Promoting High Order Thinking - Final Presentation and Reflection

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Effective teaching of writing in Manaiakalani

This morning I had the pleasure of listening to Rebecca Jesson speak at the Manaiakalani Hui 2014. She spoke about effective teaching of writing in Manaiakalani following six case study teachers.

This is what was evident with those case study teachers with high order thinking and cognitive engagement in their classrooms; student had plenty of opportunity to create to learn, discussions with students were rich, digital learning objects focus on synthesising and creating new concepts.

Have a look at the presentation to see more!

Effective Questioning - Trevor Bond

 

Effective questioning from EDtalks on Vimeo

Effective questioning -  27/09/2012

Trevor Bond, a consultant working within New Zealand schools, discusses one of his passions 'questioning'. He sees questioning as being central to thinking and learning. Trevor believes that we must go beyond just talking to our students about 'open' and 'closed' questions. He states that a good question is the one that gives you the answer.


Main points

• Thinking is a process of questioning
• Not teacher questioning, but learner questioning

Two types of thinking:

• Sub-conscious - when we are not aware
• Conscious - deliberately set out to make a decision, think about something so we can come to an end point

The whole thinking process, is asking and answering questions in our heads.

For example: Analysis - asking questions that compare and contrast. Decisions - asking ourselves questions, and finding answers.

• All revolves about asking and answering questions.
• Questions - prime intellectual tool - what aren’t we teaching kids to question better? - Neil Postman
• Questioning central to thinking

Thinking = Questioning


Internal and external questions:

• Internal - un-asked, cognitive, un-expressed
• External - expressed questions, to bring information, to fill in gaps, inform thinking.

Open and closed questions are not enough - we need to look at core skills that we use as questioners.

As adults we use them subconsciously - need to teach the kids the strategies and skills we use to ask and answer questions. Thinking/questioning process.

Facilitate and teach kids to become effective questioners.

So what is it that we do as effective questioners?

1.  We identify the need - how can you ask a relevant question when you don’t know what the need is?
2.  We identify the contextual vocabulary - how can you express the question if you don’t have the vocabulary? How can you understand the context if you don’t have vocabulary ?

Teach children, within a context or problem to:

• Identify the need
• Identify what they know,what they don’t know
• Along with contextual vocab to ask questions = effective questioner.

Frame a range of question types - fallacy “open are better than closed”. Nothing wrong with closed questions. A good question is the one that gets you the answer you need.


Stay away from who, what, when, where, why, which, how? Don’t leave kids out from asking good questions.


Teach children, within a context or problem to:

• Change and modify questions, until they find the way to answer their questions
• Embed keywords and questions
• Be persist until they find the answers

Create situations where the children need to ask questions to help them to solve the end point - then facilitate and support them.


If we really work on our children’s questioning ability, we are working at the foundation of thinking skills, foundation of reading comprehension skills, foundation at learning skills.


Go and help your kids to be effective questioners!

- Trevor Bond 2012

Using Bloom's and SOLO Taxonomy Reading

Last Friday, I used one of my MIT release days to collaborate with a fellow MIT teacher, Kent Somerville (check out his inquiry blog here). We decided to create a high order thinking reading unit around our inquiry focus - The Titanic.


A few days before I had received some feedback from Dorothy the head of the program, about my inquiry and my journey so far. Some of the main points were taken from Rebecca Jesson's research feedback and recommendations for our schools in the Manaikalani cluster:


- Provide student the opportunity to extend school journal text read, with online readings and further text.
- Give students rich 'creating' opportunities in order to strengthen learning.
- Stay away from low level 'digital worksheets' and give opportunities to learn from text and across texts to explain/reflect/show learning through creation.

This feedback provoked a lot of thinking and caused a total mind shift in my pedagogy. I had a eureka moment! I have been taught this way myself at school and had been taught how to teach this way… Good old photo copied worksheets from black lined masters and in worst cases digital worksheets.


I am also feeling quiet embarrassed that I didn't make this change in pedagogy sooner, I know that Blooms and SOLO have been around for yonks! It is now time to wake up and smell the roses and realise, that I  am getting closer to shifting my class, to one of high order thinking.


