenomena presented can, due to the law of the emotional reality of the imagination, be experienced by children as quite real. Their experience is so intense that younger students feel the need to talk about it. Such childhood fantasies are often perceived by others as manifestations of deceit and deceit. However, if these stories invented by the child do not pursue any benefit, then they are not lies, but fantasies that are at odds with reality. As the child grows older, such fantasizing ceases to be a simple continuation of the fantasizing of the preschooler, who himself believes in his fantasy as in reality. Younger students begin to realize the conventionality of their fantasizing, its inconsistency with reality.

In the mind of a junior schoolchild, real concrete knowledge and fascinating images of imagination built on their basis coexist. With age, the role of fantasy, divorced from reality, decreases, and the realism of the child's imagination increases, which is due to the expansion of horizons and general awareness of the surrounding reality and the development of critical thinking. The realism of the imagination is manifested in the creation of images that do not contradict reality, but are not necessarily an accurate reproduction of real events. The question of the realism of children's imagination is connected with the question of the relation of the images that arise in younger schoolchildren to reality. The realism of the child's imagination is manifested in all types of activities available to him: in games, in visual and constructive activities, when listening to fairy tales, etc. In play activities, for example, a child's demands for credibility in a play situation increase with age. The child strives to depict well-known events realistically, as happens in life, and a change in reality is often caused by ignorance, an inability to coherently and consistently depict real events. The realism of the imagination in primary school age is especially pronounced when choosing the attributes of play activities. Unlike preschoolers, younger students make a strict selection of play material on the basis of its maximum proximity to real objects. Amendments to the game situation, imaginary images, introduced in the process of play activity by children of primary school age, give the game imaginary features that are more and more consistent with reality.

The main directions for the development of the imagination of a younger student:

Improving imaging planning;
increasing the accuracy and certainty of images of the imagination;
an increase in the variety and originality of products of the imagination;
reduction of elements of reproductive reproduction of images;
increase in realism and controllability of images of the imagination;
strengthening the connection of imagination with thinking;
the transition of the imagination from an activity that needs external support to an independent internal activity based on speech.

1. At first, the images of the imagination are vague, unclear, gradually they become more accurate and definite.

2. At first, only a few signs are reflected in the images of the imagination, and by the end of the primary school age there are many more, and significant ones.

3. The processing of images, accumulated knowledge and ideas in the 1st grade is insignificant, but by the 3rd grade, children accumulate much more knowledge and the images of the imagination become more diverse, more generalized and brighter.

4. At first, any image of the imagination requires reliance on a specific object or its image, model, and then reliance on the word gradually develops, which allows younger students to mentally create a new image.

At primary school age, in general, children can imagine much less than an adult, but they have more confidence in the images of their imagination and their weaker control. Therefore, it often seems that the imagination of children is more developed than that of adults. However, younger schoolchildren have much less knowledge and ideas, which make up the material from which images of the imagination are built, than an adult. The nature of the methods used by younger students to synthesize images of imagination, their combinations, quality and variety are also significantly inferior to adults. The lack of developed self-control in fantasizing gives rise to the illusion of ease with which the child produces more and more new images of imagination. Children have only a greater brightness of images, they also have little control over them.

The imagination of a younger student is distinguished by the presence of elements of reproductive, simple reproduction. Initially, the imagination of younger schoolchildren is distinguished by a slight processing of existing ideas. In play or productive activities, children display what they see and experience almost in the order in which it took place in their lives. personal experience. As they grow older, the number of elements of reproductive, simple reproduction in the imagination of a younger student becomes less and less. In the future, the creative processing of ideas and the development of creative imagination are intensified.

M.E. Vannik identified the main stages of creative imagination in children of primary school age:

preparatory (incitement to create),
incubation of the idea (sketch, sketch: this stage in children can be curtailed), implementation of the idea (creation of a specific work),
presentation of the result (for example, an exhibition of works, this stage is of particular importance for children).

The following conditions contribute to the development of creative imagination: the inclusion of students in various activities, the use of non-traditional forms of conducting lessons, the creation of problem situations, excursions, the use of role playing, independent performance of work, planning of work on the implementation of products, use various materials, the use of various types of tasks, including psychological tasks and exercises. Such aspects of educational and cognitive activity as content, organizational, subjective.

Practical example: To activate and develop creative imagination in literary reading classes, the game techniques “Fairy tales with three ends” are used, in which students are invited to come up with several options for ending famous fairy tales, the “Composing fairy tales” technique, in which children need to come up with their own fairy tale with some famous fairytale hero.

According to O.V. Davydova, the creative imagination of younger schoolchildren is intensively developing due to a special complex of psychological pedagogical conditions development of students on the basis of interdisciplinary connections, including: interactive learning through cooperation; organization of problematic creative activity; use of integrated content.

Conditions for the development of creative imagination of younger students on the basis of interdisciplinary connections

1. Interactive learning through collaboration

Methods and techniques: cooperation at the stage of motivation: conversation, didactic games, cooperation at the stage of organization: the formulation of the problem by the teacher or students, options for solving problem-creative tasks during brainstorming, visual methods, methodological drawing, cooperation at the stage of control: encouragement, approval of novelty, unusual design, selection of works for the portfolio

Forms of study:

Means of education: reliance on meaningful and formal knowledge, interest based on the knowledge of mythology, the use of visibility not for copying, but for combining, creating a situation of success in fine art (visibility, methodical drawing, encouragement, approval), creative book (portfolio), individual and collective grade

2. Organization of problem-creative activity

Methods and techniques: didactic games, conversation, heuristic, problem and visual methods, the use of visualization (including methodical drawing) not for copying, but for combining, cooperation and diplomacy in solving problems, accessible creative tasks of open mind, brainstorming, personal or social significance of tasks ; creative atmosphere; the use of a variety of visual materials and techniques, the creation of situations of success, encouragement, approval of novelty, extraordinary design

Forms of study: collective-group and individual-collective classes, exhibitions, dialogue of cultures

Means of education: the use of contradictions between the knowledge of history, mythology and the application of this knowledge in new practical conditions, the discrepancy between knowledge and new requirements; the contradiction between theoretical and practical implementation: knowledge of the methods and ways of creative imagination; mastering the ways of creating an artistic image; mastering the techniques of visual activity with a variety of materials, self-realization in creativity, the implementation of control tasks

3. Use of integrated education content

Methods and techniques: block study of topics in quarters (7-10 lessons), reliance on interdisciplinary knowledge of history and fine arts, the inclusion of mythology, conversation, visual methods, brainstorming, didactic games, the use of a regional component, cooperation, solving practically significant problem-creative problems, ZUN proficiency in fine arts with a variety of materials and technologies

Forms of study: collective-group and individual-collective classes, exhibitions, dialogue of cultures

Means of education: isolating the general basis of the content of subject programs " art” and “History”, which can be traced in the mythological knowledge of the content of each of the listed items, the use of verbal, visual and audiovisual means (the latter were also used in the first two conditions)

The author believes that since under the conditions secondary school Since the experience of younger students is expanding due to the knowledge of subjects studied in parallel, then educational and cognitive activities aimed at developing creative imagination should be based on interdisciplinary connections that allow transforming the elements of reality using the experience of previous generations.

The intensive development of the creative imagination of younger students in the learning process takes place on the basis of the principle of creative awakening (creating a creative atmosphere in the classroom that encourages students to creative activity based on new, vivid, emotional impressions and ideas), the principle of dialogism (creative cooperation between the teacher and students), the principle creative self-expression (reflection of one's own impressions in the created images), based on the close relationship of "external" and "internal" psychological conditions. These include a favorable psychological climate in the classroom, trust between the teacher and students, the “openness” of the student to the experience of creative activity, the internal locus of evaluating activity, etc. Favorable conditions for the disclosure of the creative potential of teachers and students are created within the framework of innovative learning. The level of recreative imagination that a child has reached by the end of primary school age can be assessed by such indicators as formal adequacy, emotionality, originality and integrity of the image reconstruction. To assess the level of development of the creative imagination of younger students, one can use such criteria as the quantitative productivity of activity, originality of imagination, flexibility in the use of ideas.

Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation

Non-state educational institution higher professional education

Novosibirsk Humanitarian Institute

Department of Practical Psychology

Course work

by discipline

Research methods in psychology

Completed by a 2nd year student PZ - 11

Ivanova Svetlana Vladimirovna

Checked

Gulyaeva Kapitolina Yurievna

Novosibirsk 2009

Introduction. 3

Chapter 1. Imagination and creativity of the individual. 5

1.1 The concept of imagination. 5

1.2 Concept creativity. 10

1.3 Research methods of imagination and creativity. fifteen

Chapter 2. Features of creative abilities and imagination of younger students. 19

2.1 Mental characteristics of children of primary school age. 19

2.2 Imagination and creativity of younger students. 23

Chapter 3. Experimental study of the characteristics of creative abilities and imagination of younger students. 31

3.1 Organization, methods and methods of research. 31

3.2 Analysis and discussion of the research results. 34

References.. 48

Application. fifty

Introduction

The relevance of this course work lies in the fact that research on the problem of studying the features of the development of creative abilities, in particular, imagination, in children of primary school age lies in the fact that in modern sociocultural conditions, when there is a process of continuous reform, a radical change in all public institutions, skills thinking in an extraordinary way, creatively solving tasks, designing the intended end result acquire special significance.

Creatively thinking person is able to solve the tasks assigned to him faster and more economically, to overcome difficulties more effectively, to set new goals, to provide himself with greater freedom of choice and action, that is, in the final analysis, to most effectively organize his activities in solving the tasks set for him by society. It is a creative approach to business that is one of the conditions for educating an active life position of a person.

Prerequisites for further creative development and self-development of the individual are laid in childhood. In this regard, increased demands are placed on the initial stages of the formation of a child's personality, especially on the primary school stage, which largely determines its further development.

Problems of creativity have been widely developed in domestic psychology. Currently, researchers are searching for an integral indicator that characterizes a creative person. A great contribution to the development of problems of abilities, creative thinking was made by psychologists like B.M. Teplov, S.L. Rubinstein, B.G. Ananiev, N.S. Leites, V.A. Krutetsky, A.G. Kovalev, K.K. Platonov, A.M. Matyushkin, V.D. Shadrikov, Yu.D. Babaeva, V.N. Druzhinin, I.I. Ilyasov, V.I. Panov, I.V. Kalish, M.A. Cold, N.B. Shumakova, V.S. Yurkevich and others.

An object research - the imagination and creativity of the individual.

Subject research - features of the imagination and creative abilities of children of primary school age.

Target research - to identify the characteristics of the imagination and creative abilities of children of primary school age.

Hypothesis: we assume that primary school students have specific features of imagination and creativity compared to children preschool age.

Tasks:

Conduct an analytical review of the literature on the research topic,

Expand the concept of imagination and creativity,

To study, on the basis of psychological and pedagogical literature, the main patterns in the development of the imagination and creative abilities of younger students,

Conduct an experimental study of the features of the development of imagination and creative abilities of younger students,

Analyze the obtained diagnostic results, draw conclusions.

Research methods: observation, conversation, experiment, analysis of products of activity (creativity).

Research base. School No. 15 in Novosibirsk ( Leninsky district, st. Nemirovicha-Danchenko, 20/2), students of the 3rd grade in the amount of 15 people; Preschool educational institution No. 136 in Novosibirsk (Leninsky district, Titova st., 24), pupils of the senior group in the amount of 15 people.

Chapter 1 1.1 The concept of imagination

The experimental study of imagination has been a subject of interest for Western psychologists since the 1950s. The function of imagination - the construction and creation of images - has been recognized as the most important human ability. Its role in the creative process was equated with the role of knowledge and judgment. In the 1950s, J. Guilford and his followers developed the theory of creative (creative) intelligence.

The definition of imagination and the identification of the specifics of its development is one of the most difficult problems in psychology. According to A.Ya. Dudetsky (1974), there are about 40 different definitions of imagination, but the question of its essence and difference from other mental processes is still debatable. So, A.V. Brushlinsky (1969) rightly notes the difficulties in defining imagination, the vagueness of the boundaries of this concept. He believes that "Traditional definitions of imagination as the ability to create new images actually reduce this process to creative thinking, to operating with ideas, and concludes that this concept is generally still redundant - at least in modern science."

S.L. Rubinstein emphasized: "Imagination is a special form of the psyche that only a person can have. It is continuously connected with the human ability to change the world, transform reality and create something new."

With a rich imagination, a person can live in different times, which no other person can afford. creature in the world. The past is fixed in images of memory, and the future is presented in dreams and fantasies. S.L. Rubinstein writes: "Imagination is a departure from past experience, it is a transformation of the given and the generation of new images on this basis."

L.S. Vygotsky believes that “Imagination does not repeat impressions that have been accumulated before, but builds some new rows from previously accumulated impressions. Thus, introducing something new into our impressions and changing these impressions so that as a result a new, previously non-existent image , constitutes the basis of that activity which we call imagination.

Imagination is a special form of the human psyche, standing apart from other mental processes and at the same time occupying an intermediate position between perception, thinking and memory. The specificity of this form of mental process lies in the fact that imagination is probably characteristic only of a person and is strangely connected with the activity of the organism, being at the same time the most "mental" of all mental processes and states.

In the textbook "General Psychology" A.G. Maklakov gives the following definition of imagination: “Imagination is the process of transforming ideas that reflect reality, and creating new ideas on this basis.

In the textbook "General Psychology" V.M. Kozubovsky contains the following definition. Imagination is the mental process of a person creating in his mind an image of an object (object, phenomenon) that does not exist in real life. Imagination can be:

The image of the final result of real objective activity;

a picture of one's own behavior in conditions of complete informational uncertainty;

the image of a situation that resolves problems that are relevant to a given person, the real overcoming of which is not possible in the near future.

Imagination is included in the cognitive activity of the subject, which necessarily has its own object. A.N. Leontiev wrote that "The object of activity acts in two ways: firstly - in its independent existence, as subordinating and transforming the activity of the subject, secondarily - as an image of the object, as a product of the mental reflection of its property, which is carried out as a result of the activity of the subject and cannot be realized otherwise" . .

The selection in the subject of its specific properties necessary for solving the problem determines such a characteristic of the image as its partiality, i.e. dependence of perception, ideas, thinking, on what a person needs - on his needs, motives, attitudes, emotions. “It is very important to emphasize here that such “partiality” is itself objectively determined and is expressed not in the adequacy of the image (although it can be expressed in it), but that it allows one to actively penetrate into reality.”

The combination in the imagination of the subject contents of the images of two objects is associated, as a rule, with a change in the forms of representation of reality. Starting from the properties of reality, the imagination cognizes them, reveals their essential characteristics through their transfer to other objects, which fix the work of the productive imagination. This is expressed in metaphor, symbolism, characterizing the imagination.

According to E.V. Ilyenkov, "The essence of imagination lies in the ability to "grasp" the whole before the part, in the ability to build a complete image on the basis of a single hint, the tendency to build a complete image." "A distinctive feature of the imagination is a kind of departure from reality, when a new image is built on the basis of a separate sign of reality, and not just the existing ideas are reconstructed, which is typical for the functioning of the internal plan of action."

Imagination is a necessary element of human creative activity, which is expressed in the construction of the image of the products of labor, and ensures the creation of a program of behavior in cases where the problem situation is also characterized by uncertainty. Depending on the various circumstances that characterize the problem situation, the same task can be solved both with the help of imagination and with the help of thinking.

From this we can conclude that the imagination works at that stage of cognition, when the uncertainty of the situation is very high. Fantasy allows you to "jump" through some stages of thinking and still imagine the final result.

