5 Ways to Break the Efficiency Trap and Focus on Effective Instruction

Everyone is in such a hurry these days, and we in the system of public education are no exception. 

We want our students to measure up, and we want them to do it right now; and we want them to measure up to a whole bunch of different things at the same time and at the same rate; and we focus on teaching to the test because we have to; and we use measurements that efficiently show how well students think on a lower level---

---and then we actually bemoan our students inability to think critically, creatively, and effectively on a higher level!

It’s time to consider alternatives.

1. Leave Test Data Disaggregation to Administrators 

It's fine for administrators and policy makers to use data from standardized tests as a comparative measurement of basic skills proficiency---and they should; however, it's not okay when the results are taken as the only measure of student learning or as an indication of future success in life. Basic skills proficiency is the most important first step in developing higher-level thinking skills, and it's important information for teachers to know as one element in planning their instruction---but---

---basic skills development should not be the only goal of instruction.

2. Let Teachers Bump Up the Effectiveness of Instruction 

Teachers need to be able to focus on multiple measures to develop effective instruction; however, many educators get mired in state, national, and administrative mandated efficiency checklists required to show “Yep---we covered that.” 

This happens way too much in education. So much so that in some schools, the result is a total lack of effectiveness, and thus---no efficiency at all---the Catch-22 of instruction where test scores stall and instruction produces a Numskull Effect---a generation of students, and a society who think that being educated means passing tests.

3. Trust the Teachers to Know What They Are Doing

It’s time to trust the practitioners. Let the teachers create instruction that develops critical and creative thinking skills in an effective way and as applicable to situations in the 21st century. Support them with staff development that empowers them to continue developing their skills while investigating project based learning options that work. 

Project based learning (PBL) guarantees an effective application of basic skills that enable the development of critical and creative thinking. PBL options also provide relevant educational experiences that motivate students to withstand the rigor involved in higher-level thinking tasks. The activities are social in a productive way so students and teachers love them, and administrators and policy makers enjoy the positive feedback and outcomes.

4. Invest  in Technology and Create 5-Year Upgrade Plans

There are as many reasons to use technology as not, but talk about a motivator. Students love it. The grumbling stops when technology is involved, and teachers use it to effectively manage time and access to student data. It's costly, but it's possible to provide schools with quality equipment.

For examples of innovative ways to use technology in the classroom, and for alternatives to the lecture-based, sage-on-the-stage approaches to teaching, read the article "The Flipped Mobile Classroom: Learning 'Upside-Down'" on Edutopia. 

5. Listen to Advice from Business Professionals

Yavor Ivanovich, Founder of Xenium, asserts that entrepreneurs need to focus on being effective rather than on being efficient because "few of us can be efficient for a long period of time."

While Ivanov in his article "Habits of Successful Entrepreneurs" targets business professionals, his ideas examine the connection between quality and quantity, where a focus on effectiveness ensures that products can be efficiently measured in a qualitative way.

---and more of this is needed in education today.

As Ivanov says: "Focus on being effective and do one thing, but do the right one. Then do it well. Then go for efficiency. Repeat!"

Think-and-Take Mini-Lesson #4

"Consider and Imagine Alternatives"

Lesson from GoTeachGo

Critical Thinking - The Complete Starter Guide - All Grade Levels

Available on Teacher's Pay Teachers 
Each of these mini-lessons is preparing students for the critical thinking skills they will need to use in Project-Based Learning Units of study. They make great openers to read kids for class.

You teach students to find evidence to support their opinions or assertions all of the time. But when you teach them to analyze, examine, and question how others arrived at the conclusions they made, their understanding deepens and new insights are achieved. Remind your students that each day they are going to practice skills that smart thinkers use to make good decisions and solve problems. Then use each 
mini-lesson as a bell-ringer, and wake your class up to a deeper level of learning. Tell your students these skills are called critical thinking skills, and remind them smart thinkers use them every day.

The Mental Checklist of all five skills will be used each week as reference in each mini-lesson. 

• Looking for Evidence
• Making Connections
• Point of View
• Considering and Imagining Alternatives
• Considering Significance

Procedures

1. Write on the board the objective: Yesterday you learned about the thinking skill "Point of View". Today our learning outcomes are to begin developing the critical thinking skill of "Considering and Imagining Alternatives" and participate in activities where you examine alternatives to situations and you imagine your own alternatives to others. (You can word this your way).

