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