Imagination processes have an analytic-synthetic character. Its main tendency is the transformation of representations (images), which ultimately ensures the creation of a model of a situation that is obviously new, that has not arisen before. Analyzing the mechanism of imagination, it must be emphasized that its essence is the process of transforming ideas, creating new images based on existing ones. Imagination, fantasy is a reflection of reality in new, unexpected, unusual combinations and connections.

So, imagination in psychology is considered as one of the forms of reflective activity of consciousness. Since all cognitive processes are reflective in nature, it is necessary, first of all, to determine the qualitative originality and specificity inherent in the imagination.

Imagination and thinking are intertwined in such a way that it can be difficult to distinguish between them; both of these processes are involved in any creative activity, creativity is always subordinated to the creation of something new, unknown. Operating with existing knowledge in the process of fantasizing implies their mandatory inclusion in the system of new relationships, as a result of which new knowledge may arise. This shows: "... the circle closes... Cognition (thinking) stimulates the imagination (creating a transformation model), which (the model) is then verified and refined by thinking," writes A.D. Dudetsky.

According to L.D. Stolyarenko, several types of imagination can be distinguished, the main ones being passive and active. The passive, in turn, is divided into voluntary (dreaming, dreams) and involuntary (hypnotic state, fantasy in dreams). Active imagination includes artistic, creative, critical, recreative, and anticipatory.

Imagination can be of four main types:

Active imagination - is characterized by the fact that, using it, a person, at his own request, by an effort of will, causes appropriate images in himself.

Active imagination is a sign of a creative type of personality that constantly tests its inner capabilities, its knowledge is not static, but continuously recombines, leads to new results, giving the individual emotional reinforcement for new searches, the creation of new material and spiritual values. Her mental activity is supraconscious, intuitive.

Passive imagination lies in the fact that its images arise spontaneously, in addition to the will and desire of a person. Passive imagination can be unintentional and intentional. Unintentional passive imagination occurs with a weakening of consciousness, psychosis, disorganization of mental activity, in a semi-drowsy and sleepy state. With deliberate passive imagination, a person arbitrarily forms images of escape from reality-dreams.

The unreal world created by the individual is an attempt to replace unfulfilled hopes, make up for heavy losses, and ease mental trauma. This type of imagination indicates a deep intrapersonal conflict.

There is also a distinction between the reproducing, or reproductive, and the transforming, or productive imagination.

The task of reproductive imagination is to reproduce reality as it is, and although there is also an element of fantasy, such imagination is more like perception or memory than creativity. Thus, a direction in art called naturalism, as well as partly realism, can be correlated with reproductive imagination.

Productive imagination is distinguished by the fact that in it reality is consciously constructed by a person, and not just mechanically copied or recreated, although at the same time it is still creatively transformed in the image.

Imagination has a subjective side associated with the individual personality characteristics of a person (in particular, with his dominant hemisphere of the brain, type nervous system, features of thinking, etc.). In this regard, people differ in:

brightness of images (from the phenomena of a clear "vision" of images to the poverty of ideas);

by the depth of processing of images of reality in the imagination (from complete unrecognizability of the imaginary image to primitive differences from the real original);

by the type of the dominant channel of imagination (for example, by the predominance of auditory or visual images of the imagination).

1.2 The concept of creativity

Creativity is the highest mental function and reflects reality. However, with the help of these abilities, a mental departure beyond the limits of the perceived is carried out. With the help of creative abilities, an image of an object that has never existed or does not exist at the moment is formed. At preschool age, the foundations of the child's creative activity are laid, which are manifested in the development of the ability to plan and its implementation in the ability to combine their knowledge and ideas, in a sincere transfer of their feelings.

Currently, there are many approaches to the definition of creativity, as well as concepts related to this definition: creativity, innovative thinking, productive thinking, creative act, creative activity, creative abilities and others (V.M. Bekhterev, N.A. Vetlugina, V. N. Druzhinin, Y. A. Ponomarev, A. Rebera, etc.).

Psychological aspects of creativity, in which thinking is involved, are widely represented in many scientific works (D.B. Bogoyavlenskaya, P.Ya. Galperin, V.V. Davydov, A.V. Zaporozhets, L.V. Zankov, Ya.A. Ponomarev , S.L. Rubinshtein) and creative imagination as a result of mental activity, providing a new education (image), implemented in different types activities (A.V. Brushlinsky, L.S. Vygotsky, O.M. Dyachenko, A.Ya. Dudetsky, A.N. Leontiev, N.V. Rozhdestvenskaya, F.I. Fradkina, D.B. Elkonin, R. Arnheim, K. Koffka, M. Wergheimer).

"Ability" is one of the most common psychological concepts. In domestic psychology, many authors gave him detailed definitions.

In particular, S.L. Rubinstein understood abilities as "... a complex synthetic formation, which includes a number of data, without which a person would not be capable of any specific activity, and properties that are developed only in the process of organized activity in a certain way ". Statements similar in content can be gleaned from other authors.

Ability is a dynamic concept. They are formed, developed and manifested in activity.

B.M. Teplov proposed three essentially empirical signs of abilities, which formed the basis of the definition most often used by specialists:

1) abilities are individual psychological characteristics that distinguish one person from another;

only those features that are relevant to the success of an activity or several activities;

abilities are not reducible to the knowledge, skills and abilities that a person has already developed, although they determine the ease and speed of acquiring these knowledge and skills.

Naturally, the success of an activity is determined by both motivation and personal characteristics, which prompted K.K. Platonov to attribute to abilities any properties of the psyche, to one degree or another determining success in a particular activity. However, B.M. Teplov goes further and points out that, in addition to success in activity, the ability determines the speed and ease of mastering the activity, and this changes the situation with the definition: the speed of learning may depend on motivation, but the feeling of ease in learning (otherwise - "subjective price", experience of difficulty), rather, is inversely proportional to motivational tension.

So, the more a person’s ability is developed, the more successfully he performs the activity, the faster he masters it, and the process of mastering the activity and the activity itself are subjectively easier for him than training or work in the area in which he does not have the ability. The problem arises: what is this mental essence - abilities? One indication of its behavioral and subjective manifestations (and the definition of B.M. Teplov, in fact, is behavioral) is not enough.

In its most general form, the definition of creativity is as follows. V.N. Druzhinin defines creativity as individual characteristics qualities of a person that determine the success of his performance of creative activities of various kinds.

Creativity is an amalgamation of many qualities. And the question of the components of human creativity is still open, although at the moment there are several hypotheses concerning this problem. Many psychologists associate the ability to creative activity, primarily with the peculiarities of thinking. In particular, the famous American psychologist Guilford, who dealt with the problems of human intelligence, found that creative people characteristic of the so-called divergent thinking.

People with this type of thinking, when solving a problem, do not concentrate all their efforts on finding the only correct solution, but begin to look for solutions in all possible directions in order to consider as many options as possible. Such people tend to form new combinations of elements that most people know and use only in a certain way, or form links between two elements that at first glance have nothing in common. The divergent way of thinking underlies creative thinking, which is characterized by the following main features:

1. Quickness - the ability to express maximum amount ideas, in this case what matters is not their quality, but their quantity).

2. Flexibility - the ability to express a wide variety of ideas.

3. Originality - the ability to generate new non-standard ideas; this can manifest itself in answers, decisions that do not coincide with generally accepted ones.

4. Completeness - the ability to improve your "product" or give it a finished look.

Well-known domestic researchers of the problem of creativity A.N. Luk, based on the biographies of prominent scientists, inventors, artists and musicians, highlights the following creative abilities:

1. The ability to see the problem where others do not see it.

The ability to collapse mental operations, replacing several concepts with one and using symbols that are more and more capacious in terms of information.

The ability to apply the skills acquired in solving one problem to solving another.

The ability to perceive reality as a whole, without splitting it into parts.

The ability to easily associate distant concepts.

The ability of memory to produce the right information at the right moment.

Flexibility of thinking.