2.  Show students the Mental Checklist on the ELMO or SmartBoard. Review with students the five critical thinking skills, and remind them they will be practicing and learning 1 new skill each day.

3. Introduce the new thinking skill with an all class discussion.
Start with a whole class discussion. Ask these questions and encourage responses with specific examples.
--What does it mean to be open-minded?
--Are you open-minded?
--What do you do that shows you are open-minded?

4. Assign students to groups of four. Distribute 1 sheet of chart paper per group. Tell students to draw a large T-Chart on the paper. Have students write label the first column with "Agree" and the other column with "Disagree". Then have them title the chart 
"You think school uniforms are a good idea". 
--Remind students that the point of the exercise is to understand alternative opinions and outlooks.

5. Instruct students to complete the T-Chart  as a group. They list specific reasons why they agree or disagree with the opinion. 

6. Students analyze their opinions and write two statements that show they understand the opposing viewpoint.
--Have students use the following sentence stems to help them understand the pattern, or have the stems as a reference to come up with their own sentences. 

Example: 

One statement that shows agreement:
We agree that school uniforms are a good idea because-------------------. While I understand your point that _____________________, We don't agree with the alternative because ______________.

One statement that shows the alternative:
Ww don't agree that school uniforms are a good idea because-------------------. While I understand your point that _____________________, We think _________________is a better alternative because ______________.

7. Ask students the following question and choose as many students as want 

to share. 

---What did you learn about considering and imagining alternatives? 

---How hard was it to come up with an alternative to your own opinion? What most did you learn about your own ability to be open-minded?

8. End the lesson by having students write a paragraph. Have them write about the questions discussed in class. Remind them they are to write about what they learned about the skill of "Considering and Imagining Alternatives". Perhaps they can describe experiences when they were open-minded and how they felt about it---good or bad. How did this cooperation affect the outcome of the project?

Be sure to walk around as students are writing, and observe their responses while prompting them for specific details where needed.

9. Collect paragraphs from students who want you to share what they have written, and put them in one stack. Put the others in a second stack. Assure students whose paragraphs you will read that you will not read aloud their names unless they have let you know it is okay to do so.

10. On Grading: You can collect them and count them as participation points for daily grades, and have students file them in their writing portfolios daily. Then they can revisit them each week to monitor their understanding. Or you can let students keep them as a reminder of what they are learning throughout the week, and have them turn the paragraphs in each week or file them weekly and turn them all in at the end of each quarter. No matter how you assess these paragraphs, you will have gotten the students thinking about their thinking.

And that's the objective!

Next Week's Lesson:    “Considering Significance”

Be sure to visit TeachersPayTeachers to examine lots of great PBL units of study.

Recommended Reading: "Authentic Assessment Benefits"

5 Ways Project Based Learning Enables Intelligent Thinking

Students want to learn. Active participation motivates them to engage in the type of mental rigor required to learn. Project Based Learning (PBL) provides relevant opportunities that combine this innate desire to learn with the type of active participation that motivates students to ask the higher-level questions of how and why they arrived at their findings.

In short---PBL activities require students to think about what they are learning in an intelligent way.

The Gist of Project Based Learning (PBL)

1. More doing and less sitting and listening.
Students go beyond the hands-on as a means of production into the hands-in doing the actual work. They have to think about what they are doing, and they start asking questions that lead to greater understandings.

2. Collaborative / team building activities
Students learn to listen, analyze, and evaluate varied perspectives, while tolerance and social skills develop in the process. 

3. Options for differentiated learning  through varied perspectives
Students offer autonomous participation in groups by bringing with them varied perspectives for analysis and insight. This type of examination also develops verbal communication skills as well as skills in persuasion.

4. Relevant applications of skills learned to real world situations
Students work hand-in-hand with real world situations---professionals building models, raising community awareness, or collaborating with scientists, community coordinators, and the like, in real studies.

5. Emphasizes the use of critical and creative thinking
Students engage in using critical thinking skills to make decisions and solve problems while in the creative process of looking for ways to do so.

