Howard Gardner points out in his blueprint for education,
Five Minds for the Future (2006), learning in the 21st century
requires a mind that is "disciplined, creating, synthesizing,
ethical and respectful"
Infusing thinking
skills into the curriculum for the PreK-5th grade learning:
We
as educators, need to infuse thinking skills into
this learning process. We like to say that Thinking
Skills are one of the tools of engineers. It is
important to model for our students the use of
thinking skills and provide feedback to them on
their use. Creative and critical thinking are key
to the finding design challenges and doing a
design. Questioning is needed through-out the
process as well as developing our curiosity.
Meta-cognitive reflection bring in the ability to
see what we are doing and change where necessary and
using Blooms
higher order taxonomywill
bring about additional thinking skills.
How: Provide teachers with
professional development, scaffolding, and a collaborative
web site for support. Below are the sections of learning
around skillful thinking:
Framing of thoughtful questions, and the
follow-up of these questions for
understanding. Need
to make these questions "Kid Friendly"
two sets prek_2 & 3-5.
Teach and model such skills as decision
making, problem solving, critical thinking,
brainstorm, compare / contract,
classification, drawing conclusions
The
purpose of this article is twofold: first, to
provide information on the learning process and
skillful thinking and, second, to provide educators
with tangible suggestions on how to change the
learning environment to enhance skillful thinking.
Using the updated
Bloom Taxonomy,
we can create questions around the 6 levels,
starting from the lowest level to the higher order
thinking skill:, includes action verbs.