The ability to choose one of the alternatives for solving a problem before it is tested.

The ability to integrate newly perceived information into existing knowledge systems.

The ability to see things as they are, to distinguish what is observed from what is brought in by interpretation.

Ease of generating ideas.

Creative imagination.

The ability to refine details, to improve the original idea.

Candidates psychological sciences V.T. Kudryavtsev and V. Sinelnikov, based on a wide historical and cultural material (history of philosophy, social sciences, art, individual areas of practice) identified the following universal creative abilities that have developed in the process of human history.

1. Imagination realism - a figurative grasp of some essential, general trend or pattern of development of an integral object, before a person has a clear idea about it and can enter it into a system of strict logical categories.

2. The ability to see the whole before the parts.

Supra-situational - the transformative nature of creative solutions and the ability to solve a problem not just choose from alternatives imposed from outside, but independently create an alternative.

Experimentation - the ability to consciously and purposefully create conditions in which objects most clearly reveal their essence hidden in ordinary situations, as well as the ability to trace and analyze the features of the "behavior" of objects in these conditions.

1.3 Imagination and creativity research methods

For more exact definition the level of development of students' creative abilities, it is necessary to analyze and evaluate each independently completed creative task.

S.Yu. Lazareva recommends that the pedagogical assessment of the results of students' creative activity be carried out using the "Fantasy" scale developed by G.S. Altshuller to assess the presence of fantastic ideas and, thus, allowing to assess the level of imagination (the scale was adapted to the junior school question by M.S. Gafitulin,

T.A. Sidorchuk).

The "Fantasy" scale includes five indicators: novelty (assessed on a 4-level scale: copying an object (situation, phenomenon), a slight change in the prototype, obtaining a fundamentally new object (situation, phenomenon)); persuasiveness (convincing is a reasonable idea described by a child with sufficient certainty).

Data scientific works they say that research conducted in real life is legitimate if it is aimed at improving the educational environment in which the child is formed, contributing to social practice, at creating pedagogical conditions conducive to the development of creativity in the child.

1. Technique "Verbal fantasy" (speech imagination). The child is invited to come up with a story (story, fairy tale) about some living creature (person, animal) or about something else of the child's choice and present it orally within 5 minutes. Up to one minute is allotted for inventing a theme or plot of a story (story, fairy tale), and after that the child starts the story.

In the course of the story, the child's fantasy is evaluated on the following grounds:

speed of imagination processes;

unusualness, originality of images of the imagination;

richness of imagination;

depth and elaboration (detailing) of images; - impressionability, emotionality of images.

For each of these features, the story is evaluated from 0 to 2 points. 0 points are given when this feature is practically absent in the story. The story receives 1 point if this feature is present, but is relatively weakly expressed. The story earns 2 points when when the corresponding sign is not only present, but also expressed quite strongly.

Unusualness, originality of images of the imagination is regarded in the following way.

If the child simply retold what he once heard from someone or saw somewhere, then on this basis he gets 0 points. If the child retells the known, but at the same time introduced something new from himself, then the originality of his imagination is estimated at 1 point. In the event that the child came up with something that he could not see or hear somewhere before, then the originality of his imagination gets a score of 2 points. The richness of the child's fantasy is also manifested in the variety of images he uses. When evaluating this quality of imagination processes, the total number of different living beings, objects, situations and actions, various characteristics and signs attributed to all this in the child's story is fixed. If the total number of the named exceeds ten, then the child receives 2 points for the richness of fantasy. If the total number of parts of the specified type is between 6 and 9, then the child receives 1 point. If there are few signs in the story, but in general not less than five, then the richness of the child's fantasy is estimated at 0 points.

The child receives points when the central object of the story is depicted very schematically.

score - if, when describing the central object, its detailing is moderate.

points - if the main image of his story is described in sufficient detail, with many different details characterizing him.

The impressionability or emotionality of images of the imagination is assessed by whether it arouses interest and emotions in the listener.

About points - the images are of little interest, banal, do not impress the listener.

score - the images of the story cause some interest on the part of the listener and some emotional response, but this interest, together with the corresponding reaction, soon fades away.

points - the child used bright, very interesting images, the listener's attention to which, once having arisen, did not fade away later, accompanied by emotional reactions such as surprise, admiration, fear, etc.

Thus, the maximum number of points that a child in this technique can receive for his imagination is 10, and the minimum is 0.

Chapter 2. Features of creative abilities and imagination of younger students

2.1 Mental characteristics of children of primary school age

Primary school age (from 6-7 to 9-10 years old) is determined by an important external circumstance in a child's life - admission to school.

A child entering school automatically occupies a completely new place in the system of human relations: he has permanent responsibilities associated with educational activities. Close adults, the teacher, even strangers communicate with the child not only as a unique person, but also as with a person who has taken upon himself the obligation (whether voluntarily or under duress) to study, like all children at his age. The new social situation of development introduces the child into a strictly normalized world of relationships and requires him to be organized arbitrariness, responsible for discipline, for the development of performing actions associated with the acquisition of skills in educational activities, as well as for mental development. Thus, the new social situation of schooling toughens the child's living conditions and acts as a stressful one for him. Every child who enters school has increased mental tension. This is reflected not only in physical health, but also in the behavior of the child [Davydov 13., 1973].

Before school, the individual characteristics of the child could not interfere with his natural development, since these characteristics were accepted and taken into account by close people. The school standardizes the conditions of a child's life. The child will have to overcome the trials that have piled on him. In most cases, the child adapts himself to standard conditions. Education becomes the leading activity. In addition to assimilating special mental actions and actions serving writing, reading, drawing, labor, etc., the child, under the guidance of a teacher, begins to master the content of the main forms of human consciousness (science, art, morality, etc.) and learns to act in accordance with traditions and new people's social expectations.

According to the theory of L.S. Vygotsky, school age, like all ages, opens with a critical, or turning point, period, which was described in the literature earlier than others as a crisis of seven years. It has long been noted that in the transition from preschool to school age a child changes very sharply and becomes more difficult to educate than before. This is some kind of transitional stage - no longer a preschooler and not yet a schoolboy [Vygotsky L.S., 1998; p.5].

Recently, a number of studies devoted to this age have appeared. The results of the study can be schematically expressed as follows: a 7-year-old child is distinguished primarily by the loss of childlike spontaneity. The immediate cause of childish immediacy is the lack of differentiation between inner and outer life. The child's experiences, desires and expression of desires, i.e. behavior and activity usually represent an insufficiently differentiated whole in the preschooler. The most significant feature of the crisis of seven years is usually called the beginning of differentiation of the inner and outer sides of the child's personality.

The loss of immediacy means the introduction into our actions of an intellectual moment that wedged between experience and immediate action, which is in direct contrast to the naive and direct action characteristic of the child. This does not mean that the crisis of seven years leads from a direct, naive, undifferentiated experience to the extreme pole, but, indeed, in each experience, in each of its manifestations, a certain intellectual moment arises.

At the age of 7, we are dealing with the beginning of the emergence of such a structure of experience, when the child begins to understand what it means "I rejoice", "I am upset", "I am angry", "I am kind", "I am evil", i.e. . he has a meaningful orientation in his own experiences. Just as a three-year-old child discovers his relationship with other people, so a seven-year-old discovers the very fact of his experiences. Thanks to this, some of the features that characterize the crisis of seven years come to the fore.

Experiences acquire meaning (an angry child understands that he is angry), thanks to this, the child develops such new relationships with himself that were impossible before the generalization of experiences. As on a chessboard, when with each move completely new connections between the pieces arise, so here completely new connections between experiences arise when they acquire a certain meaning. Consequently, the whole character of the child's experiences is rebuilt by the age of 7, just as a chessboard is rebuilt when the child has learned to play chess.

