Group items tagged

A proven program for enhancing students' thinking and comprehension abilities Visible Thinking is a research-based approach to teaching thinking, begun at Harvard's Project Zero, that develops students' thinking dispositions, while at the same time deepening their understanding of the topics they study.? Rather than a set of fixed lessons, Visible Thinking is a varied collection of practices, including thinking routines?small sets of questions or a short sequence of steps?as well as the documentation of student thinking.?Using this process thinking becomes visible as the students'?different viewpoints are expressed, documented, discussed and reflected upon

There are 20 different 'Thinking Keys' each designed to unlock different parts of the thinking process.The use of the keys helps to develop flexible problem solving and thinking habits. The thinking keys provide a flexible and dynamic way to engage students in further learning. They are a great way to do informal assessment during the unit for measuring student understanding. The students really enjoy the range of activities that the keys enable them to choose from and subsequently produce interesting and thoughtful work.

Welcome. Project Zero is an educational research group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education composed of multiple, independently-sponsored research projects. Since 1967, Project Zero has examined the development of learning processes in children, adults, and organizations. Today, Project Zero's work includes investigations into the nature of intelligence, understanding, thinking, creativity, ethics, and other essential aspects of human learning. Our mission is to understand and enhance high-level thinking and learning across disciplines and cultures and in a range of contexts, including schools, businesses, museums, and digital environments.

Thinking is pretty much invisible. To be sure, sometimes people explain the thoughts behind a particular conclusion, but often they do not. Mostly, thinking happens under the hood, within the marvelous engine of our mind-brain. As the name suggests, the basic strategy is to make thinking visible in the context of learning.

A fantastic Google Presentation by John Pearce looking at Web 2.0 tools and other cloud based apps to support thinking

This binder is an attempt to collect and organize Digital Citizenship resources by age (grade level). Often when we think of Digital Citizenship, we only think about the safety aspects of it but being a digital citizen is much more than just being safe. The nine elements of Digital Citizenship as outlined in the book Digital Citizenship in Schools

Blogging is an excellent way of motivating students to develop a lifelong love of learning. Writing is a process, and when they learn this they will be able to apply the skills to other aspects of their schooling. It also teaches children critical thinking skills which will help them as they progress through school. Along with the development of critical thinking skills, students will learn how to conduct research. This is particularly important both in school and in the workplace they will one day take part in.

Thinkers Keys Welcome to an exciting framework for the teaching of thinking to young people. The Thinkers Keys are twenty powerful strategies for generating quality thinking in many learning situations. They were written explicitly for 8 to 14 year-olds, although we have often found them being used in classrooms of 5 year-olds, and also in senior school and university environments. Here's a 2-min video about the electronic Thinkers Keys.

My first year teaching a literacy coach came to observe my classroom. After the students left, she commented on how I asked the whole class a question, would wait just a few seconds, and then answer it myself. "It's cute," she added. Um, I don't think she thought it was so cute. I think she was treading lightly on the ever-so shaky ego of a brand-new teacher while still giving me some very necessary feedback.

WHEN Tony Wagner, the Harvard education specialist, describes his job today, he says he's "a translator between two hostile tribes" - the education world and the business world, the people who teach our kids and the people who give them jobs. Wagner's argument in his book "Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World" is that our K-12 and college tracks are not consistently "adding the value and teaching the skills that matter most in the marketplace."

So called gamification of learning is one thing, actually getting students to design a game requires high order thinking skills like creativity. Here is a great list of design your own game websites. 

"n the Australian Curriculum, students develop ICT capability as they learn to use ICT effectively and appropriately to access, create and communicate information and ideas, solve problems and work collaboratively in all learning areas at school, and in their lives beyond school. The capability involves students in learning to make the most of the digital technologies available to them, adapting to new ways of doing things as technologies evolve and limiting the risks to themselves and others in a digital environment. The Melbourne Declaration on the Educational Goals for Young Australians (MCEETYA 2008) recognises that in a digital age, and with rapid and continuing changes in the ways that people share, use, develop and communicate with ICT, young people need to be highly skilled in its use. To participate in a knowledge-based economy and to be empowered within a technologically sophisticated society now and into the future, students need the knowledge, skills and confidence to make ICT work for them at school, at home, at work and in their communities. Information and communication technologies are fast and automated, interactive and multimodal, and they support the rapid communication and representation of knowledge to many audiences and its adaptation in different contexts. They transform the ways that students think and learn and give them greater control over how, where and when they learn."

This is a brilliant resource. Some of these stories would make launch lessons. Could include some "Making Thinking Visible Routines" for some powerful learning. Dust Echoes is a series of twelve beautifully animated dreamtime stories from Central Arnhem Land, telling stories of love, loyalty, duty to country and aboriginal custom and law.  Includes study guides. 

I consciously overplan the first few days. The worst possible first-day scenario is to arrive unprepared. Over the years, I've collected a number of first-day activity ideas - far too many to use. I've pared down the activities based on the following considerations: My first goal is to build classroom community, making all students feel comfortable and successful. My second goal is to establish routine. My third goal is to formatively assess students' current levels in all subject areas. It's never too early to begin thinking about parent night. I choose activities that accomplish at least two of the goals stated above.

This looms like another great mind mapping tool. It's great that you can save it to your Google drive. I was able to create a map on my ipad with ease. Online mapping is a great way for students to make their thinking visible and because it can be saved to drive they have the capacity to share it with others and collaborate.

"Global connectivity, smart machines, and new media are just some of the drivers reshaping how we think about work, what constitutes work, and the skills we will need to be productive contributors in the future. This report analyzes key drivers that will reshape the landscape of work and identifies key work skills needed in the next 10 years. It does not consider what will be the jobs of the future. Many studies have tried to predict specific job categories and labor requirements. Consistently over the years, however, it has been shown that such predictions are difficult and many of the past predictions have been proven wrong. Rather than focusing on future jobs, this report looks at future work skills-proficiencies and abilities required across different jobs and work settings."

During my meetings with teachers, I asked them to reflect on how deep involvement in an inquiry project was influencing their thinking about the way they work with inquiry in the classroom. Their reflections were honest and insightful. In this post, I am sharing some of these reflections- and the potential implications for how we engaging students in quality inquiry. I am so grateful to the great staff of Macquarie for allowing me to share in their journey and their permission to include their thoughts in this post.

"ur FREE materials are designed to empower students to think critically, behave safely, and participate responsibly in our digital world. Use our interactive SCOPE & SEQUENCE to find the lessons that are just right for your classroom. These cross-curricular units spiral to address digital literacy and citizenship topics in an age-appropriate way. Browse by grade band or click a category to highlight lessons that address that topic."

"Blogging in education is about quality and authentic writing in digital spaces with a global audience, while observing digital citizenship responsibilities and rights, as on documents, reflects, organizes and makes one's learning and thinking visible and searchable! "

I have been thinking about some "new" items I could add to my original Digital Citizenship Kit that I created last year.  Like I said in that blog post, I love using props when teaching