Point of View, Varied Perspectives, Insightful Discoveries, and PBL

This week’s think-and-take lesson is on the critical thinking skill of point of view. A greater understanding of a larger problem, topic, or situation comes from examining things from various perspectives. Think of the fable The Blind Men and The Elephant.  Each blind man was able to describe the one section of the object (elephant) by touch, but none of them could tell what the object was until they combined their findings. They analyzed, synthesized, and by making connections, they discovered something new---or at least something that none of them had thought of on their own.

Or consider the story with the opposite outcome:  The Six Blind Men and China. All six men had their own perspective, but none would listen to the other, so all of them left China never really understanding the country at all.

The point---Learning how to use critical thinking skills enables intelligent thinking.

• Encourage your students to examine varied perspectives as an intelligent way to learn.
• Incorporate Project Based Learning into your instruction, and your students will thrive.

Think-and-Take Mini-Lesson #3

"Point of View"

Lesson from GoTeachGo

Critical Thinking - The Complete Starter Guide - All Grade Levels

Available on Teacher's Pay Teachers 
Each of these mini-lessons is preparing students for the critical thinking skills they will need to use in Project-Based Learning Units of study. They make great openers to read kids for class.

You teach students to find evidence to support their opinions or assertions all of the time. But when you teach them to analyze, examine, and question how others arrived at the conclusions they made, their understanding deepens and new insights are achieved. Remind your students that each day they are going to practice skills that smart thinkers use to make good decisions and solve problems. Then use each 
mini-lesson as a bell-ringer, and wake your class up to a deeper level of learning. Tell your students these skills are called critical thinking skills, and remind them smart thinkers use them every day.

Other suggestions: Use the first week of instruction as an introduction to all 5 skills, teaching one per day; and revisit the skills, focusing on one per week for more intensive practice.

The Mental Checklist of all five skills will be used each week as reference in each mini-lesson. 

• Looking for Evidence
• Making Connections
• Point of View
• Considering Alternatives
• Considering Significance

Procedures

1. Write on the board the objective: Yesterday you learned about the thinking skill "Making Connections". Today our learning outcomes are to begin developing the critical thinking skill of "Point of View" and participate in activities where you listen to and examine how other people see things and what other people think about things. (You can word this your way).

2.  Show students the Mental Checklist on the ELMO or SmartBoard. Review with students the five critical thinking skills, and remind them they will be practicing and learning 1 new skill each day.

3. Assign students to groups of 4. Distribute a sentence strip to each group with a character type on each strip. Then distribute to each group another strip with a scenario written on it. 

4. Instruct students to complete the activity as a group. They will look at the character their group was assigned, read the scenario as well, and discuss how they think their character sees or feels about what is happening in the scenario. Each groups agrees on one perspective and all groups share with the class.

Example: 

Character - Mom 

Scenario - A boy looking over his shoulder starts to pedal his bike faster.

Questions:

What might this mother be thinking?

How might she respond? Use words to describe feelings.

Why would she think this way? 
What is your group's conclusion?
How did you decide on this perspective? (Encourage specific examples)

5. Ask students the following question and choose as many students as want 

to share. 

---"What did you learn about the way others may think about things? 

---"What perspective did you think your character had about the scenario? Did your group members listen to you? How did it affect the outcome of your groups decision? Did you agree or disagree with your group members? What did you learn about the way you listen when others are sharing what they think?

6. Discuss with students what they learned. 

---What did you learn in this lesson?  Did you discover anything you already do that uses the skill of "Point of View"? Did we meet our lesson outcomes? What makes you say that?

---Consider asking students this question: How did thinking about the way other people see things or experience things help you understand why you made your decision?

7. End the lesson by having students write a paragraph. Have them write about the questions discussed in class. Remind them they are to write about what they learned about the skill of "Point of View". Perhaps they can describe experiences when they had a point of view to share with their team and no one listened. How did it affect the outcome of the project? Or maybe they had success and all points of view were considered by team members who shared. How did this cooperation affect the outcome of the project? They can also write answers to any of the discussion questions as well.

Be sure to walk around as students are writing, and observe their responses while prompting them for specific details where needed.

8. Collect paragraphs from students who want you to share what they have written, and put them in one stack. Put the others in a second stack. Assure students whose paragraphs you will read that you will not read aloud their names unless they have let you know it is okay to do so.

