1. Introducing Critical and Creative Thinking

2. Agenda Using polls The importance of Critical and Creative Thinking
What is in the curriculum?
Questions
Planning for implementation
Relationship to other curriculum areas
Progressing learning
Whole school planning
Assessing

3. to survive and thrive in a radically altered economy.”
“In the new work order, young people will need excellent enterprise skills – digital literacy, critical thinking, creativity, financial savvy, flexibility, the ability to collaborate, self sufficiency –
to survive and thrive in a radically altered economy.”
The Age, 3 May 2016

4. “For unless students are creative, curious, resilient and resourceful they will neither be prepared for a lifetime of learning new things nor be able to thrive in a fast changing world.”
The Age, 15 March 2016

5. Most effective strategies
Months' impact is estimated in terms of the additional months' progress you can expect students to make as a result of an approach being used in school, taking average student progress over a year as a benchmark.
For example, the ‘feedback’ strand in the Toolkit shows that improving the quality of feedback provided to students has an average impact of eight months. This means that students in a class where high quality feedback is provided can be expected to make, on average, eight months more progress over the course of a year compared to another class of students who are performing at the same level at the start of the year.

6. What is meta-cognition and self-regulation?
Meta-cognition and self-regulation approaches aim to help learners think about their own learning more explicitly. This is usually by teaching students specific strategies to set goals, and monitor and evaluate their own academic development. Self-regulation means managing one’s own motivation towards learning. The intention is often to give students a repertoire of strategies to choose from during learning activities.
... These strategies are usually more effective when taught in collaborative groups so learners can support each other and make their thinking explicit through discussions.
Source: Australian Teaching and Learning Toolkit

7. What should you consider when teaching meta-cognition and self regulation?
Teaching approaches which encourage learners to plan, monitor and evaluate their learning have very high potential, but require careful implementation.
Have you taught students explicit strategies on how to plan, monitor and evaluate specific aspects of their learning? Have you given them opportunities to use them with support and then independently?
Have you asked students to:
identify the different ways that they could plan (general strategies) and then how best to approach a particular task (specific technique)?
consider where the task might go wrong?
identify the key steps for keeping the task on track?
consider how they would improve their approach to the task if they completed it again?
Source: Australian Teaching and Learning Toolkit

8. Structure Strands Achievement standards Questions and Possibilities
Explore the nature of questioning and a range of processes and techniques to develop ideas and possibilities
Reasoning
Explore how to compose, analyse and evaluate arguments and reasoning
Meta-Cognition
Explore the range of strategies to understand, manage and reflect on thinking and learning processes
Achievement standards
The first achievement standard is Foundation to Level 2 and then at Levels 4, 6, 8 and 10.
“Towards Foundation Level” (Levels A-D) for students with disabilities is included

9. Implementing the capabilities
The Victorian Curriculum F–10 includes capabilities, which are a set of discrete knowledge and skills that can and should be taught explicitly.
It is expected that the skills and knowledge defined in the capabilities will be developed, practised, deployed and demonstrated by students in and through their learning across the curriculum.

10. How and where to teach this?
An example
Content description:
Examine how different kinds of questions can be used to identify and clarify information, ideas and possibilities.
Achievement standard (part of):
Students apply questioning as a tool to focus and expand thinking.
Possibilities –
Where will it be:
introduced/developed
practised
deployed
demonstrated

11. How and where to teach this?
Year XXX
Introduced/
developed
Practised
Deployed
Demonstrated
English
Maths
The Arts
History
Geography
Civics and Citizenship
Economics and Business
Languages
Health and Physical Education
Science
Digital Technologies
Design and Technologies

13. Planning for progression in learning
Examine how different kinds of questions can be used to identify and clarify information, ideas and possibilities
What will you teach to progress the student’s learning?
Consider how to approach and use questions that have different elements, including factual, temporal and conceptual elements
By the end of Level 6, students apply questioning as a tool to focus or expand thinking. 
What will the students be able to demonstrate as they are progressing towards the standards?
By the end of Level 8, students prioritise the elements of a question and justify their selection.

14. Analysing whole school planning
What are the implications when English is used as the main vehicle for teaching critical and creative thinking?
How do you build consistency for the students?
What are the implications for sequencing the concepts?
Could you “over teach” the content?

15. Assessing
If we articulate the learning progression with standards, we can teach it and assess it

16. Key messages
Critical and creative thinking processes are fundamental to effective learning across the curriculum.
This Victorian Curriculum F-10 design assumes that knowledge and skills are transferrable across the curriculum and therefore are not duplicated. For example, where skills and knowledge such as asking questions, evaluating evidence and drawing conclusions are defined in Critical and Creative Thinking, these are not duplicated in other learning areas such as History or Health and Physical Education. 

17. Key messages
Explicit teaching of and the application of thinking skills enables students to develop an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the processes they can employ whenever they encounter both the familiar and unfamiliar, to break ineffective habits and build on successful ones, building a capacity to manage their thinking.
Thinking that is productive, purposeful and intentional is at the centre of effective learning and the creation of new knowledge, with the progressive development of knowledge about thinking and the practice of using thinking strategies fostering students’ motivation for, and management of, their own learning.

19. Location / Contact details
VCAA websites
Victorian Curriculum F-10
Victorian Curriculum F-10 Resources and Support
Curriculum Planning Resources:
Queries
Sharon Foster – –