We chose to focus on 'evaluation' from Blooms levels of thinking. In the first session we got the students evaluate and assess the value and importance of 'thung chai' (basket boats) to the people of Vietnam. In the second session, students had to assess the value and importance of the Titanic to the people of the UK. Then finally in the last session, students had to assess why boats were important to different communities.


So there you have it, I am finally feeling like I am getting somewhere! Now to bring it into the classroom!

The SAMR Ladder - Are you teaching above the line?

Building Question Askers Not Question Answerers - Trevor Bond

Building question askers not question answerers from EDtalks on Vimeo.

CORE Education's Trevor Bond helps us understand how to build active learners who ask questions.

Student Questioning Skills  - Notes  

Research shows that we are growing question answerers:
- 50% of questions are generated at home
- 10% at pre-school
- 0.08% at high school
- focus on answering teachers questions

Difference between a question answerer and questions asker:
Q Answerer: All they can do is share knowledge in their head.
Q Asker: Somebody who can think, find information, get the things that they need to solve problems, to think deeper and wider, to see new perspectives.

"If we go on doing what we have always done, we will go on getting what we have always got". 

Neil Postman - Teaching as a subversive activity - Questioning being our most important intellectual tool.

Cleaver teachers may provide experiences/learning that create stimuli for child's thinking
-  When that stimuli kicks in, there will then be that moment of cognitive dissonance.
- The stimuli has kicked in, then the questions will follow.

"Thinking is the process of asking and answering questions in your head". 

Moment three - negotiates questions - where student thinks whether or not they have the right to ask.
- Time constraints,  teacher planning, and teacher attitude can hold back those critical question moments.
- Fighting against it.

What does this mean in reality in the classroom?

- Have to change the environment - have to change messages/body language.
- Start out as three year old - full of questions - effective learners.
- Stop the negative signals - encourage it.
- Any time a kid has asked a question, celebrate they have! - even if irrelevant.
- Rather than answering it straight away, help the student to clarify exactly what it is they are asking.
- Wonderwall
- Framework - questioning waka

http://question-skills.wikispaces.com/Waka+graphic

Term 1 Week 7 Update

Wow! The weeks have just flown by. We had camp last, week and now swimming for next two. Too see some of our amazing learning and experiences so far visit out blog here.



In terms of my MIT inquiry, I have planned and started Key Competency sessions in the afternoon. Hearing Helen's success with the KC's inspired me to implement them successfully in the classroom, and they have been working wonders. I have decided to implement the Key Competencies because my inquiry revolves around promoting high order thinking for all learners, especially those who stuggle to succeed at all five.  I used a presentation to base out sessions by (link here).

Each session we talk about one KC, share ideas, deconstruct the words, and create a lovely slide about each one. So far we have covered - managing self, thinking and participating and contributing. It is truly amazing how powerful they are if you really make a big deal out of them, integrate them throughout the day and if the kids truly understand them in real life contexts.  I have also incorporated them into my class rewards system 'Class dojo'. It has been a great way for the kids to think about which KC relates to certain behaviors. I am yet to cover the last two KC's, and hoping we will be done by the end of the week so I can start thinking about our next steps.

As for the high order thinking, at the moment I am stepping it right back to simply thinking! It is interesting how a day could go by and we possibly get through it without really thinking deeply. I have been focussing the thinking during reading time - So when we are reading in small groups, I have been getting the kids to fold their arms once they have an idea/answer, and we wait for everyone to think, I will sometimes choose someone who particularly looks like they have new clue in order to force them to think.

In terms of follow up, I am encouraging them make more inferences about  the text (example here). A colleague of mine suggested I look at the thinkers keys. At the moment I am in the middle of making a generic thinkers key presentation that could relate to any topic, and use these for future lessons.

The Thinkers Keys are twenty powerful strategies for generating quality thinking in many learning situations. To find more info on the thinkers keys click here.

So that is me so far! My next steps are to visit a few teachers from around the clusters to find out:

- How they incorporate the Key Competencies
- How they promote thinking and high order thinking
- What their cognitively engaging/high order thinking follow up activities look like
- How they plan for such thinking


Until next time :)