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Thinking Skills: How Parents Can Help

Thinking and being aware of our own thoughts are skills that make us human. Thinking is an active process. It encompasses events that range from daydreaming to problem solving. It is a kind of ongoing, internal dialogue that accompanies actions like performing a task, observing a scene or expressing an opinion.

What Does "Teaching Thinking in School" Mean?

The "teaching thinking" movement goes beyond the learning of facts. It encourages students to ask questions of the information and ideas presented in class. It helps students learn how to identify unstated assumptions, to form and defend opinions, to see relationships between events and ideas.

There are many approaches to teaching thinking. Some educators teach students to use a set of identifiable skills — such as discriminating between relevant and irrelevant points in a particular argument, or generating questions from written material. Others try to involve students in classroom experiences that will help them think more actively — such as a classroom debate or a mock court case.

What Are Some Examples of Thinking Skills Instruction?

• In an American history class, students might use a simulation exercise to understand the points of view of the colonists and the British at the time of the Revolution. That is, after studying background information, students would play roles of persons on both sides of the conflict, debating the issues as they reflect their imagined families, work and community.

• In a mathematics class, students might work together in pairs. While one student acts as problem solver, talking aloud his or her thinking on how to solve a problem, the other student is an active listener, asking questions and helping the problem solver think through the process. Later, these students would exchange roles.

• In a first grade classroom, the teacher might engage students in a discussion of the reliability of evidence after reading them the story of Chicken Little. The teacher might lead this discussion by asking students whether the other animals should have trusted Chicken Little, and how they could have determined the truth or falsity of her story.

• After viewing a film on the Lewis and Clark expedition, a fifth grade teacher might ask students to work in pairs, listing the steps involved in planning and carrying out the expedition.

• Children of all ages can do team research. For example, elementary school children might investigate the effects of the gold rush on westward expansion, while secondary students might study the traffic flow in a major intersection of their community.

• Thinking skills can even be taught in performance courses, such as band or woodworking. In band, students might be asked to think about how a piece would sound if the tempo or volume were changed. They might mark their scores with different tempos and volumes, then play the re-marked scores to hear the resulting differences in the music. Woodworking can be seen as a series of problems requiring solution. For example, instead of constructing a table by following a preset model, students might be encouraged to draw several ways of making a table (such as differing arrangements of legs or other supports, various tabletop shapes), and experiment with each design on small models, determining which are the most stable, pleasing to the student and so on.

How Can Students' Thinking Skills Be Evaluated?

First, it's important to say that evaluating thinking skills is not the same as evaluating the number of words students spell correctly — students are not graded on how well they do, and there is generally no "right" answer. The teacher evaluates students' thinking skills to see where they are at a given time, and to see where they may need extra work.

Students' thinking skills might be evaluated orally or with a paper-and-pencil test. For example, a teacher might be interested in evaluating students' skills in analysis — a breaking-down process to find out how parts fit together to make a whole. Students might be asked to list the steps involved in solving a particular problem, or to break down a task (such as making a bed) into its component parts.

How Can Parents Help Their Children Think More Actively?

As a parent you can:

• Encourage your children to ask questions about the world around them.

• When reading to or with young children, ask them to imagine what will happen next in the story.

• Actively listen to your children's conversation, responding seriously and non-judgmentally to the questions they raise.

• When your children express feelings, ask why they feel that way.

• Suggest that your children find facts to support their opinions, and then encourage them to locate information relevant to their opinions.

• Use entertainment — a TV program or a movie — as the basis of family discussions.

• Use daily activities as occasions for learning. For example, instead of sending a child to the store with a simple list of items to purchase, talk with the child first about how much each item might cost, how much all the items might cost, how much all the items might add up to, and estimate how much change she should receive.

• Reward your children for inquisitive and/or creative activity that is productive.

• Ask your children what questions their teachers are raising in class. For example, a history class might be "asking" how American westward expansion began.

Remember, if your children are active participants in a home where there is talk about the why and the how of things, they are more likely to be active thinkers both in and out of school.