9. On Grading: You can collect them and count them as participation points for daily grades, and have students file them in their writing portfolios daily. Then they can revisit them each week to monitor their understanding. Or you can let students keep them as a reminder of what they are learning throughout the week, and have them turn the paragraphs in each week or file them weekly and turn them all in at the end of each quarter. No matter how you assess these paragraphs, you will have gotten the students thinking about their thinking.

And that's the objective!

Next Week's Lesson:    “Consider Alternatives”

And if you would like to examine PBL units of study, please visit TeachersPayTeachers.

Recommended Reading for this Week:

Introducing Project-Based Learning

Critical Thinking, Common Core Standards and the Creativity Connection

Common Core Standards---a contentious phrase of varied interpretations and concerns---some valid, many misinformed, and most misunderstood. 

When examining these standards separate from some politically biased curriculum choices and inhibiting administrative micro-management styles, they reveal harmless, unbiased skill sets organized for use as a framework for academic consistency.

Most important, the core of these skills develops higher-level thinking. Skim through them. You'll find at every level a focus on higher-level thinking skills.

The Common Core Standards (CCSS) is not content curriculum. It is a scope and sequence, or a set of skill mastery expectations aligned grade to grade. Remember those outlined and developmentally appropriate skill sets articulated by grade level to eliminate gaps in learning?

The scope and sequence structure of the CCSS is an old idea with a new name and a national purpose. Instead of varied skill sets that differ from textbook to textbook, CCSS sets are national norms. They are ways to narrow gaps in learning on a national scale, and they are a direct result of the need to improve higher level thinking skills in students nationwide. CCSS allow variety in curriculum choice and empower teachers to think and be creative in choosing and developing the curriculum that they use to meet their students’ academic needs.

And teachers who think and create inspire students to think and innovate.

• Teaching students skills in isolation improves students' knowledge base, but teaching them how to analyze what these skills mean to their lives improves their knowledge level---and applying these thinking skills to relevant learning projects requires them to synthesize and inspires them to innovate.

• Common Core Standards support this premise, and Project Based Learning (PBL) provides curriculum enabling this process. Add quality staff development, and watch learning improve.

• Students must move beyond a basic knowledge level to be competitive in the 21st century. The development of higher level thinking requires students to think critically, and in using these skills, they become intelligent thinkers. They learn to make sense of messy creative processes and generate useful, inventive, and helpful ideas.

Making Connections or Accessing Prior Knowledge

Think-and-Take Mini-Lesson #2
"Making Connections"

Lesson from GoTeachGo

Critical Thinking - The Complete Starter Guide - All Grade Levels

Available on Teacher's Pay Teachers

Last week, the think-and-take mini-lesson focused on examining the skill of looking for evidence. The questions about thinking involved asking how they arrived at their conclusions. This week's mini-lesson focuses on making connections. 

The Mental Checklist of all five skills will be used each week as reference in each mini-lesson as will the introduction. 

• Looking for Evidence
• Making Connections
• Points of View
• Considering Alternatives
• Considering Significance

Introduction:

You teach students to find evidence to support their opinions or assertions all of the time. But when you teach them to analyze and question how they arrived at the conclusions they made, their understanding deepens. Tell your students that each day they are going to practice skills that smart thinkers use to make good decisions and solve problems. Then use each mini-lesson as a bell-ringer, and wake your class up to a deeper level of learning. Tell your students these skills are called critical thinking skills, and remind them smart thinkers use them every day.

Other suggestions: Use the first week of instruction as an introduction to all 5 skills, teaching one per day; and revisit the skills, focusing on one per week for more intensive practice.

Procedures

1. Write on the board the objective: Yesterday learned about the thinking skill "look for evidence". Today our learning outcomes are to begin developing the critical thinking skill of "making connections" and participate in activities where you use what you already know to draw conclusions and understand causes. (You can word this your way).

2.  Show students the Mental Checklist on the ELMO or SmartBoard. Review with students the five critical thinking skills, and remind them they will be practicing and learning 1 new skill each day.

3. Have each student take a sheet of notebook paper and fold into three sections and create a chart like a K-W-L chart, but instead, label the sections K-W-H for What your know- What you would like to know - How you would go about finding answers to your questions.

