1. Thinking Toolbox

2. Outline What skills will our children need for their future?
What are thinking skills?
School-friendly Thinker’s Keys
Edward de Bono’s Six Hats
Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy
Graphic Organisers

3. A good teacher makes you think even when you don’t want to.
(Fisher, 1998, Teaching Thinking)

4. The students of the future should be able to:
Solve problems
Think creatively
Think critically
Make decisions
Generate new ideas
Analyse information
Plan for the future

5. What is thinking? Thinking is a mental process.
Thinking skills are the intellectual skills such as the skills of memorizing and recalling facts and information, clarifying, making analysis, generating ideas, making decisions, problem solving, and planning.
Different authors of thinking skills have proposed different models and approaches in teaching thinking skills.

6. Critical thinking
Critical thinking refers to reasonable, reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do. Critical thinkers try to be aware of their own biases, to be objective and logical.

7. Creative thinking
Creative Thinking refers to the ability to form new combinations of ideas to fulfil a need, or to get original or otherwise appropriate results by the criteria of the domain in question.

8. Metacognition
Metacognition refers to awareness and control of one's thinking, including commitment, attitudes and attention. Simply it is the ability to think about one’s own thinking.

9. What does the Thinking Classroom look like?
There are significant opportunities for higher-level thinking, complex problem solving and/or open-ended response. Thinking skills are explicitly taught in an authentic and meaningful context.

10. Convergent and Divergent Thinking
In convergent thinking, the thinking skills are focused on a particular thing, problem, or issue. For example: "The tyre had a nail and some scratches. What caused the tyre to puncture?" Here, we are looking for evidence about what caused the tyre to puncture
In divergent thinking, we want to generate many, varied and new ideas. For example; "What are the use of old tyres?"

11. School Friendly Thinker’s Keys
Question Key
Picture Key
Reverse Listing Key
Construction Key
Interpretation Key
Different Uses Key
What If ? Key
(developed by Tony Ryan)

12. Benefits of Thinker’s Keys
Easy to use and explain
Familiar object- “unlocking thinking”
Encourage children (and adults) to:
Look at things differently
Think divergently
Think creatively
Brainstorm ideas
Listen to others’ ideas
Share their ideas
Be organised

13. Question Key
Start with an answer and list questions that give that answer.
Eg. Think of questions to give the answer:
Midnight
Seaweed
Christmas
Koalas.
Clowns
Butterflies

14. Picture Key
Draw a simple diagram or squiggle and students work out ways to link it (by finishing the picture) to a specific:
topic
theme
book
celebration, etc.
(N.B. Variation on Ryan’s original Picture Key)

15. Reverse Listing Key
Place words such as cannot, would not, never or not in a sentence.
Eg. Name 10 things that you could not clean.
List 10 things that can not grow
Name 10 things you couldn’t put on a sandwich
Name 10 items you wouldn’t find in a house
List 10 things you would not see at the circus

16. Construction Key
Set up a wide variety of construction problem-solving tasks and use lots of readily available material.
Eg. Build the highest possible self- supporting structure using one sheet of newspaper, sticky tape and a pair of scissors.
Eg. Use the material supplied to:
Build a trap for the Big Bad Wolf
Build a tower for Princess Fiona
Build a house for Shrek
Build a bridge to hold a preschool truck

17. Interpretation Key
Describe an unusual situation and then think of some different explanations for the existence of that situation.
Eg. The butterfly is laughing. Give 3 reasons to explain why.
The clown is crying
The ant is as big as an elephant
The monster is laughing
The monkey is eating potato chips

18. Different Uses Key
List some different uses for items from your topic (emphasis on reusing and recycling).
Eg. Find 10 uses for:
An old clown nose
An empty yoghurt container
An old work book
A broken television
Mum’s old toothbrush
Red Riding Hood’s basket

19. What If? Key
You can ask virtually any What If question. You can use the ideas wheel to record student responses.
Eg. What If:
all cars turned into skateboards?
chocolate was good for you?
mice were as big as elephants?
money did grow on trees?

21. Six Hats Developed by Edward de Bono (1980s) Framework for thinking
Easy to use
Visual and tactile
Involves a variety of thinking
Allows students to separate their thinking
Can be used by individuals, small groups or whole class

22. The purpose behind the use of this tool is to help students to learn to reflect on their thinking and to recognise that different thinking is required in different learning situations.

