Thinking Toolbox

Thinking Toolbox

Outline • What skills will our children need for their future? • What are thinking skills? • School-friendly Thinker’s Keys • Edward de Bono’s Six Hats • Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy • Graphic Organisers

A good teacher makes you think even when you don’t want to. (Fisher, 1998, Teaching Thinking)

The students of the future should be able to: • Solve problems • Think creatively • Think critically • Make decisions • Generate new ideas • Analyse information • Plan for the future

What is thinking? • Thinking is a mental process. • Thinking skills are the intellectual skills such as the skills of memorizing and recalling facts and information, clarifying, making analysis, generating ideas, making decisions, problem solving, and planning. • Different authors of thinking skills have proposed different models and approaches in teaching thinking skills. http://www.ppk.kpm.my/sphsp/masteryguide/asri1.htm#skills

Critical thinking • Critical thinking refers to reasonable, reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do. Critical thinkers try to be aware of their own biases, to be objective and logical. http://www.adprima.com/thinkskl.htm

Creative thinking • Creative Thinking refers to the ability to form new combinations of ideas to fulfil a need, or to get original or otherwise appropriate results by the criteria of the domain in question. http://www.adprima.com/thinkskl.htm

Metacognition • Metacognition refers to awareness and control of one's thinking, including commitment, attitudes and attention. Simply it is the ability to think about one’s own thinking. http://www.adprima.com/thinkskl.htm

What does the Thinking Classroom look like? • There are significant opportunities for higher-level thinking, complex problem solving and/or open-ended response. Thinking skills are explicitly taught in an authentic and meaningful context. http://www.sricboces.org/Goals2000/rubric1.htm

Convergent and Divergent Thinking • In convergent thinking, the thinking skills are focused on a particular thing, problem, or issue. For example: "The tyre had a nail and some scratches. What caused the tyre to puncture?" Here, we are looking for evidence about what caused the tyre to puncture • In divergent thinking, we want to generate many, varied and new ideas. For example; "What are the use of old tyres?"

School Friendly Thinker’s Keys • Question Key • Picture Key • Reverse Listing Key • Construction Key • Interpretation Key • Different Uses Key • What If ? Key (developed by Tony Ryan)

Benefits of Thinker’s Keys • Easy to use and explain • Familiar object- “unlocking thinking” • Encourage children (and adults) to: • Look at things differently • Think divergently • Think creatively • Brainstorm ideas • Listen to others’ ideas • Share their ideas • Be organised

Question Key Start with an answer and list questions that give that answer. • Eg. Think of questions to give the answer: • Midnight • Seaweed • Christmas • Koalas. • Clowns • Butterflies

Picture Key Draw a simple diagram or squiggle and students work out ways to link it (by finishing the picture) to a specific: • topic • theme • book • celebration, etc. (N.B. Variation on Ryan’s original Picture Key)

Reverse Listing Key Place words such as cannot, would not, never or not in a sentence. • Eg. Name 10 things that you could not clean. • List 10 things that can not grow • Name 10 things you couldn’t put on a sandwich • Name 10 items you wouldn’t find in a house • List 10 things you would not see at the circus

Construction Key Set up a wide variety of construction problem-solving tasks and use lots of readily available material. • Eg. Build the highest possible self- supporting structure using one sheet of newspaper, sticky tape and a pair of scissors. • Eg. Use the material supplied to: • Build a trap for the Big Bad Wolf • Build a tower for Princess Fiona • Build a house for Shrek • Build a bridge to hold a preschool truck

Interpretation Key Describe an unusual situation and then think of some different explanations for the existence of that situation. • Eg. The butterfly is laughing. Give 3 reasons to explain why. • The clown is crying • The ant is as big as an elephant • The monster is laughing • The monkey is eating potato chips

Different Uses Key List some different uses for items from your topic (emphasis on reusing and recycling). • Eg. Find 10 uses for: • An old clown nose • An empty yoghurt container • An old work book • A broken television • Mum’s old toothbrush • Red Riding Hood’s basket

What If? Key You can ask virtually any What If question. You can use the ideas wheel to record student responses. • Eg. What If: • all cars turned into skateboards? • chocolate was good for you? • mice were as big as elephants? • money did grow on trees?

