Group items tagged

SCAMPER is a strategy that can be used to assist students to generate new or alternative ideas. It is a tool to support creative, divergent thinking. SCAMPER is an acronym for: substitute, combine, adapt, modify/magnify/minify, put to other uses, eliminate, reverse/rearrange. What is its purpose? SCAMPER is a thinking tool that helps students to ask questions about a concept, text, or idea that require them to think beyond the obvious. It can help develop critical thinking skills and creativity and is a useful cooperative learning tool and a great stimulus for role play. In this post from Litemind, Lucciano " ....... presents a complete SCAMPER primer, along with two free creativity-boosting resources: a downloadable reference mind map and an online tool that generates random questions to get you out of a rut whenever you need." In this very comprehensive post Luciano note only explains the terminology associated with SCAMPER but also lists suggested questions as well as "Trigger Words".

What should our goal for student thinking be? How do we scaffold student thinking in ways that are meaningful while developing autonomy and encouraging students to think effectively when we are not there? What would success with thinking strategies look like? These were the challenging questions that Mark Church presented to teachers at the most recent 'Cultures of Thinking Teach Meet' hosted by Masada College.

Designed to assist teachers to help their students, Microsoft offers this a free 37 page ebook entitled Developing Critical Thinking Through Web Research Skills. The ebook presents strategies for teaching Internet search skills and strategies for evaluating information. The ebook also links to many additional resources for teaching web search strategies. There are strategies and resources appropriate for students from in early elementary grades through high school included in the ebook. AOf course it has many references to Bing and other Microsoft products, but overall it is a good resource.

SCAMPER is an acronym for another of those interesting thinking tools used to spark creative approaches to a situation or problem. It is a checklist designed to force one to think about and look at things in different ways. This post is interesting because of the visual approach that the author takes to Substituting, Combining, Adapting, Modifying or magnifying, Purposing, Eliminating or Reverse/rearranging.

If you are interested in building a classroom culture where thinking is noticed, named and celebrated, there are three books which make essential reading. They provide clear evidence for why teachers should focus their efforts on encouraging and normalising thinking and offer research-backed strategies to support this. The books are the result of ongoing research by Harvard's Project Zero and their lead author Ron Ritchhart.

"Creative and Critical Thinking Skills are more important than ever. Here is the place for parents, teachers, and home schoolers to find fun, easy-to-implement ideas to get kids thinking in new ways"

Good questions are great learning tools. The 8 strategies discussed here offer useful ideas for classroom techers

When schools communicate, and share strategies they are using to develop mindsets, dispositions and competencies with parents and when parents adopt these strategies and elements of a metalanguage for learning and thinking, our students are better able to integrate the desirable attributes. 

Five interesting ways that offer some new twists for students to approach thinking. A good graphic accompanies the post

A blog post where the author invited Gautam John, who works with Pratham Books, to write a guest post about their social publishing strategy where he briefly touched upon their use of Creative Commons licenses. In this post, shares more about how his organization uses Creative Commons licenses and why he thinks it is important for your organization to consider it

The chart features 8 strategies teachers can use to conduct a formative assessment. By definition, formative assessment is assessment for learning which usually takes place simultaneously with learning. The aim of formative assessment is to students understanding and plan subsequent instruction. In this chart on the page, you will get to discover 8 ways you can check for students comprehension, have a look and share with us what you think of it."

"Building 20 and brainstorming came into being at almost exactly the same time. In the sixty years since then, if the studies are right, brainstorming has achieved nothing-or, at least, less than would have been achieved by six decades' worth of brainstormers working quietly on their own. Building 20, though, ranks as one of the most creative environments of all time, a space with an almost uncanny ability to extract the best from people. Among M.I.T. people, it was referred to as "the magical incubator." "

To ensure reflective practice is more than an activity added to our schedule, we need to take a reflective stance. Too often, reflection becomes the thing we do at the end of a task or the end of the day. We look back and contemplate what was, and with that in mind, we look forward to what we might do differently next time. It is in this way a very reactionary process. By all means, this form of reflection has its place, and it can be a powerful strategy to deploy as we seek to learn from experience. If we value reflective practice, we will be sure to set aside time for this form of reflection on a routine basis. By engaging in reflection habitually, we ensure that it is a routine part of our day. But adopting a reflective stance can make this more powerful.

This page makes it easy to find information and resources that are relevant to particular concepts, approaches and strategies. Each Collection is curated to serve a particular need and shares a set of resources pooled from The Learner's Way. In time this set of Collection will grow. In addition to articles from The Learner's Way you will be able to find resources designed to help you get started with the key concepts presented. The aim is to produce a set of resources which are readily accessible and of immediate benefit to classroom teachers and school leaders.