Thinking about Thinking

An underlying theme from this week of on-campus learning (with one day in school on Monday) was the critical thinking process.

As educators, we talk about critical and creative thinking often. We discuss it as the gold-standard skill we wish to develop in our students. It is one of the core curricular competencies in the BC Curriculum. But in practice, with all the content and pedagogical tools we like to incorporate into the classroom, the why behind these tools (and how they are linked to the thinking process) can be hidden from sight.

So how do I, in my everyday teaching methods, keep a focus on creative and critical thinking skills?

The artifact.

This week offered a rich set of artifacts (from a resource, from my SAs, and from my own lesson planning), which directly link to critical and creative thinking learning outcomes. Each of these artifacts aim to engage students in a step-by-step thinking process. The aim of each of these activities were to help students deconstruct answers that they may have learned from rote memorization, and by doing so, both the student and teacher are able to assess whether deep thinking has taken place.

This week at Yale, I led a short and simple formative quiz in Anatomy and Physiology. Students answered two broad questions (why and how questions) independently on their own sheets of paper. They were encouraged to include drawings of certain atoms/molecules to help explain their answers. During my introduction, I told students that I would be using the proficiency scale (found on page 10 of this curriculum document), denoted by a number from 1 to 4 (1=emerging; 2=developing; 3=proficient; 4=extending) to assess their answers. I emphasized that the “number 3” was not the same as 3 points out of 4. Their goal should be to meet proficiency (3, like an A), and only some of them will be able to take their explanations further into extending (4).

This week, I took note of how Karen scaffolds her writing assignments in English 9. I noticed that all of her writing assignments follow a clear, detailed set of step-by-step instructions for students to follow. This ensures that students are not just making a “product” (the final paragraph), but are mindfully working through the thinking and action steps along the way, which will help them develop powerful thinking strategies that can be carried forward into all of their writing in the future.

I tried to carry forward this scaffolded style of learning task into my “Emergency Lesson Plan” for English 9 I started planning this week. In my lesson, students conduct an independent research project, which requires students to conduct their own research and exploration of a category of media, and use evidence and observations to analyze what they observe and find the message/purpose of the text based on context. They will then construct an analysis project in response. In my instructions, I laid out the steps of the planning, research, brainstorming, and final writing stages to guide students through the writing process. My hope is that the thinking routines the students develop in this lesson will be carried forward into other aspects of English, the interdisciplinary, and the skills they require in life.

Why it matters.

I linked my formative assessment strategy from Monday’s Anatomy & Physiology 12 class to other thinking routines teachers might choose to employ. Giving students a formative quiz on previously-learned concepts encourages them to write out their thinking and reasoning. Encouraging them to draw diagrams as part of their answers is a helpful cognitive tool that helps them remember concepts and visualize them for themselves. Then, going through the answers as a class gives active feedback, allowing the students to self-reflect on their grasp of the ideas.

Ultimately, no matter the content taught in various classes, it’s the thinking process that matters most. The purpose of the new BC curriculum is to teach competencies that students will benefit from for the rest of their lives. Thinking skills are an integral competency.

I can also link thinking strategies to the inquiry-based Science and Math classrooms we are learning about in our EDUC 472 class. Inquiry is the process by which students are filling in self-assessed gaps in their learning. They engage with open-ended questions so that they are more aware of their own thinking and reasoning. The purpose of the inquiry classroom is less the answers students find (content), but the skills they develop along the way. Thus, the inquiry classroom, focused around critical and creative thinking, is a perfect fit for the new BC curriculum.

In the inquiry classroom, the role of the teacher is to set up learning activities and facilitate the learning in a way that allows students to engage with thinking routines. We are not teaching students what to think; we are teaching students how to think.

Next steps.

In our cohort learning block, we posed the question, “How do I know I’ve established a culture of thinkers in my class?”

Our results described a classroom where students speak often (more often than the teacher!) and are willing to collaborate with each other or even (respectfully) challenge the teachers’ ideas. A thinking class contains empathetic worldviews, integrated and interdisciplinary connections, deep and open-ended questions, and elaborate justification and explanation to answers. These are descriptors I hope will match my future classrooms.

This week, our cohort was introduced to an entire toolbox of thinking routines. These are strategies that guide students through a structured thinking process to encourage metacognition, social-emotional learning, and critical thinking. I would like to incorporate these thinking routines (and other formative assessment strategies) into my lesson planning as I move into in-person and online teaching in October.

Professional Standard #3: Educators understand and apply knowledge of student growth and development.

Professional Standard #5: Educators implement effective planning, instruction, assessment and reporting practices to create respectful, inclusive environments for student learning and development.