I want to go beyond just listing how a character changed. Let’s get students thinking about that change!
Differentiation TechniqueThink From Anything's Perspective
Read The OverviewThinking 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.
Specific Examples of “Think From Anything's Perspective”
Thinking Like Producers About Consumers
Here’s how I’d use ethics and multiple perspectives to get students thinking about producers, consumers, and decomposers in new and interesting ways.
Thinking Like Equivalent Fractions
Go across disciplines by asking students to write a story about fraction equivalence.
Academic Love Letters
We’re going to take the Academic Valentine idea from earlier, and extend it into a full blown love letter – just in time for Valentine’s Day!
Halloween: Characters Dressed As Characters
What if characters from film or literature dress up like other characters based on some parallel such as: conflict, trait, accomplishment, etc.
Multiple Perspectives: Right And Wrong At The Same Time?
It’s essential to teach our students to think flexibly and consider multiple points of view. Flexible thinking leads to product innovation, diplomacy between nations, and advances in science. School, however, often encourages students to settle into a “one right answer” mindset.
Think Like A Philosopher
Up near the top of Bloom’s taxonomy is “evaluating.” A great use of this level of thinking is to evaluate a character’s ethical choice. But we can go deeper! Let’s ask students to evaluate characters’ actions based on another character’s point of view. To add another layer, we’ll teach kids about philosophers and use their points of view as well.
Think Like An Engineer: Egg Drop
At our school, 6th graders participate in an annual egg drop. To increase the rigor, I looked for unique scientific roles and came up with three: designing a parachute to slow the egg’s descent, testing materials to pack inside the structure, and developing the structure itself. Each of these roles will be developed into a scientific discipline.
Think Like A Disciplinarian: The Common Problems
Think Like A Disciplinarian is a method for teaching students to approach concepts from an expert’s point of view. You’ll expose you class to new modes of thinking, teach subject–specific language, and develop questions that delve deeper into problems. As a bonus, students will learn about potential careers.
Think Like An Anthropologist to Make Inferences
Like all HM comprehension skills, “Making Inferences” appears yearly beginning in kindergarten, so I know my 6th graders have practiced, and may well have mastered, the skill. To differentiate, I turned to the model of “Thinking Like a Disciplinarian.”