Six Hats • Developed by Edward de Bono (1980s) • Framework for thinking • Easy to use • Visual and tactile • Involves a variety of thinking • Allows students to separate their thinking • Can be used by individuals, small groups or whole class

The purpose behind the use of this tool is to help students to learn to reflect on their thinking and to recognise that different thinking is required in different learning situations.

So what are the Six Thinking Hats? • Red: Emotions and feelings • Yellow: Good points and benefits • Black: Problems and caution • White: Thinking about facts and information • Green: Creative and new ideas • Blue: Thinking about thinking

How can I use the Six Thinking Hats? • Responding to literature • Problem solving • Brainstorming • Role-play and drama • Visual and creative arts • Play

Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy • Taxonomy of Cognitive Objectives • 1950s- developed by Benjamin Bloom • Means of expressing qualitatively different kinds of thinking • Been adapted for classroom use as a planning tool • Continues to be one of the most universally applied models • Provides a way to organise thinking skills into six levels, • from the most basic to the more complex levels of thinking • 1990s- Lorin Anderson (former student of Bloom) revisited the taxonomy • As a result, a number of changes were made • (Pohl, 2000, Learning to Think, Thinking to Learn)

Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy • Creating • Generating new ideas, products or ways of viewing things • Designing, constructing, planning, producing, inventing • Evaluating • Justifying a decision or course of action • Checking, hypothesising, critiquing, experimenting, judging • Analysing • Breaking information into parts to explore understandings and relationships • Comparing, organising, deconstructing, finding • Applying • Using information in another familiar situation. • Implementing, carrying out, using, executing • Understanding • Explaining ideas or concepts • Interpreting, summarising, paraphrasing, classifying, explaining • Remembering • Recalling information • Recognising, listing, describing, naming, finding

Lower-order and Higher-order Thinking Skills • The skills of memorizing and recalling facts or information are the lower order thinking skills as they do not require wide and deep thinking. • Thinking skills such as clarifying, making analysis, generating ideas, making decisions, problem-solving and planning which require wider and deeper thinking are the higher-order thinking skills.

“He who learns but does not think is lost.” (Chinese Proverb)

Higher-order Thinking • Critical thinking Interpreting, testing, judging, justifying, critiquing, testing, concluding, speculating, disputing, evaluating, deciding. • Creative thinking Hypothesising, designing, reconstructing, creating, modifying, developing, imagining, brainstorming, generating, solving, devising. • Analytical thinking Comparing, contrasting, relating, choosing, determining, interviewing, identifying, combining, categorising, researching, experimenting, specifying, deducing.

Thinking Skills in the Classroom We have a variety of thinking strategies and approaches to draw from: · DeBono’s Six Hats · Tony Ryan’s Thinker’s Keys · Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences · Graphic Organisers · Bloom’s Taxonomy/ Revised Taxonomy (Just to name a few)

These Strategies Can Be Incorporated Into Planning Through: · Contract activities · Learning centres/ rotational activities · Enrichment/ extension tasks · Small group activities · Whole class activities · Diary/ journal writing · Homework · Reading program • Across all KLA’s all the time

Thinking Skills in a Student Reading Program • Understanding and comprehension are essential to a student’s success with reading (i.e. Interpreting, summarising, comparing, explaining). • BUT higher-order thinking should also play a part.

“Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.” (Albert van Szent- Gyorgyi)

Planning Documents • Cater for student’s individual learning styles and multiple intelligences. • Encourage students to construct knowledge for themselves, participate in higher-order thinking and facilitate divergent thinking. • Documents should be simple and include a variety of strategies and approaches.

“Smarts” in the Classroom • A multiple intelligence approach is one way we can drive higher-order thinking in the classroom. • Junior E’s Monster Smarts is an example of a multiple intelligence approach to program planning where children have used thinking skills to design, create, interpret and evaluate. Monster Smarts

“Smarts” in the Classroom

Investigate a book the Blooming Smarts Way • You could use this matrix in your Reading Program. It lists a number of tasks for students to complete. • They are generic activities organised across all smarts and catering for all levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy that students can select from.

Remembering

Evaluating

Graphic Organisers • Graphic organizers are visual representations of knowledge, concepts or ideas. They are known to help: • * relieve learner boredom • * enhances recall • * provide motivation • * create interest • * clarify information • * assist in organizing thoughts • * promote understanding

Thinking Toolbox