Thinking & Learning

Professor David Perkins from Harvard University uses the following analogy to describe learning in many classrooms; very often learning is structured like a neat garden where everything is trimmed and in its place. He believes for authentic learning to occur; the garden should have plenty of wild growth and be spreading. 

Watching a young child’s natural curiosity in taking in new things through all of their senses is intriguing and wonderful. They are learning instinctively. They tend to have one way to think and one way to learn. When they arrive at school, their modes of learning need to be expanded and explained to them so that they can learn how to learn in a new variety of ways. To encourage our students to think in a stimulated ‘wild’ manner rather than in a subdued ‘tame’ way as Professor Perkins suggests, it is essential for us to provide sound scaffolding for their thinking. 

Explicitly teaching the Habits of Mind enables students to change their thinking for different situations when they need to. Having the capacity to think about their thinking allows for creative and critical thinking. It also makes thinking ‘visible’ in classrooms for students, through recognising when they and their classmates are thinking in different ways. 

Adopting a structured school wide approach to teaching Habits of Mind as an 'all the time' practise, will ensure that all students’ thinking will be enhanced. A suggested way to do this is to select two Habits of Mind each week and make them the focus in learning and teaching in all classes; this will embed them in students’ thinking dispositions. Alternatively, every week each Key Learning Area can focus on a different two Habits of Mind in their classes. 

To support teachers in teaching Habits of Mind, there is a detailed lesson plan to use in the Lesson Plans section of this site. 

Explicitly teaching different Multiple Intelligences and Learning Styles will enable students to build their learning power as Professor Guy Claxton from Bristol University describes it. Once again, a structured school wide approach will ensure all students learn how to learn strategically by using their personal best ways. In the Lesson Plan section of this site there are detailed lesson plans to support teachers in teaching Multiple Intelligences and Learning Styles and Strategies, There is also a Lesson Plan addressing Bloom’s Taxonomy of Thinking, Thinking Tools and The Five E’s of Learning . 

Our students are not 'little adults'. Their brain circuitry is not complete and as such they haven’t the capacity to consistently make balanced decisions and think through issues without support for their thinking. We can effectively provide this support by introducing an array of thinking tools and strategies for our students to use in their learning. By assisting them to control their thinking, we can establish the launch pad necessary for them make meaningful new connections in their learning. 

Included in the planners and on the website in the student, parent and teacher sections are excellent thinking tools which will benefit your students thinking. In a new section of the website,Online Interactive Resources, there is an array of interactive living, learning and thinking resources which students can type directly into and then save. These include Study Techniques and Approaches, Values for Life and soon to be included Thinking Tools and Strategies.

These resources include:

• Pluses, Minuses, Interesting (PMI)
• Know, What, How, Learnt (KWHL)
• Y Diagram
• Six Thinking Hats
• Think, Pair, Share
• Glad, Mad, Sad
• The Hand – Who, What, Where, When, Why, How
• Urgency versus Importance; Beating Procrastination
• Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) 

There are thinking tools appropriate for every learning situation. Time spent researching them and incorporating them in learning and teaching will enable our students to link their thinking and learning and extend to new and exciting frontiers. Google “Visible Thinking” this site will provide further thinking tools to use with students.

 “The problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.” Albert Einstein