4. Put a picture of the solar system an ELMO or SmartBoard. Have students look at the image and write something they know about in the "K"section on their chart. Discuss what they know. Next have them write what they would like to find out in the "W" section of their chart. Then have them write ideas for how they would go about finding answers to their questions.

5. Place a large piece of chart paper in the front of the room with a copy of the solar system you showed on the the ELMO or SmartBoard. Hand-out three Post-it notes to each student and tell s/he to write one item from each section of their chart to add to the class chart. Students then put their Post-it notes in the corresponding sections on the class chart. Choose three students to read the class findings. Ask for students to share how they used what they knew to decide what more they wanted to learn about the solar system, and to determine how they might find out.

6. Ask students the following question and choose as many students as want to share. 

---"What prior knowledge did you use to decide what more you want to learn about the solar system?" 

 ---"What prior knowledge did you use to determine how you might find out what you want know?"

7. Ask the following questions and encourage specific responses: 

---"Why do you say that?"

---"How do you know?" 

8. Discuss with students what they learned. 

---What did you learn in this lesson?  Did you discover anything you already do that uses the skill of making connections? Did we meet our lesson outcomes? What makes you say that?

---Consider asking students this question: How did thinking about how you arrived at your 

conclusions help you understand why you made your decision?

9. End the lesson by having students write a paragraph. Have them write about the questions discussed in class. Remind them they are to write about what they learned about the skill of Making Connections. Perhaps they can describe another time they made a connection to something that helped them learn.

Be sure to walk around as students are writing, and observe their responses while prompting them for specific details where needed.

10. Collect paragraphs from students who want you to share what they have written, and put them in one stack. Put the others in a second stack. Assure students whose paragraphs you will read that you will not read aloud their names unless they have let you know it is okay to do so.

11. On Grading: You can collect them and count them as participation points for daily grades, and have students file them in their writing portfolios daily. Then they can revisit them each week to monitor their understanding. Or you can let students keep them as a reminder of what they are learning throughout the week, and have them turn the paragraphs in each week or file them weekly and turn them all in at the end of each quarter. No matter how you assess these paragraphs, you will have gotten the students thinking about their thinking.

And that's the objective!

Next Week's Lesson:    “Points of View”

And if you would like to examine PBL units of study, please visit TeachersPayTeachers.

Recommended Reading for this Week:

Young Minds in Critical Condition

Written by Sheri Rose, Owner of Precision Copyediting, LLC. 

Sheri is a champion of common sense and truth, a genuflectory fan of Shakespeare and all things artistic, a tenacious advocate for the practice of wordplay and rhetorical twists of phrase---Thomas Pain's sidekick; Chaucer's greatest fan. She also enjoys cruising her property in her 4-wheeler to stay in touch with her inner child, and she enjoys spoiling her husband and her dogs. While Sheri welcomes the challenge of writing and editing a variety of content on different topics, she has spent her life in education, and she loves to write about it.

Teachers Who Think Inspire Students to Think

It's summer time. School's out. Your classroom is closed. 

Finally---you’re on vacation.

But if you're like most teachers, you're already thinking about how to begin the next school year, and with each new experience you wonder, "How can I use this in my classroom?

You may be out of school for the summer, but your mind is still in the game.

You're a thinker---

• looking for evidence/drawing conclusions; 
• activating your prior knowledge/making connections; 
• examining things from varied perspectives;
• considering  new instructional approaches; 
• evaluating your year
• reflecting on the significance of what you do.

Intelligent Thinkers Question Everything

Thinking and questioning your thoughts comes automatically for you because you have been doing it for a while; but, students need to be taught these questioning techniques explicitly, because when they learn them, they arrive at well-reasoned decisions and solutions.

Critical thinking skills are the constant that runs throughout all decision-making and problem-solving situations, and knowing how to use them will enable your students to keep up with the pace of in the 21st century.

So sit back and read this blog.

Enjoy the think-and-take activities that help your students explore, learn, and apply the critical thinking habits of smart thinkers, and inspire each of them to become a life-long thinker and learner like you.

Metacognition --- Thinking About Thinking

The think-and-take ideas shared in this blog are mini-lessons from Project Based Learning (PBL) samples that show how to teach students to become intelligent thinkers. Each week, for the next five weeks, one metacognitive / critical thinking skill will be examined. Below is a Mental Checklist you can use with students when beginning each lesson that gets students thinking about their thinking.