23. So what are the Six Thinking Hats?
Red: Emotions and feelings
Yellow: Good points and benefits
Black: Problems and caution
White: Thinking about facts and information
Green: Creative and new ideas
Blue: Thinking about thinking

28. How can I use the Six Thinking Hats?
Responding to literature
Problem solving
Brainstorming
Role-play and drama
Visual and creative arts
Play

29. How can I use the Six Thinking Hats?
Responding to literature
Problem solving
Brainstorming
Role-play and drama
Visual and creative arts
Play

32. Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy
Taxonomy of Cognitive Objectives
1950s- developed by Benjamin Bloom
Means of expressing qualitatively different kinds of thinking
Been adapted for classroom use as a planning tool
Continues to be one of the most universally applied models
Provides a way to organise thinking skills into six levels,
from the most basic to the more complex levels of thinking
1990s- Lorin Anderson (former student of Bloom) revisited the taxonomy
As a result, a number of changes were made
(Pohl, 2000, Learning to Think, Thinking to Learn)

34. Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy
Creating
Generating new ideas, products or ways of viewing things
Designing, constructing, planning, producing, inventing
Evaluating
Justifying a decision or course of action
Checking, hypothesising, critiquing, experimenting, judging
Analysing
Breaking information into parts to explore understandings and relationships
Comparing, organising, deconstructing, finding
Applying
Using information in another familiar situation.
Implementing, carrying out, using, executing
Understanding
Explaining ideas or concepts
Interpreting, summarising, paraphrasing, classifying, explaining
Remembering
Recalling information
Recognising, listing, describing, naming, finding

35. Lower-order and Higher-order Thinking Skills
The skills of memorizing and recalling facts or information are the lower order thinking skills as they do not require wide and deep thinking.
Thinking skills such as clarifying, making analysis, generating ideas, making decisions, problem-solving and planning which require wider and deeper thinking are the higher-order thinking skills.

36. “He who learns but does not think is lost.”
(Chinese Proverb)

37. Higher-order Thinking
Critical thinking
Interpreting, testing, judging, justifying, critiquing, testing, concluding, speculating, disputing, evaluating, deciding.
Creative thinking
Hypothesising, designing, reconstructing, creating, modifying, developing, imagining, brainstorming, generating, solving, devising.
Analytical thinking
Comparing, contrasting, relating, choosing, determining, interviewing, identifying, combining, categorising, researching, experimenting, specifying, deducing.

38. Thinking Skills in the Classroom
We have a variety of thinking strategies and approaches to draw from:
· DeBono’s Six Hats
· Tony Ryan’s Thinker’s Keys
· Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences
· Graphic Organisers
· Bloom’s Taxonomy/ Revised Taxonomy
(Just to name a few)

39. These Strategies Can Be Incorporated Into Planning Through:
· Contract activities
· Learning centres/ rotational activities
· Enrichment/ extension tasks
· Small group activities
· Whole class activities
· Diary/ journal writing
· Homework
· Reading program
Across all KLA’s all the time

40. Thinking Skills in a Student Reading Program
Understanding and comprehension are essential to a student’s success with reading (i.e. Interpreting, summarising, comparing, explaining).
BUT higher-order thinking should also play a part.

41. “Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.”
(Albert van Szent- Gyorgyi)

42. Planning Documents
Cater for student’s individual learning styles and multiple intelligences.
Encourage students to construct knowledge for themselves, participate in higher-order thinking and facilitate divergent thinking.
Documents should be simple and include a variety of strategies and approaches.

43. “Smarts” in the Classroom
A multiple intelligence approach is one way we can drive higher-order thinking in the classroom.
Junior E’s Monster Smarts is an example of a multiple intelligence approach to program planning where children have used thinking skills to design, create, interpret and evaluate.
Monster Smarts

44. “Smarts” in the Classroom

47. Investigate a book the Blooming Smarts Way
You could use this matrix in your Reading Program. It lists a number of tasks for students to complete.
They are generic activities organised across all smarts and catering for all levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy that students can select from.

48. Remembering

49. Evaluating

50. Graphic Organisers
Graphic organizers are visual representations of knowledge, concepts or ideas. They are known to help:
* relieve learner boredom
* enhances recall
* provide motivation
* create interest
* clarify information
* assist in organizing thoughts
* promote understanding

52. I use them
In my reading programme,
Camp diaries
Contracts…

59. Resources
These CDs contain many graphic organisers for downloading. Approx $40 ea
The web, free, easily accessible if you are online: eg

65.
showcasing photos for uploading to wikis etc. include music
Can have an education account
Movies connecting children’s learning to real life situations
Cyber safety also “Hectors World”
ideastoinspire.co.uk
Clever ideas to access and download