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Classroom Procedures that Develop Your Children's Thinking Skills
Training children to think critically has become increasingly difficult over the years because of many societal and spiritual problems that have lead us to disregard Christ's commandment to love Him with our minds. I want to suggest to you some basic classroom procedures that promote habits of reflection in your children.
Basic procedures
- Give clear instructions immediately your class begins. Do not repeat them.
- Before introducing new material, have your students write down all they know about the topic. This technique will eliminate needless review.
- As you lecture, write on the board all important terms, concepts, and facts.
- If students' attention wanes, quiz them on the new material the next day.
- As you discuss the material, ask frequent questions. It has been suggested that a good teacher spends half the class talking and the other half listening.
- When you give a reading assignment, suggest a focus for reading.
Note taking
As you talk, teach your children to take good notes.
- They should record only main ideas, definitions, and important facts. They should not turn themselves into human tape recorders.
- Train them to abbreviate and paraphrase. They will learn to take notes and to listen to you simultaneously. As is the case with everything else they learn, the more notes they take, the better note takers they will become.
- Instruct them to review their notes frequently, thinking think about the material and adding information if the notes are incomplete.
- Always include test questions that are based on your lectures as well as information from the textbook.
Listening skills
Incorporate activities in your classroom that promote good listening skills, which should be methodically taught at an early age. This is the procedure:
- Instruct the children to get out pen and paper.
- Tell them to sit quietly and listen carefully because you will not repeat anything you say.
- Read the class a short passage, such as one of Aesop's fables.
- Immediately ask questions about the passage that they answer in writing. The questions should be of varying difficulty starting with those that involve mere recollection and identification, then questions that require explanation or classification, then, depending on the children's ages, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. In this way, you can make good use of Bloom's taxonomy.
- Do not repeat the questions.
- Immediately give the answers to each question. Do not repeat the answers.
- Record the grades and chart each child's progress.
Questioning techniques
There is a right and a wrong way to do everything, including the way you ask questions of your class. Here are some suggestions:
- Ask frequent questions.
- Do not repeat questions.
- Do not allow articulate, confident students to answer every time.
- Ask questions of the whole class and instruct everyone to form a mental answer. Then call on one student to reply.
- Allow sufficient wait time for a response to any question. Children need time to think.
- After a correct response, do not cut off thinking with comments such as "That's right" or "Good." This kind of remark will ensure everyone else will stop thinking about the issue. Such comments send the message that nothing else need be said. And there is always something more to say. Of course, it is instinctive in us all to immediately make affirmative comments, but resist the temptation in order to keep your children thinking.
- Instead, ask follow-up questions, such as "Someone expand on that" or "Does anyone disagree?"
- Ask open-ended questions.
- Cue replies with a caveat: "This question doesn't have one correct answer."
- Do not answer your own questions.
- Acknowledge a student's insight that you have not thought of.
- Do not rebuff challenges to your own conclusions as long as your students disagree respectfully.
The kind of questions you ask sets the intellectual tone of your classroom.
Testing techniques
Testing gives you rich opportunities to increase your children's ability to think.
- Do not ask recall questions such as the true/false, fill-in-the-blank, multiple-choice variety, all of which test mere recognition knowledge rather than requiring the student to articulate the significance of what he has learned.
- Instead, include short answers that are half-page paragraphs and essays that require one- to two-page responses. Essay questions require the student to synthesize and evaluate what he has learned. They require him to organize and explain the material to someone else.
- Avoid publishers' pre-packaged tests because
- They do not reflect the material you have taught.
- They are predictable.
- They lure you into teaching to the test.
- They train students to merely memorize information.
- They do not encourage reflection.
Ways to discourage thinking
There are many ways a teacher can inadvertently discourage thinking.
Do not
- Give your opinion before your children respond to questions.
- Expect a single correct answer.
- Ask a series of questions. This will create confusion in a child's mind.
- Ask obvious questions.
- Establish a pattern with your questions.
- Discourage students' questions.
- Give the correct answer to a question after an incorrect response.
In the mid-20th century, Dorothy Sayers wrote a brilliant essay entitled The Lost Tools of Learning in which she asked this trenchant question: "Is it not the great defect of our education today. . .that although we often succeed in teaching our pupils 'subjects,' we fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think? They learn everything except the art of learning." Sayers went on to say, "Modern education concentrates on teaching subjects, leaving the method of thinking, arguing, and expressing one's conclusions to be picked up by the scholar as he goes along." Her concern that students are not given the vital tools they need, they are not taught how to think for themselves, is even more valid today than it was in 1947, and her definition of education should be every teacher's goal: "The sole end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves." You and I certainly need God's help if we are to accomplish this daunting task, but the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, and with His help we can effectively train the minds of the children He has given us.
Copyright 2004. All Rights Reserved. ElizabethMcCallum.com
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