Specialists

Post your grade level's responses here.

Specialist Comments on the article "Educational Leadership" Susan Hudgins, Missy Luldwick, Judy Stupka Accountabililty to Knowledge At Green Run we have made it a priority to make students accountable for their knowledge. We ask them to justify all their answers, either verbally or in writing. We not only model, but encourage them to ask relevant questions to inspire class discussions. We feel it is important that the student not only have the correct answer, but the teacher has a clear understanding of how they arrived at the answer.

Meeting: Nov. 24- Questioning back and forth- students understanding the material Discussion-Socratic seminar, shared inquiry Predictions problem solving- have the students exhausted all the possible answers before deriving the "one" answer metacognitive thinking + domain knowledge interest in expanding reasearch or reading to other material not directly taught in the classroom

rlatkins I like the reference to Hansel and Gretel. It helps support how important literature is in critical thinking. Looking at characters, plots and theme can help develop higher level thinking. Theme is all about using higher level thinking by taking in the characters, setting, point-of-view and plot students have to look for the deeper stucture, very much determined by their level of prior knowledge, to determine the theme. Critical thinking based on prior knowledge.

[|howtheone] In PE we use forms of critical thinking regularly. some times it is as simple as letting the children choose which piece of equipment they will use to complete a task. For example, they have a variety of places on the floor to try and make a shot into the basketball hoop. The places start out close and get progressively farther away. Tehy are given the option of 5 or 6 different types of balls, varrying in size, shape, weight, etc. More complex tasks include being given a bin with 6 or 7 different pieces of equipment with no obvious connection. Their task is to identify the equipment, organize it according to function, and creat a game using all the equipment in the bin. The game must use all the equipment and must be complete with rules, penalties for breaking rules, Object of the game, a name for the game, set up, and any other tidbits the group can think to include. Though you may view this last activity as more CREATIVE thinking, as opposed to CRITICAL thinking; I have found the two often go hand in hand.

[|jsjames1] This is great.This reinforces what I stated which is that games are excellent for developing critical thinking skills. I also agree wholeheartedly with you that creative and critical thinking really go hand in hand. i don't believe they can be separated. jsjames1

[|mlludwic] It mentioned in the article under,"Why Scientific Thinking Depends on Scientific Knowledge", that you can't teach just content, but background knowledge is needed as well. I think sometimes we have put all the emphasis on essential knowledge and very little time building the background. With the demands of the curriculum increasing, we have been forced to prioritize what we are required to teach.

maupeter The article states that critical thinking is very difficult to teach. As teachers, the following points are relevant to our instruction. Students need to be familiar with a problem's deep structure and they need to know that they should look for a deep structure. You can teach students metacognitive strategies, but in order to implement the strategy, the students need domain knowledge and practice putting that knowledge to work. Critical thinking is not a skill. We need to teach students new ways of thinking, but most importantly, they need to be able to use the right type of thinking at the right time.

__gihanvey__ I found this article to be informative, as it raised arguments I had not considered prior to this reading. The suggestion that students do not automatically or consistently transfer critical or problem solving skills from one situation to another makes sense with my experiences as a reading teacher. It seems to provide answers to the question I have frequently, and frustratingly, pondered about why my students weren’t “making the connection”. For example, in one story, a student could problem-solve, using meaning and visual cues, to accurately read a word or sentence, while in another story, he struggled to do so. Previously, it seemed logical that if he could do it //there,// he should be able to do it //here//. Now I better understand why that is not necessarily true. __ecbaar__ From this article and some others about Critical Thinking: 1. Critical thinking is hard 2. Practice makes perfect 3. Transfereing practice between situations is difficult too 4. Improvement demands aquiring critical thinking theory 5. Mapping out a strategy helps 6. We need to understand Belief Preservation if we hope to think critically

[|judee73] This article brought many ideas and thoughts to the surface. But one thing that stood out for me was the importance of background knowledge. Yes, critical thinking can be modeled and practiced, but without the important knowledge, it may not be applied in all situations. Again, we must remember that children learn at different stages at different times. The curriculum puts time and content restraints on students and teachers. Teachers focus on basic knowledge and have little time left to 'think critically' with their students.

[|JAVazquez] This is why the VBCPS Gifted Program was completely changed 10 years ago! The old resource model was teaching critical thinking skills in isolation, but the skills were not being transferred. Now, the gifted program imbeds thinking skills into its curricula. Differentiation, rigor, depth and complexity: these are some of the means for fostering critical thinking. Another critical benchmark of the gifted program is metacognition. I was encouraged to see that metacognition, along with domain knowledge, was a key factor in developing critical thinking skills. (Also, It is important to remember that “critical thinking” goes beyond Bloom’s taxonomy.)

[|shhudgins] This article was very informative. In mathematics we are told to "trust the spiral". Yes, we need to "trust the spiral", but we also need to frequently revisit concepts that build on prior knowledge that is needed for future instruction.

[|slgunter] I believe critical thinking is an important step in becoming a successful adult.We need to start teaching in a way that lends to better critical thinking skills in our schools. This will be a challenge for some special ed. students as they don't have some of the basic content knowldege that is neccessary to then think critically about the topic as they have trouble sequencing and storing information. It won't happen over night and it will take a lot of practice, but I'm willing to try. PS. I agree with Ms. James. We will need a lot of support from the school system if we are going to succeed in this new 21st century challenge.

[|JAVazquez] This is an additional thought: Just reading the various posts is a prime example of critical thinking at work. Most everyone is posting from his or her perspective. The critiques are based on the personal knowledge and experience each of us brings to this, and then we voice our opinions in that context.

[|hlengle] I agree with the portion of the article that states a student needs to have enough background or prior knowledge on a topic before they can begin to think critically about it. Many of my students cannot begin to answer critical thinking questions until they know the vocabulary and content that are a building block to that. I also related to the story of Hansel and Gretel and how culture and background can effect how you connect to a question or issue...and in turn solving it.

[|klturner] For so long the schools system and state board of ed. have relentlessly stressed the importance of the SOL's- this article reiterates what teachers have been saying all along, jamming facts down a students throat doesn't help them to learn analytical skills. Instead we should be repetitive in our approach to problem solving exploring all possible answers and encouraging our students to read and research subject matter outside that which is included in everyday curriculum.