Teaching Children To Think

Tony RyanLearning Consultant

tony@tonyryan.com.au

This is a condensed version of a workshop that I offer to teachers

around the world.

These strategies can just as easily be used by parents; and by trainers / presenters

who work with adult groups!

1. Develop positive dispositions for thinking

and learning

2. Generate the highest levels of intellectual rigour and

inquiry

3. Combine proven frameworks, with practical strategies that are in

context

4. Enhance thinking with ICT

Four Key Approaches To

Teaching Kids To Think

Develop positive dispositions for

thinking and learning

Positive dispositions for thinking and learning??• Skills are not enough. A disposition for wanting / needing to

think is critical. Make thinking spicy!

• Generate an enthusiasm for intellectual play and curiosity

• Encourage explicit and direct reasoning

• Give children time to think

• Show them how to plan ahead and get organised

• Help them to study the brain at both a physiological and psychological level

• Self-talk is a specific awareness of their own thinking

• For children, begin with an explicit lesson

• Write up words such as: “I’m a legend”

• Then ask them to self-talk those words, without any sound or without moving their lips

• Encourage them to do this self-talk when they are working on a mental task

Teach students to self-talk

Student Passions??!

• Have you asked every one of your children about their passions in life?

• What are the Big Three interests for the age group you’re teaching this year?

• Where and how do you compile data about their interests?

• Where specifically do you build those interests into the classroom environment?

Generate the highest levels of

intellectual rigour and inquiry

Here is a powerful process for developing an intellectually stimulating question

1. Brainstorm the hardest question in the world about the topic being studied

2. Now adjust it downwards until it can be used with your class

It’s called the ‘Intellectual Rubber Band’

Engage children in constant

inquiry - get them

wondering!

Challenge them to conjecture on the reasons for specific issues eg these

bricked-in windows

Hint: It’s to do with the

expression: “Daylight robbery”

A process for student inquiry

Q. What’s our purpose for doing this inquiry?

Q. What do we already know about this issue?

Q. What are our questions?

Q. What learning steps will we take?

Q. How will we do useful research?

Q. How will we share our findings?

Play the Socrates Game

• Why do you believe...?

• Could you give an example of that?

• Are you suggesting...?

• What reasons do you have for saying that?

• Could you clarify that comment?

• Why did you find that interesting?

• How do you know that?

Break students into pairs:* Student A offers

perspectives on a specific topic

* Student B continually asks any / all of the

Socratic questions in context

Zestful inquiries!!

• When possible, develop an inquiry about passions in their lives

• Generate interest with a provocative intro lesson

• Give your inquiry units some exciting titles (name them after a movie or a piece of music)

• Develop an assessment task that is intellectually stimulating

• They can be: Philosophical / provocative / quirky / thought-provoking / unusual / intriguing

• Examples of focus questions?

• What is the price of life?

• Are we really what we eat?

• How could computer games create a better world?

• How does a trend affect our choices?

• Does happily ever after really exist?

Develop rich focus questions

Combine proven

frameworks, with practical

strategies that are in

context

Educational delivery mechanism

sCurriculum:

What is taught

Pedagogy:How it’s taught

Assessment: How it’s

measured

Reporting: How we give

feedback

We must deliver on 4 core areas in

learning:

Some frameworks for ‘thinking’ within

the pedagogy

• Blooms taxonomy

• Williams taxonomy

• Marzano’s taxonomy

• Habits Of Mind

• Thinkers Keys

Skills for thinking

• Creative (adapt, imagine, predict, invent, hypothesise, challenge, redefine, expand)

• Critical (synthesise, analyse, generalise, critique, examine, infer, interpret, classify)

• Metacognitive (evaluate, reflect, summarise, review, self-talk, develop plans, query)• Adapted from: Learner-Centred Assessment (Wilson & Murdoch, 2006); and, Thinkers Keys

revised version (Ryan, 2007)

• It’s not an optional extra!!

• It’s not just for smart kids!

• The quality of thinking will determine the quality of their learning retention

• Teacher modelling of quality thinking is a critical influence on student thinking

Key issues with ‘thinking’ in classrooms

Thinkers Keys

20 practical thinking strategies for

enhancing thinking(thinkerskeys.com)

An example of the 10 critical thinking

strategies

An example of the creative thinking

strategies

23

The 20 strategies

24

The secret to quality thinking? Use the strategies in sequences. Here’s an

example of a problem-solving approach.

Enhance thinking with ICT

2002 - Use a large piece of cardboard; cut out some

magazine photos; copy text from an encyclopedia (and yet,

little idea of context)

2012 - Construct a wiki; steal images from google; plagiarise from a Cheat

Site (and yet, little idea of context)

It’s not necessarily the ICT that generates intellectual rigour. It’s

the quality of the teaching practice

ICT is not enough. The

learning has to be intellectually

rigorous

Name at least

20 different uses for a cellphone

We’re moving from Knowledge Consumption

to Knowledge Co-Creation

These devices encourage all of us to create new k’ledge eg

Apps

Using ICT tools

• How could you advance children’s thinking with your own cellphone?

• ... or with a camera being used by the children?

• ... or with a FlipCamera being used by the children?

RedefinitionTech allows for the creation of new tasks,

previously inconceivable

ModificationTech allows for significant task redesign

AugmentationTech acts as a direct tool substitute, with

functional improvement

SubstitutionTech acts as a direct tool substitute, with

no functional change

eg Typing out your work with a word processor

eg using spell check or word count

eg to make use of multi-media in highly enhanced ways

eg co-creating on group projects with other classes world-wide

Enha

ncem

ent

Transformation

This is a great visual tool, but sometimes, not much thinking is involved when it is only used

to create a fancy image

Get some thinking going eg place an article into wordle, and then analyse the

author’s text choices

21st C learning theories??

•Behaviourism•Constructivism•Instructivism•Cognitivism•Connectivism

How do you generate

‘connectivism’?

Visual Stimulus

• Most (?!) of your students will be visual learners

• Students process images up to 10 000 times faster than text

• Powerful recall through image: 90% recall of images after 72 hrs; over 60% after one year

• Develop a visual database of their ongoing achievements and / or daily learnings

One photo / day to represent the most

powerful learning that day

Some follow-up options

• Revisit these notes / handouts at least once in the next week

• After 2 wks, discuss what you have placed into practice

• Use any worthwhile ideas within a week