By the time of the crisis of seven years, for the first time, a generalization of experiences, or an affective generalization, the logic of feelings, arises. There are deeply retarded children who experience failure at every turn: ordinary children play, an abnormal child tries to join them, but he is refused, he walks down the street and is laughed at. In a word, he loses at every turn. In each individual case, he has a reaction to his own insufficiency, and in a minute you look - he is completely pleased with himself. Thousands of individual failures, but no general feeling of low value, he does not generalize what has happened many times already. A generalization of feelings arises in a child of school age, i.e., if some situation happened to him many times, he develops an affective formation, the nature of which also relates to a single experience, or affect, as a concept relates to a single perception or memory . For example, a child of preschool age does not have real self-esteem, pride. The level of our requests to ourselves, to our success, to our position arises precisely in connection with the crisis of seven years.

A child of preschool age loves himself, but self-love as a generalized attitude towards himself, which remains the same in different situations, but self-esteem as such, but a child of this age does not have a generalized relationship to others and an understanding of his own value. Consequently, by the age of 7, a number of complex formations arise, which lead to the fact that the difficulties of behavior change dramatically and radically, they are fundamentally different from the difficulties of preschool age.

Such neoplasms as pride, self-esteem remain, but the symptoms of the crisis (manipulation, antics) are transient. In the crisis of seven years, due to the fact that differentiation of the internal and external arises, that for the first time a meaningful experience arises, an acute struggle of experiences also arises. A child who does not know whether to take bigger or sweeter candies is not in a state of internal struggle, although he hesitates. Internal struggle (contradictions of experiences and choice of one's own experiences) becomes possible only now [Davydov V., 1973].

A characteristic feature of primary school age is emotional impressionability, responsiveness to everything bright, unusual, colorful. Monotonous, boring classes sharply reduce cognitive interest at this age and give rise to a negative attitude towards learning. Going to school makes a big difference in a child's life. A new period begins with new duties, with the systematic activity of teaching. The life position of the child has changed, which makes changes in the nature of his relations with others. The new circumstances of the life of a small schoolboy become the basis for such experiences that he did not have before.

Self-esteem, high or low, gives rise to a certain emotional well-being, causes self-confidence or disbelief in one's own strength, a feeling of anxiety, an experience of superiority over others, a state of sadness, sometimes envy. Self-esteem is not only high or low, but also adequate (corresponding to the true state of affairs) or inadequate. In the course of solving life problems (educational, everyday, gaming), under the influence of achievements and failures in the activities performed, the student may experience inadequate self-esteem - increased or decreased. It causes not only a certain emotional reaction, but often a long-term negatively colored emotional well-being.

Communicating, the child simultaneously reflects in the mind the qualities and properties of a communication partner, and also cognizes himself. However, now in the pedagogical and social psychology not developed methodological foundations the process of formation of younger schoolchildren as subjects of communication. By this age, the basic block of psychological problems of the personality is structured and the mechanism of development of the subject of communication changes from imitative to reflexive [Lioznova E.V., 2002].

An important prerequisite for the development of a younger student as a subject of communication is the appearance in him, along with business communication a new extra-situational-personal form of communication. According to M.I. Lisina, this form begins to develop from the age of 6. The subject of such communication is a person [Lisina M.I., 1978]. The child asks the adult about his feelings and emotional states, and also tries to tell him about his relationships with peers, demanding from the adult an emotional response, empathy with his interpersonal problems.

2.2 Imagination and creativity of younger students

The first images of the child's imagination are associated with the processes of perception and his play activity. A one and a half year old child is still not interested in listening to stories (fairy tales) of adults, since he still lacks the experience that generates perception processes. At the same time, one can observe how, in the imagination of a playing child, a suitcase, for example, turns into a train, a silent, indifferent to everything that happens, a doll into a crying little man offended by someone, a pillow into an affectionate friend. During the period of speech formation, the child uses his imagination even more actively in his games, because his life observations are sharply expanded. However, all this happens as if by itself, unintentionally.

Arbitrary forms of imagination "grow up" from 3 to 5 years. Imagination images can appear either as a reaction to an external stimulus (for example, at the request of others), or initiated by the child himself, while imaginary situations are often purposeful, with an ultimate goal and a pre-thought-out scenario.

The school period is characterized by the rapid development of the imagination, due to the intensive process of acquiring versatile knowledge and using it in practice.

Individual features of the imagination are clearly manifested in the process of creativity. In this sphere of human activity, imagination about significance is placed on a par with thinking. It is important that for the development of imagination it is necessary to create conditions for a person under which freedom of action, independence, initiative, and looseness are manifested.

In general, primary schoolchildren usually do not have any problems associated with the development of children's imagination, so almost all children who play a lot and in a variety of ways in preschool childhood have a well-developed and rich imagination. The main questions that in this area may still arise before the child and the teacher at the beginning of training relate to the connection between imagination and attention, the ability to regulate figurative representations through voluntary attention, as well as the assimilation of abstract concepts that can be imagined and presented to the child, as well as to an adult, hard enough.

Senior preschool and junior school age are qualified as the most favorable, sensitive for the development of creative imagination, fantasies. Games, conversations of children reflect the power of their imagination, one might even say, a riot of fantasy. In their stories and conversations, reality and fantasy are often mixed, and the images of the imagination can, by virtue of the law of the emotional reality of the imagination, be experienced by children as quite real. The experience is so strong that the child feels the need to talk about it. Such fantasies (they are also found in adolescents) are often perceived by others as lies. Parents and teachers often turn to psychological counseling, alarmed by such manifestations of fantasy in children, which they regard as deceit. In such cases, the psychologist usually recommends that you analyze whether the child is pursuing any benefit with his story. If not (and most often it happens so), then we are dealing with fantasizing, inventing stories, and not with lies. This kind of storytelling is normal for kids. In these cases, it is useful for adults to join the children's game, to show that they like these stories, but precisely as manifestations of fantasy, a kind of game. Participating in such a game, sympathizing and empathizing with the child, an adult must clearly designate and show him the line between the game, fantasy and reality.

At primary school age, in addition, there is an active development of the recreative imagination.

In children of primary school age, several types of imagination are distinguished. It can be recreative (creating an image of an object according to its description) and creative (creating new images that require the selection of material in accordance with the plan).

The main trend that occurs in the development of children's imagination is the transition to an increasingly correct and complete reflection of reality, the transition from a simple arbitrary combination of ideas to a logically reasoned combination. If a child of 3-4 years old is satisfied with two sticks laid crosswise for the image of an airplane, then at 7-8 years old he already needs an external resemblance to an airplane ("so that there are wings and a propeller"). A schoolboy at the age of 11-12 often designs a model himself and demands from it an even more complete resemblance to a real aircraft ("so that it would be just like a real one and would fly").

The question of the realism of children's imagination is connected with the question of the relation of the images that arise in children to reality. The realism of the child's imagination is manifested in all forms of activity available to him: in play, in visual activity, when listening to fairy tales, etc. In play, for example, a child's demands for credibility in a play situation increase with age.

Observations show that the child strives to depict well-known events truthfully, as happens in life. In many cases, the change in reality is caused by ignorance, the inability to coherently, consistently portray the events of life. The realism of the younger schoolchild's imagination is especially evident in the selection of game attributes. For a younger preschooler in the game, everything can be everything. Older preschoolers are already selecting material for the game according to the principles of external similarity.

The younger student also makes a strict selection of material suitable for play. This selection is carried out according to the principle of maximum closeness, from the point of view of the child, of this material to real objects, according to the principle of the possibility of performing real actions with it.

The obligatory and main protagonist of the game for schoolchildren in grades 1-2 is a doll. With it, you can perform any necessary "real" actions. She can be fed, dressed, she can express her feelings. It is even better to use a live kitten for this purpose, since you can already really feed it, put it to bed, etc.

The corrections to the situation and images made during the game by children of primary school age give the game and the images themselves imaginary features that bring them closer and closer to reality.

