Summer 2008 | Volume 65 | Number 9

Thinking Skills NOW (online only)

About This Issue

Marge Scherer

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Immersed in Inquiry

Jean Anne Clyde and Angela Hicks

Clyde, a professor at the University of Louisville, and Hicks, a teacher at Crestwood Elementary in Oldham County Kentucky, launched an inquiry project with Hicks's 5th graders, starting with the question "How has Oldham County changed over time?" Students quickly brainstormed generative questions and began researching them through online searches, books, interviews, data analysis, and field trips. They were so drawn into the inquiry process that for three months the class lived and breathed investigation of Oldham County. Content and skills required by Kentucky's learning standards were woven into the ongoing exploration. A puzzle about an historic black church led three learners, especially, to take unusual initiative. Students presented their research and their views on inquiry to the school board; they also created two online books and a podcast showcasing their work.

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Differentiating Math Through Expeditions

Brent Loken

Loken, director of curriculum at the Hsinchu International School in Hsinchu, Taiwan, describes the organizing strategy he has used for years to redesign instruction, curriculum, and assessment in his classes. Loken designed his Algebra 1 class to include three overall "expeditions," similar to units, each one focused on a core concept. Expeditions give his students more independence as learners and, through continual formative assessment, more control over improving their own mastery of key benchmarks. Loken shows how he plans the key ideas and standards that will be covered in each expedition (using the backward design process developed by Grant Wiggins), creates formative assessments that students take at their own pace, and guides students in planning how they will carry out their learning and monitor their progress.

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Senior Studies: Life Prep 101

Steve Newman and Dave Allen

Evanston Township High School in Evanston, Illinois, has developed a Senior Studies class that brings the community into the classroom and the classroom into the community. Each year, 65 12th-grade students and three teachers meet for the last three periods of the day in an interdisciplinary elective that combines English, history, and service learning. Students learn about the local community, engage in community service, and design and implement independent projects that involve career exploration, creative expression, academic research, or service learning. The authors, who teach the course, describe how Senior Studies prepares students for life.

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Preparing Creative and Critical Thinkers

Donald J. Treffinger

To prepare students to be 21st-century problem solvers, we need to teach them how to use cognitive tools that fall into two categories: creative thinking and critical thinking. Creative thinking involves generating many unusual, original, and varied possibilities; critical thinking involves examining possibilities carefully, fairly, and constructively. This article describes how students can learn to use such cognitive tools as brainstorming, attribute listing, and sequencing within a systematic Creative Problem Solving framework.

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Asking Good Questions

Kenneth E. Vogler

Most teachers ask questions that require students to merely recall knowledge or information rather than use higher-order thinking skills. Teachers can become better verbal questioners by familiarizing themselves with both question taxonomies and question sequences and patterns. Question taxonomies—such as Bloom's Taxonomy, the Revised Taxonomy, and Gallagher and Ascher's hierarchical taxonomy—classify questions on the basis of the mental activity required to formulate an answer. Questioning sequences and patterns (such as "lifting and extending" and "narrow to broad"), in which each question builds on the answer to the previous question, help students develop connected understandings. Teachers can hone their expertise by asking students questions in a predetermined sequence, observing and evaluating a peer's questioning techniques, and being observed and evaluated.

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Developing the Language of Thinking

Jeff Zwiers

Zwiers maintains that to produce the kind of abstract thinking—and conventional expression of that thinking—required in school, students need to enhance their skills in cognitive language. Cognitive language is the kind of language that teachers, authors, and test designers use naturally, but that doesn't come naturally to many learners. Teachers need to become "language watchers," identifying the thinking skills and cognitive terms associated with various disciplines. Zwiers gives examples of strategies his colleagues at a west coast middle school have used to help students recognize and become facile with three features of cognitive language: (1) figurative expressions, (2) complex sentences, and (3) organizing structures. He describes successful classroom tactics to make academic language understandable and push students to use it themselves.

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Pedagogy on the Prairie

Ann Heyse

Each summer, teachers at Westminster Christian Academy take a group of students on a 12-day trip into the wilderness, where they camp, hike, bike, kayak, and study a rigorous curriculum of philosophy, history, science, literature, and ethics. Students read, discuss, and write about historical and environmental issues in locations where these issues come to life. Their written reflections, included with the article, reveal that they are engaging in deep thinking and contemplating how to apply what they are learning to their own lives. Heyse, one of the teachers who leads the group, shares her experiences and offers tips for educators considering offering a similar experience.

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The Promise of Career Tech

Scott J. Peters

Career and technical education (CTE) is often sidelined in high schools because people believe that it does not prepare students for college, that it forces students into a lower "track," and that it is primarily a refuge for students with behavior problems who might otherwise drop out. Research, however, has shown that students frequently enroll in CTE courses in order to prepare for college. CTE offers opportunities for hands-on learning that many students need but rarely find in traditional academic programs. The real-world learning and flexibility inherent in good CTE programs can give struggling students opportunities to succeed and prevent them from dropping out. Peters cites several characteristics of CTE programs that make them successful and offers suggestions for what educators can do to maximize the benefits of CTE in their schools.

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Summertime Reflections

Joanne Rooney

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Book Review

Naomi Thiers

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ASCD and 21st-Century Skills

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