Critical Thinking Skills for 3rd Graders-Shawna

Introduction

It is report card time. My computer grade book has the Hawaiian General Learner Outcomes for each of my third grade students. These are the over-arching goals of a standards based education. Are the students self-directed in their learning? By this time of the year I know my students’ behaviors very well and even as a scour my grade books for notes and evidence of such, this is a relatively easy grade to give. I have those students who consistently make goals for their own learning and reflect on that learning, turn in assignments and are responsible with their time. They are independent and thrive with instruction followed by work periods where they are must regulate their own behavior. Yet the next grade I must give is ironically more complicated. I must mark for each of my students a grade on a continuum of consistently to rarely, whether they are complex thinkers. We have a rubric given to us by the state to measure this goal and as a grade level team we have attempted to create a child-friendly rubric in order to teach this. Yet still I struggle with defining the thinking level of each of my students. What does it mean to be a complex thinker? How do you gauge whether complex thinking has occurred? Curiosity, skepticism, the need to question are beginning indicators. Beyond that students learn to analyze, evaluate and ultimately self-regulate. What level of complex thinking can I bring my own third graders to? I have been pondering about exactly what I want to impart to my students. I have a year to leave my mark on these future citizens. We need a society that doesn’t take things for face value, that delves deeper to solve problems, that doesn’t always believe what is being portrayed in the media. I have thought about Doris Lessings’ article, “Group Minds” many times since I first read it in college. She argues that it is human nature, not just periods of time like Germany during the Holocaust, to follow the group opinion even when there is evidence contrary. She says that it has been noticed that there is ten percent of a given population who are the natural leaders that will follow their own independent thinking and opinions. And I see this in my own classroom. The few children, eyes sparkling, who will politely disagree with the teacher and the rest of their peers when something contradicts the obvious. I have desired to foster this and to have this modeled for the children who never quite seem to evaluate what is presented to them. How do you teach children to think for themselves without teaching them to be disrespectful? How do you teach kids to question ideas when they have been expected from day one to give rote, memorized answers?

Literature Review

Basically, thinking is an invisible, abstract process that needs to be made visible so that children can learn to extend their thoughts. How can that which is invisible be made visible? Many researchers have been trying to answer this question. Some suggest that modeling, drawing, writing and other forms of art can bring make the invisible visible. Once students become aware of their thinking, teachers can use that knowledge to scaffold lessons to stretch their students ability to think critically. So what is critical thinking? "Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action" (http://www.critical thinking.org)
Brain research supports the explicit teaching of critical thinking skills ( http://online.learningbridges.com/OC/Course.aspx). Teachers can teach students to be metacognitive. Metacognition means to think about your thinking and to learn to think better. Sometimes young students need concrete experiences in order to understand this abstract concept. According to McGregor (2007) “First impressions are critical to a learner. When introduced to a new thinking strategy, the learner instinctively asks, ‘Is this interesting? Do I need or want to know this? Can I succeed in thinking this way?’ A concrete launching lesson helps students reply with a resounding yes to each of these questions.” McGregor goes on to outline in her book, “Comprehension Connections” ways to make these thinking strategies concrete and accessible to children.
Critical thinking should be taught explicitly, and students must learn to monitor their own thinking. Benjamin Bloom (1956) created a hierachy of thinking skills referred to as Bloom‘s Taxonomy. From lowest level of skill to highest he rated types of thinking as: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Knowledge refers to information that can be recalled simply through rote learning. Further down the list is where higher level thinking occurs. Analysis is where students classify information by parts. Synthesis occurs when a learner combines the parts of message and assembles into something of his/her own. Evaluation is when a thinker presents and defends judgments or opinions based on a set of criteria. As a teacher, the level of questioning I present to a student will directly effect the level of responses. If I ask simple recall questions than I shall get answers that are low level thinking skills. If I structure my questions as more open-ended where there isn‘t necessarily a right or wrong answer students will have to respond by applying their background knowledge and refine their understanding.
If I want to teach my students to think critically, I need to be able to measure their development of critical thinking skills. According to Stiggins, Rubel, and Quellmalz (1988) the way to measure thinking skills is similar to the way teachers measure all other skills: oral questioning, pencil/paper tests, and performance assessments. The key to using traditional means to measure nontraditional skills is to watch the key words in which tests are phrased. Low level thinking skills such as recall can be identified by keys words such as define, identify, name, list and when. Higher level questions such as for the skill of inference will have key words such as predict, anticipate and infer. If a student is asked to evaluate, key words would incluse judge, assess, argue, debate and critique. As an educator, I can change my students’ thinking by being conscious of changing the level of questioning I engage them in.













Shawna’s Notes:



-Mosiac of Thought, , project zero references, developing minds, research papers, Anderson + Krathwohl updated blooms taxonomy



Methodology

Strategies I would like to use:
Debbie Miller, Comprehension Connections, Explicit teaching of Critical Thinking Skills


Data collection:
Complex thinking rubrics to grade student reflections--students opinions of books (dra question), student self reflections

Anecdotal notes in green student notebooks--cooked notes as well

Digital recordings of students book talks --beginning, middle, end

Students thinking charts --use of a lot of graphic organizers and systematic teaching of how to link new thinking to schema
Report card grades??? Complex thinking???

Exit passes?

Student Interviews?

Students tests with higher level thinking questions



HSA test scores of test group students fall data vs. spring