A.G. Ruzskaya notes that children of primary school age are not deprived of fantasizing, which is at odds with reality, which is even more typical for schoolchildren (cases of children's lies, etc.). “Fantasying of this kind still plays a significant role and occupies a certain place in the life of a younger student. Nevertheless, it is no longer a simple continuation of the fantasizing of a preschooler who himself believes in his fantasy as in reality. A 9-10 year old student already understands the “conventionality "his fantasies, his inconsistency with reality."

Concrete knowledge and fascinating fantastic images built on their basis coexist peacefully in the mind of a junior schoolchild. With age, the role of fantasy, divorced from reality, weakens, and the realism of children's imagination increases. However, the realism of a child's imagination, in particular the imagination of a younger schoolchild, must be distinguished from its other feature, close, but fundamentally different.

The realism of the imagination involves the creation of images that do not contradict reality, but are not necessarily a direct reproduction of everything perceived in life.

The imagination of a younger schoolchild is also characterized by another feature: the presence of elements of reproductive, simple reproduction. This feature of children's imagination is expressed in the fact that in their games, for example, they repeat the actions and situations that they observed in adults, play out stories that they experienced, which they saw in the cinema, reproducing the life of the school, family, etc. without changes. The theme of the game is the reproduction of impressions that took place in the lives of children; the storyline of the game is a reproduction of what was seen, experienced, and necessarily in the same sequence in which it took place in life.

However, with age, the elements of reproductive, simple reproduction in the imagination of a younger student become less and less, and more and more creative processing of ideas appears.

According to L.S. Vygotsky, a child of preschool and primary school age can imagine much less than an adult, but he trusts the products of his imagination more and controls them less, and therefore imagination in the everyday, "cultural sense of the word, i.e. something like what is real, imaginary, in a child, of course, more than in an adult.However, not only the material from which the imagination builds is poorer in a child than in an adult, but also the nature of the combinations that are added to this material, their quality and the variety is considerably inferior to the combinations of an adult.Of all the forms of connection with reality that we have listed above, the child's imagination, to the same extent as the adult's imagination, has only the first, namely, the reality of the elements from which it is built.

V.S. Mukhina notes that at primary school age, a child in his imagination can already create a variety of situations. Being formed in the game substitutions of some objects for others, the imagination passes into other types of activity.

In the process of educational activity of schoolchildren, which starts from living contemplation in the primary grades, the level of development of cognitive processes plays an important role, as psychologists note: attention, memory, perception, observation, imagination, memory, thinking. The development and improvement of the imagination will be more effective with purposeful work in this direction, which will entail the expansion of the cognitive abilities of children.

At primary school age, for the first time, there is a division of play and labor, that is, activities carried out for the sake of pleasure that the child will receive in the process of the activity itself and activities aimed at achieving an objectively significant and socially assessed result. This distinction between play and work, including educational work, is an important feature of school age.

The importance of imagination in primary school age is the highest and necessary human ability. However, it is this ability that needs special care in terms of development. And it develops especially intensively at the age of 5 to 15 years. And if this period of imagination is not specially developed, in the future there will be a rapid decrease in the activity of this function.

Along with a decrease in a person’s ability to fantasize, a person becomes impoverished, the possibilities of creative thinking decrease, interest in art, science, and so on goes out.

Younger students carry out most of their vigorous activity with the help of imagination. Their games are the fruit of the wild work of fantasy, they are enthusiastically engaged in creative activities. The psychological basis of the latter is also creative

imagination. When in the process of learning children are faced with the need to comprehend abstract material and they need analogies, support with a general lack of life experience, imagination also comes to the aid of the child. Thus, the significance of the function of imagination in mental development is great.

However, fantasy, like any form of mental reflection, must have a positive direction of development. It should contribute to a better knowledge of the world around self-disclosure and self-improvement of the individual, and not develop into passive daydreaming, replacing real life with dreams. To accomplish this task, it is necessary to help the child use his imagination in the direction of progressive self-development, to enhance the cognitive activity of schoolchildren, in particular the development of theoretical, abstract thinking, attention, speech and overall creativity. Primary school children love to play artistic creativity. It allows the child to reveal his personality in the most complete free form. All artistic activity is based on active imagination, creative thinking. These features provide the child with a new, unusual view of the world.

Chapter 3 3.1 Organization, methods and methods of research

Target pilot study- in a practical way to identify the features of the development of the imagination and creative abilities of younger schoolchildren in comparison with children of a younger age group, namely, in comparison with children of older preschool age.

AT The study involved younger schoolchildren - students of the 3rd grade of secondary school No. 15 in Novosibirsk, located in the Leninsky district at ul. Nemirovich-Danchenko, 0/2. Children of primary school age in the amount of 15 people. constituted the experimental group.

The control group consisted of a sample of children of senior preschool age of 15 people. - Pupils of preschool educational institution No. 136 in Novosibirsk, located in the Leninsky district at st. Titova, 24.

AT methods: conversation, observation and analysis of products of children's creative activity.

AT The study included the following methods.

Method #1. A technique for studying the features of imagination based on the Torrens test "Incomplete figures".

The child is shown images of simple geometric shapes (square, triangle, circle) on separate forms and is offered to draw as many drawings as possible on the base of each of the proposed figures, and drawing can be done both inside the outline of the figure and outside it in any convenient for the child turning the sheet of the image of the figure, i.e. You can use each figure in different angles.

The quality of the drawings in terms of their artistry is not taken into account in the analysis, since we are primarily interested in the idea of the composition itself, the variety of emerging associations, the principles for translating ideas, and not the technical finishing of the drawings.

The time of work is not limited, because otherwise the child develops anxiety, uncertainty, and this contradicts the nature of the creative process, the elementary manifestation of which should be modeled during the experiment.

This technique, being, in fact, a "miniature model of the creative act" (E. Torrens), allows you to fully study the features of creative imagination and trace the specifics of this process. From the point of view of E. Torrance, the activity of creative imagination begins with the emergence of sensitivity to gaps, shortcomings, missing elements, disharmony, etc., i.e. in conditions of lack of external information. In this case, the figures for drawing and the corresponding instruction provoke the appearance of such sensitivity and create the possibility for a multivalued solution of the task, since a large number of drawings are performed on the basis of each of the test figures. According to the terminology of E. Torrens, difficulties are identified, conjectures arise or hypotheses are formulated regarding the missing elements, these hypotheses are checked and rechecked, and their possible implementation, which is manifested in the creation of various drawings.

This technique activates the activity of the imagination, revealing one of its main properties - the vision of the whole before the parts. The child perceives the proposed test-figures as parts, details of any integrity and completes, reconstructs them. The possibility of realizing such a reconstructive function of the imagination lies in the very specifics of this mental process. In the first chapter, we already pointed out that the mechanisms of imagination are always based on the processes of dissociation and association, analysis and synthesis of existing ideas. The child, completing the figures to the subject images, performs the operation of synthesis. However, this is possible only through a preliminary analysis of a given figure, singling it out from a number of objects, highlighting its properties, studying its functional features, etc. The productivity of the imagination largely depends on the level of formation of the operations of analysis and synthesis.

Visual activity is typical for children of this age period. In addition, as many psychologists note, it allows, as it were, to bring the processes of imagination from the internal plan to the external, which creates a kind of visual support in case of an insufficient level of formation of the internal mechanisms of the combinatorics of the imagination processes in children. And, finally, the use of pictorial activity makes it possible to obtain extensive practical material (children's drawings) for a versatile objective analysis.

One of the characteristics of creative imagination is the flexibility of using ideas; as a result, all children's work can be divided into creative and non-creative.

The non-creative ones are:

Typical drawings, when the same figure turns into the same image element (circle - the wheel of a car, scooter, bicycle, motorcycle).

Drawings in which different standards turn into the same image element (a circle, a square, a triangle turned into a clock).

Compositions of this kind are regarded as perseverative (repeating), out of their total number, only one composition (as an idea) is taken into account in further analysis.

