Concept Formation: A Model for Inductive Thinking Here's are the steps for running an inductive lesson based on Hilda Taba's model of Concept Formation. Plus a sample lesson about the Nile River.
Thinking From Anything’s Perspective How a small change, with very little effort on the teacher's part, leads to a delightfully complex task that can will get students thinking.
Concentric Circles – Getting Students to Think Bigger (and Smaller!) This differentiation technique is called "Concentric Circles". You use it to move students up and down the ladder of abstraction, applying a single idea in multiple contexts.
Get Students Out Of Creative Ruts Sometimes students need a little structure to force them into a more creative state of mind. Here are a few ideas for interesting writing prompts
Thinking Hats and Lunar Survival Skills How Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats helped me solve a problem with my favorite group discussion task.
Synthesize: Make A Change, Explain The Effect I love the term "Synthesize" from the classic Bloom's Taxonomy, but it can be hard to know exactly what it looks like. My favorite "Synthesize Recipe" is to ask students to make a change to existing content and then explain the effects of that change to me.
Phrases to Open Up a Discussion (Lunar Survival Skills Part 2) One of my favorite open-ended, creative activities becomes even better with careful phrasing on my part. These three questions will help you be the facilitator of a discussion, rather than the authority.
Which One is Not Like The Others? When we ask kids "which one is not like the others", our cleverest students love to find ways to pick the non-obvious answer. So why not use this as a framework for pushing students deeper into our content.
Create A Holiday Take students beyond the decorations and ask them to identify what a holiday reveals about a culture's values. Then, push them further as they develop their own holidays.
Why I don’t include “Explain Why” in Questions I used to think that adding "explain why" to the end of a question somehow made it higher-level. But now I see two problems in asking students to "explain their thinking".
