Week 6 Element Spotlight: THINKING
A new week, a new element in the spotlight. This week, we’ll turn our attention to the Require THINKING Element.
Full disclosure: This is probably my favorite element to think about and help teachers think about! If (when?) I nerd out a bit on the blog this week, now you at least know the reason why!
This is my favorite Element because, when it gets down to brass tacks, this is where learning really happens. Yes, all of the Elements are essential ingredients to maximizing student learning, but the THINKING Element is what drives the actual learning mechanism.
I don’t claim to understand exactly how the brain learns (though I did nearly enroll in a Ph.D. program in Cognitive/Learning Sciences), but I know that it requires active thinking. Learning is definitely not a passive process. So to cause learning to happen in our students, we must be consciously attentive to their thoughts. It’s not enough to guide students’ actions; we must guide their thinking.
Let’s look at the full description of the THINKING Element: Make kids really think hard and support them just enough to do so.
We need to consider what they’re thinking about, “how hard” they’re thinking about what we want them thinking about, and our own role in supporting that thinking. That’s a lot of thinking about thinking! And that’s why THINKING is so much fun to me :-)
To start the week, dial your thoughts into what your students are thinking:
- What are they thinking about?
- How hard are they thinking about it?
- How did you get them to think like that?
- What can you do if they aren’t quite thinking about what or as hard as you want them to?
Let’s get meta people and really think about THINKING!