Creative drawings include drawings in which non-repeating images are created on the basis of given standards. Most psychologists identify as one of the most significant aspects of the imagination, the originality of the images created by it, and therefore, the degree of their originality can be one of the indicators in the analysis of the completed compositions. The parameters of originality (individuality) and non-originality (typicality) are often used in psychology to evaluate the products of the imagination. The presence of a large number of original images in a child indicates the strength, plasticity of his imagination and, on the contrary, the unformed mechanisms of combinatorics of imagination processes leads to the emergence a large number stereotypical compositions.

The whole set of children's drawings can be divided into 6 quality levels, the description of which is given in the Appendix.

The technique is designed to study the processes of imagination. It reveals the level of development and content of images of the imagination, as well as the processes of symbolization, the ability to recode the stimulus.

Material: several sheets, paper, colored pencils.

Instruction: "Draw a picture for each word that is written on the back of the sheet. Draw as you understand and represent this word and so that everyone understands that you have drawn this particular word. Use different colors."

Stimulus material (words): happiness, grief, kindness, illness, deceit, wealth, separation, friendship, fear, love, beauty.

Testing time is not limited.

The interpretation is given in the Appendix.

3.2 Analysis and discussion of the study results

Method #1. A technique for studying the features of imagination based on the test of E. Torrens "Incomplete figures".

Diagnostic data of younger schoolchildren according to the 1st method are given in Table No. 1 of the Appendix (c), diagnostic data of older preschoolers who made up the control group, according to the 1st method are given in Table No. 2 of the Appendix (d).

Percentage distribution of children in the experimental and control groups by levels of imagination development based on the results of the 1st method

Table 1

According to Table 1, a graph has been constructed that clearly reflects the difference in the level of development of imagination and creative abilities of children in two groups:

Picture 1.

Distribution of children of two groups according to the levels of development of imagination and creative abilities according to the results of methodology No. 1

The level is characterized by a less schematic image, the appearance more details both inside the main contour and outside it.

One third of the children in the control group (33.3%) were referred to the third level of imagination development, which is characterized by the emergence of a "field of things" around the main image, i.e. subject design of the environment, there is a change in the scale

images by using a given test figure as some large part of an integral image, but at the same time, acting as image details, geometric figure continues to occupy a central position in it.

And, finally, 20% of children of senior preschool age were assigned to the lowest level of imagination development.

As good example Here are the works of older preschoolers classified as the lowest, 1st level:

Figure 3

These works are characterized by extreme sketchiness, almost complete absence of details; these children depict single objects, the contours of which, as a rule, coincide with the contours of the proposed geometric figures.

Next, let's turn to the results for the experimental group - for the group of younger students. When diagnosing younger schoolchildren, completely different results were obtained. So, not a single junior schoolchild was assigned to the low 1st and 2nd levels. 6 people are assigned to the 3rd level. or 40%. 5 children of primary school age, or 33.3% are assigned to the 4th level of development of creative imagination.

As an illustrative example, we present the work of younger students assigned to the 4th level:

Figure 4

The works of these children are already characterized by the repeated use of a given figure in the construction of a single semantic composition. The test figures in such compositions receive a certain disguise by reducing their scale, changing the spatial position, and complicating the composition. The possibility of repeated use of the test-figure as an external stimulus when creating an image of the imagination indicates the plasticity of the imagination, a higher level of formation of its operational components.

Method #2. Pictogram ("Draw a word").

Diagnostic data of younger schoolchildren according to the 2nd method are given in Table No. 3 of Appendix (E), diagnostic data of older preschoolers who made up the control group, according to the 2nd method are given in Table No. 4 of Appendix (E).

The distribution of children of two groups according to the nature of mental activity, indicating the level of development of the imagination, is recorded in table 2:

table 2

The percentage distribution of children in the experimental and control groups according to the levels of imagination development according to the results of the 2nd method, according to Table 2, a graph was constructed that clearly reflects the difference in the level of development of imagination and creative abilities of children of the two groups:

Figure 6

Distribution of children of two groups according to the levels of development of imagination and creative abilities according to the results of the 2nd method

According to the results of the 2nd methodology with the children of the control group (older preschoolers), only works performed by 5 children can be classified as creative work, these are the so-called creatives of the "artistic" type (symbols in the table - "C" and "M" ).

6 children of the control group are assigned to the type of "thinker", they are characterized by the predominance of generalization, synthesis in information, a high level of abstract-logical thinking (symbols in the table - "A" and "3").

4 children of the control group were referred to the type of concrete-effective practical thinking (symbols in the table - "K").

According to the results of the 2nd methodology with the children of the experimental group (younger schoolchildren), the works of 9 children can already be attributed to creative work. This is significantly more than the control sample of older preschoolers.

So, according to the results of the 2nd method, 4 younger schoolchildren were classified as creatives of the "artistic" type ("C"): the images made by these children were classified as plot (C) (depicted objects, characters are combined into any situation, plot, or one character in the process of activity).

According to the results of the 2nd method, 5 junior schoolchildren were classified as creatives of the "artistic" type ("M"): images made by these children were classified as metaphorical (M) (images in the form of metaphors, fiction).

4 junior schoolchildren are referred to the type of "thinker", they are characterized by the predominance of generalization, synthesis in information, a high level of abstract-logical thinking (symbols in the table - "A" and "3").

2 junior schoolchildren are referred to the type of concrete-effective practical thinking (symbols in the table - "K").

Conclusions on the results of the study.

So, the features of the imagination and creative abilities of children of primary school age (8-9 years old) in comparison with children of older preschool age are as follows:

children of primary school age reach the 4th level of imagination development: a widely developed subject environment appears in the products of the creative activity of younger schoolchildren, children add more and more new elements to the drawing, organizing a holistic composition according to an imaginary plot;

children of primary school age reach the 5th level of imagination development: in the products of creative activity of younger schoolchildren, the repeated use of a given figure when building a single semantic composition is already characteristic, and the possibility of repeated use of a test-figure as an external stimulus when creating an image of the imagination indicates the plasticity of the imagination , a higher level of formation of its operational components;

young schoolchildren develop creative thinking of an artistic plot type: in the products of the creative activity of younger schoolchildren, depicted objects, characters are combined into any situation, plot, or one character in the process of activity;

creative thinking of an artistic metaphorical type develops in younger schoolchildren: in the products of the creative activity of younger schoolchildren, images appear in the form of metaphors, fiction.

Conclusion

The development of the imagination goes along the lines of improving the operations of substituting real objects with imaginary ones and recreating the imagination. Imagination, due to the peculiarities of the physiological systems responsible for it, is to a certain extent associated with the regulation of organic processes and movement. Creativity is defined as the individual characteristics of a person's quality, which determine the success of his performance of creative activities of various kinds.

The features of creative abilities and imagination of younger schoolchildren are revealed. The school period is characterized by the rapid development of the imagination, due to the intensive process of acquiring versatile knowledge and using it in practice. Senior preschool and junior school age are qualified as the most favorable, sensitive for the development of creative imagination, fantasies. At primary school age, in addition, there is an active development of the recreative imagination. In children of primary school age, several types of imagination are distinguished.

The study of imagination as a creative process has been carried out. Imagination is a special form of the human psyche, standing apart from other mental processes and at the same time occupying an intermediate position between perception, thinking and memory. The specificity of this form of mental process lies in the fact that imagination is probably characteristic only of a person and is strangely connected with the activity of the organism, being at the same time the most "mental" of all mental processes and states. The latter means that the ideal and mysterious nature of the psyche is not manifested in anything other than imagination. It can be assumed that it was the imagination, the desire to understand and explain it, that drew attention to mental phenomena in antiquity, supported and continues to stimulate it today. Imagination is a special form of reflection, which consists in creating new images and ideas by processing existing ideas and concepts. The development of the imagination goes along the lines of improving the operations of substituting real objects with imaginary ones and recreating the imagination. Imagination, due to the peculiarities of the physiological systems responsible for it, is to a certain extent associated with the regulation of organic processes and movement. Creativity is defined as the individual characteristics of a person's quality, which determine the success of his performance of creative activities of various kinds.

favorable, sensitive for the development of creative imagination, fantasies. At primary school age, in addition, there is an active development of the recreative imagination. In children of primary school age, several types of imagination are distinguished. It can be recreative (creating an image of an object according to its description) and creative (creating new images that require the selection of material in accordance with the plan). In the process of educational activity of schoolchildren, which starts from living contemplation in the primary grades, the level of development of cognitive processes plays an important role, as psychologists note: attention, memory, perception, observation, imagination, memory, thinking. The development and improvement of the imagination will be more effective with purposeful work in this direction, which will entail the expansion of the cognitive abilities of children.