• Looking for Evidence
• Making Connections
• Points of View
• Considering Alternatives
• Considering Significance

Think-and-Take Mini-Lesson #1  -  "Looking for Evidence"

Lesson from GoTeachGo

Critical Thinking - The Complete Starter Guide - All Grade Levels

On Teacher's Pay Teachers

You teach students to find evidence to support their opinions or assertions all of the time. But when you teach them to analyze and question how they arrived at the conclusions they made, their understanding deepens.

Tell your students that each day they are going to practice skills that smart thinkers use to make good decisions and solve problems. Then use each mini-lesson as a bell-ringer, and wake your class up to a deeper level of learning. Tell your students these skills are called critical thinking skills, and remind them that smart thinkers use them every day.

Other suggestions: Use the first week of instruction as an introduction to all 5 skills, teaching one per day; and revisit the skills, focusing on one per week for more intensive practice. 

Procedures

1. Write on the board the objective: Today our learning outcomes are to begin developing the critical thinking skill of looking for evidence and show an understanding of how we arrived at our conclusions. (You can word this your way).

2. Show students the Mental Checklist on the ELMO or SmartBoard. Tell students these are the five critical thinking skills, and they will be practicing and learning one new skill each day.

3, Put the graph on an ELMO or SmartBoard. Tell them that today they are looking for evidence to support their findings.

Procedures

1. Write on the board the objective: Today our learning outcomes are to begin developing the critical thinking skill of looking for evidence and show an understanding of how we arrived at our conclusions. (You can word this your way).

2. Show students the Mental Checklist on the ELMO or SmartBoard. Tell students these are the five critical thinking skills, and they will be practicing and learning one new skill each day.

3. Put the graph on an ELMO or SmartBoard. Tell them that today they are looking for evidence to support their findings.

• Encourage them to answer questions and write responses using specific numerical data from the chart.

4. Ask students the following question and choose students who want to share. 

• What sport do most students like to play? 

5. Follow-up with these questions and encourage specific responses. 

• Why do you say that?
• How do you know? 

6. End the lesson by having students write a paragraph about what they learned. Ask them this and prompt a discussion as follows:

• What did you learn in this lesson? You might write about being introduced to critical thinking. 
• Did you discover anything you already do that uses the skill of looking for evidence?

7. Consider asking students this question:

• How did thinking about how you arrived at your conclusions help you understand why you made your decision?

Other questions to for students to think about when writing responses: 

• Are you wondering why you are learning about thinking and practicing thinking strategies? Express your ideas in a paragraph.
• Are you wondering about the other thinking skills on the Mental Checklist? Why? What would you like to know?

Be sure to walk around as students are writing, and observe their responses while prompting them for specific details where needed.

Collect paragraphs from students who want you to share what they have written, and put them in one stack. Put the others in a second stack. Assure students whose paragraphs you will read that you will not read aloud their names unless they have let you know it is okay to do so.

On Grading

• You can collect student responses, count them as participation points for daily grades and have students file them in their writing portfolios daily. Then they can revisit them each week to monitor their understanding.
• Or you can let students keep them as a reminder of what they are learning throughout the week, and have them turn the paragraphs in each week or file them weekly and turn them all in at the end of each quarter.

No matter how you assess these paragraph responses, you will have gotten the students thinking about their thinking.

And that's the objective!

Next Week's Lesson:    “Making Connections”

And if you would like to examine PBL units of study, please visit TeachersPayTeachers.

Recommended Reading for this Week:

Integrating the 16 Habits of Mind

Written by Sheri Rose, Owner of Precision Copyediting, LLC. 

Sheri is a champion of common sense and truth, a genuflectory fan of Shakespeare and all things artistic, a tenacious advocate for the practice of wordplay and rhetorical twists of phrase---Thomas Pain's sidekick; Chaucer's greatest fan. She also enjoys cruising her property in her 4-wheeler to stay in touch with her inner child, and she enjoys spoiling her husband and her dogs. While Sheri welcomes the challenge of writing and editing a variety of content on different topics, she has spent her life in education, and she loves to write about it.