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Enhancing Young Learners' Thinking Skills: A Teacher's Guide

Explore the concept of 'think' and how to teach thinking skills in the classroom. Activities, approaches, and the teacher's role in developing problem-solving and decision-making abilities in children discussed in detail.

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Enhancing Young Learners' Thinking Skills: A Teacher's Guide

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  1. Developing Thinking Skills in the Young Learner ClassroomPeter Lucantoni

  2. Overview • What does ‘think’ mean? • What are thinking skills? • Can thinking be taught? • What is the teacher’s role in teaching thinking skills? • Activities • Conclusions

  3. What does ‘think’ mean? • Think about the word ‘think’. What does it mean to you? • Make a list of at least five synonyms for ‘think’ • Draw a picture to represent ‘think’

  4. What does ‘think’ mean? Discuss these questions with your partner: • How did you approach the previous activity? What did you do first, and how did you continue? • Were you successful? Why/not? • Did you enjoy the activity? Why/not?

  5. What does ‘think’ mean? • Look at Handout 1 • Complete each of the ten synonyms using the correct vowels • Are any the same as the ones from your own list?

  6. What does ‘think’ mean? Discuss these questions with your partner: • How did you approach the previous activity? What did you do first, and how did you continue? • Were you successful? Why/not? • Did you enjoy the activity? Why/not?

  7. What are thinking skills? • Children need more than curriculum knowledge • Important for them to develop problem-solving and decision-making skills at an early age • Need to assess new information and understand unexpected problems, and find solutions and evaluate their success • [Adapted from: Teaching Young Learners to Think, Puchta & Williams, Helbling Languages, 2011]

  8. What are thinking skills? • Thinking Skills are the mental processes we use to: solve problems, make decisions, ask questions, make plans, pass judgements, organise information, create new ideas, etc • Often we are not aware of thinking - it happens automatically • [Adapted from: http://www.thinkingclassroom.co.uk/ThinkingClassroom/ThinkingSkills.aspx]

  9. What are thinking skills? • Look at Word Trees Handout 2 • What is the language focus? • Which age and level do you think the activity would be appropriate for? • Which thinking skills are practised? • How could you vary/extend the activity for different teaching/learning contexts?

  10. language focus? • age / level? • thinking skills? • vary / extend? Teaching Young Learners to Think, Puchta & Williams, Helbling 2011

  11. What are thinking skills? • But if we think about thinking, then we can become more efficient and more creative with our minds • Researchers at Newcastle University in the UK identified over 50 different classifications of thinking skills: • [Adapted from: http://www.thinkingclassroom.co.uk/ThinkingClassroom/ThinkingSkills.aspx]

  12. What are thinking skills? information understanding basic gathering thinking productive

  13. What are thinking skills? [Adapted from: http://www.thinkingclassroom.co.uk/ThinkingClassroom/ThinkingSkills.aspx]

  14. What are thinking skills? [Adapted from: http://www.thinkingclassroom.co.uk/ThinkingClassroom/ThinkingSkills.aspx]

  15. What are thinking skills? • How does the theory work in practice? • Look at these examples from Super Minds 2 (Cambridge University Press, 2012) • Notice how the examples move through the stages of information gathering, basic understanding and productive thinking

  16. Information GatheringSensing: seeing, hearing, touchingRetrieving: memory skills Super Minds 2

  17. Basic UnderstandingOrganising gathered informationForming conceptsLinking ideas together Super Minds 2

  18. Productive ThinkingUsing information and understandingCreating, deciding, analysing, evaluating Super Minds 2

  19. Can thinking be taught? • Yes! • Carol McGuiness (1999) working for the Department of Education, England, concluded: ‘Pupils benefit from being coached in thinking … success was due to good teaching methods … learning thinking works well when supported by the teacher …’ [Adapted from: Teaching Young Learners to Think, Puchta & Williams, HelblingLanguages, 2011]

  20. What is the teacher’s role? • Value ALL ideas and where necessary help the learners to express their ideas • Accept everything from everybody: Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Henry Ford, Oprah Winfrey, Steve Wozniak, …

  21. What is the teacher’s role? • Obviously, your role is crucial • Encourage free, ‘off-the-wall’, creative thinking, without criticism • Do not allow learners to feel inhibited due to lack of language confidence • Errors are part of language learning process

  22. What is the teacher’s role? • Give learners time to think about what they are doing, to study the data, to plan an approach … • Quick-fire responses can lead to impulsive guesses or simplistic answers rather than creative solutions • Important for teacher to remind learners to take time to think

  23. What is the teacher’s role? • Take all answers, ideas, suggestions from learners seriously • Use challenges: Why do you think this?, How do you know?, How did you get this answer?, Where did you look?, Does everyone agree with you? • Aim of thinking class is to seek ‘best’ answers and not always ‘right’ ones

  24. What is the teacher’s role? • Set real tasks – learners use data, planning, explanation • Get reflection on thinking strategies used – What caused difficulties? How were you successful? • Establish learning points – learners give general advice on how to succeed, strategies used and naming them • Build a bridge – apply to other contexts

  25. Did we … … decide what ‘think’ means? … discuss what thinking skills are and if they can be taught? … look at the teacher’s role? … did we do some activities and make some conclusions?

  26. Any questions?

  27. plucantoni@cambridge.org www.cambridgeenglishteacher.org http://www.facebook.com/Cambridge UniversityPressMiddleEast

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