Based on the results of the experimental study, listening conclusions were made about the features of the development of imagination and creative abilities of children of primary school age (8-9 years old) in comparison with children of senior preschool age. Firstly, children of primary school age reach the 4th level of imagination development: a widely developed subject environment appears in the products of the creative activity of younger schoolchildren, children add more and more new elements to the drawing, organizing a holistic composition according to an imaginary plot. Secondly, children of primary school age reach the 5th level of imagination development: in the products of creative activity of younger schoolchildren, the repeated use of a given figure when building a single semantic composition is already characteristic, and the possibility of repeated use of a test figure as an external stimulus when creating an image of the imagination, testifies to the plasticity of the imagination, a higher level of formation of its operational components. Thirdly, younger students develop creative thinking of an artistic plot type: in the products of the creative activity of younger students, depicted objects, characters are combined into any situation, plot, or one character in the process of activity. Fourthly, creative thinking of an artistic metaphorical type is developing in younger students: in the products of the creative activity of younger students, images appear in the form of metaphors, artistic fiction.

This course work can be used by teachers methodical material to study the characteristics of the imagination of children. If the teacher knows the features of imagination and creative thinking, knows in what period intensive development takes place, then he will be able to influence the correct development of these processes.

Of great importance for the development of creative imagination are circles: artistic, literary, technical. But the work of circles should be organized in such a way that students see the results of their work.

In younger students, the imagination develops more intensively than in preschoolers, and it is important not to miss this moment. It is important to play imaginative games with them, take them to circles and help develop creative thinking.

A creatively thinking person is able to solve the tasks assigned to him faster and more economically, to overcome difficulties more effectively, to set new goals, that is, ultimately, to most effectively organize his activities in solving the tasks set for him by society.

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Application

Appendix No. 1 (a)

Method No. 1 "Research of the features of the imagination based on the test of E. Torrens" Incomplete figures ":

· level - the works are characterized by extreme sketchiness, almost complete absence of details. Children depict single objects, the contours of which, as a rule, coincide with the contours of the proposed geometric shapes.

The level is characterized by a less schematic image, the appearance of a greater number of details both inside the main contour and outside it.

level - characteristic is the appearance around the main image of the "field of things", i.e. object design of the environment (for example, a trapezoid is no longer just a plate, but a vase standing on a table, or a circle is not just an apple, but on a plate). At this level, there is also a change in the scale of the image due to the use of a given test figure as some large detail of an integral image (for example, a circle is no longer a ball or a balloon, but the head of a person, an animal, a car wheel; a square is not a mirror or closet, but the body of the robot, the body of the truck, etc.). At the same time, acting as details of the image, the geometric figure continues to occupy a central position in it.

level - a widely developed subject environment is noted in the works, the children, having turned the test figure into some kind of object, add more and more new elements to the drawing, organizing a holistic composition according to an imaginary plot.

level - the works are characterized by the multiple use of a given figure in the construction of a single semantic composition. The test figures in such compositions receive a certain disguise by reducing their scale, changing the spatial position, and complicating the composition. The possibility of repeated use of the test-figure as an external stimulus when creating an image of the imagination indicates the plasticity of the imagination, a higher level of formation of its operational components.

level - the qualitative difference of this level from the previous ones lies in the nature of the use of the test figure, which no longer acts as the main part of the composition, but is included in its complex integral structure as a small secondary detail. This way of displaying is called "inclusion". At this level, there is the greatest freedom to use external data only as "material", an impetus to imagination and creativity.

The use of the "inclusion" action when creating ideas and products of imagination, providing in the direction of finding the optimal solution, which corresponds to the probabilistic nature of the reflection of reality, which is the specificity of the imagination process.

Appendix No. 1 (b)

Method #2 Pictogram ("Draw the word")

Interpretation

All images are classified into five main types:

abstract (A) - not designed in the image of the line;

sign-symbolic (3) - signs and symbols;

specific (K) - specific items;

plot (C) depicted objects, characters are combined into any situation, plot, or one character in the process of activity;

metaphorical (M) images in the form of metaphors, fiction.

When processing the results of the study, a letter designation is affixed next to each figure. The most commonly used form indicates the nature of mental activity:

A and 3 - the type of "thinker" - generalization, synthesis in information, a high level of abstract-logical thinking;

C and M - creatives of the "artistic" type;

K - concrete-effective practical thinking.

Appendix No. 2 (c)

The results of diagnostics of creative abilities and imagination of younger schoolchildren

Table 1.

The results of the diagnosis of children in the experimental group according to the method No. 1 "Incomplete figures" (junior schoolchildren)

Pupils	figures			Final level of development
Pupils	Square	Triangle	A circle	Final level of development
1	3	3	2	3
2	4	3	4	4
3	2	3	3	3
4	3	4	4	4
5	4	4	3	4
6	4	5	5	5
7	2	3	3	3
8	3	3	3	3
9	4	3	4	4
10	3	3	2	3
11	4	3	4	4
12	3	3	2	3
13	4	5	5	5
14	5	4	5	5
15	5	4	5	5

Appendix No. 2 (d)

Table 2.

The results of the diagnosis of children in the experimental group according to the method No. 1 "Incomplete figures" (Senior students)

Pupils	figures			Final level of development
Pupils	Square	Triangle	A circle	Final level of development
1	2	2	1	2
2	2	1	2	2
3	1	1	2	1
4	2	3	3	3
5	2	2	2	2
6	2	2	2	2
7	1	1	1	1
8	2	1	2	2
9	3	2	3	3
10	1	2	1	1
11	3	2	3	3
12	2	2	2	2
13	2	2	2	2
14	3	2	3	3
15	3	2	3	3

Appendix No. 2 (e)

The results of the diagnosis of the children of the experimental group according to the method No. 2 "Draw the word" (junior schoolchildren)

Table 3

No. stimulus.

mat-la Children

Outcome

BUT

With

BUT

FROM

With

FROM

BUT

With

BUT

FROM

With

FROM

With

BUT

With

BUT

FROM

With

BUT

FROM

With

BUT

With

BUT

With

BUT

FROM

BUT

Appendix No. 2 (E)

The results of the diagnosis of children in the control group according to the method No. 2 "Draw the word" (senior students)

Table 4

No. stimulus. mat-la Children	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	Outcome
1	BUT	3	BUT	BUT	BUT	BUT	3	To	BUT	BUT	BUT	BUT
2	To	To	To	To	3	3	To	BUT	To	BUT	To	To
3	3	3	BUT	3	3	BUT	3	3	To	3	3	3
4	FROM	With	m	BUT	FROM	FROM	With	3	FROM	FROM	FROM	FROM
5	3	3	3	BUT	BUT	3	3	3	To	3	to	3
6	To	3	3	To	3	To	to	To	to	To	to	to
7	To	to	to	3	To	BUT	BUT	To	to	3	to	to
8	3	BUT	3	BUT	3	3	3	3	3	To	3	3
9	With	FROM	m	BUT	With	To	FROM	3	With	FROM	With	With
10	BUT	3	3	3	3	BUT	3	3	3	BUT	3	3
11	M	m	With	3	BUT	M	M	m	With	M	BUT	m
12	To	to	to	BUT	3	To	To	to	to	3	To	to
13	BUT	3	to	BUT	BUT	BUT	BUT	BUT	to	3	BUT	BUT