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.
The Original Puzzlement: A Zoetrope As teachers, I spend a ton of time searching for inspiration to enliven my lessons. But sometimes, inspiration hits as soon as you leave the desk and books behind. Friday my wife and I took a trip to Disneyland and saw this unbelievable (literally, it seems like magic) intersection of art & technology.
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.
Don’t Jump Straight to “Create”! When we jump from "this kid likes board games" straight to "I'll have them create a new board game", we leave out important steps in the creative process and set kids up for disappointment (and end up with a lot of unfinished projects). Here's how to scaffold a truly creative task.
Beware “Real World Problems” Why I stopped looking for “real world” problems and started aiming for “interesting.” The real world is often tedious and annoying. Interesting never is!
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.
Multiple Perspectives Gone Mad!! Yes, I actually gave my students this question: "How could two experts’ 👓 perspectives regarding information from this reading selection differ from one another?" yikes.
Fluency: Asking For (Way) More Than One Answer Being able to generate many possible answers is key to high-level thinking. So why don't we ask students to do it more often?
Evaluate with Academic Tournaments The bracketed tournament isn't just for college basketball. Set up a tournament to determine best president, state, element, or literary character and challenge your students to make interesting judgements.
Enrichment Must Prompt Thinking Enrichment is not merely about doing fun things. It should never be just a project-of-the-week. It must be about getting students thinking in new and interesting ways. Here's how!
