Developing Thinking Skills in Yr 8 Students

7/31/2019 Developing Thinking Skills in Yr 8 Students

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Rebecca Jermy

Farlingaye High School 1

Research Project: Developing Thinking Skills in Year 8 Students

Farlingaye High School is an 11-18 mixed comprehensive of over 1800 students. I

am in my third year of teaching English and have undertaken a research project into ways

of developing, or stretching, students thinking skills in Year 8. Year 8 is often identified asa year in which students attainment slumps and therefore I wanted to explore ways of

ensuring students made progress, building on the skills needed in Year 9 and Key Stage 4,

and hopefully creating more confident and independent students because they have welldeveloped skills and, in my vision, meta-cognitive awareness of their thinking processes.

The importance of promoting thinking skills has long been recognised by many

researchers. Piagets constructivist theory states that to think means, above all, tounderstand; and to understand means to arrive at transformations, which furnish the reason

for the state of things1. Thinking is here recognised as vital to achieve understanding,

highlighting how students need to mentally engage with material before it can be processed

and so learned; thus, he sees thinking as a way of understanding the world around us.However, Piagets theory has since been developed: John Dewey has highlighted that

thinking should not just be used as a means of understanding the world, but a means ofinterrogating it. Indeed, he critically describes thinking as being anything that comes to

mind whereas good thinking involves overcoming the inertia that inclines one to accept

suggestions at their face value; it involves willingness to endure a condition of mentalunrest and disturbance.To maintain the state of doubt and to carry on systematic and

proactive inquiry2. Deweys perception that thinking is best when it is difficult, or creates

disturbance, suggests that students thinking needs to be challenging to permit them to

make significant progress in developing those skills that they then can apply to the world.

When considering how to achieve such valuable thinking, we can first turn toVygotsky who accentuates more than anything else the value of language in achievinggood thinking: he believed that thought and language could not exist without each other.

He strongly believed that articulating thoughts was an effective method to process

connected thoughts in a conscious way, to raise the awareness of mental activity andsubsequently to create organised logic3. Vygotsky highlights the social nature of humans,

arguing that the social context of talking allows thoughts to be given expression, and taken

control of. By working with others first, humans can then learn to work alone. Researchers

other than Vygotsky have highlighted the value of discussion and its value in developingthinking skills: Jerome Bruner comments that teaching is vastly facilitated by the medium

of language, which ends by being not only the medium of exchange but the instrument the

learner can use himself in bringing order into the environment4. Norman reflects onBruners ideas, commenting that talk gives students the chance to learn via collaborating

and trying out new ways of thinking5, however he also points out that this talk needs to be

1 Jean Piaget: The Genetic Approach to the Psychology of Thought, in Readings for Reflective

Teaching, Andrew Pollard (ed.), 20022 How We Think, 19103 Debra McGregor: Developing Thinking Developing Learning, 20074 The Process of Education, 19665 Thinking Voices: The Work of the National Oracy Project, 1992


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concerned with sorting and developing ideas, and thus is considered exploratory,

permitting it to be hesitant and incomplete rather than presentational. In accordance with

this, Mercer (2002) has analysed discussions taking place within learning environments andfound that students changed their thinking as they formulated their ideas more clearly in

language and heard how others responded to them, thus recognising how thinking skills

may be aided by talking.

Theorists have tried to define the sorts of thinking which may be undertaken by

students. Blooms taxonomy is well known in defining questioning and the types ofthinking required of students. The more recent PRICE model of thinking defines the

categories differently, identifying: processing information, reasoning, inquiry, creative

thinking and evaluation. However, there is clearly room for overlap within these skills:

Alec Fisher writes about the overlap between critical and creative thinking, commentingthat whilst critical thinking is evaluative, and often negative, good thinking will

simultaneously be creative, coming up with alternative suggestions and improvements.

With this in mind, I chose to focus on creative thinking in my research, as I felt itprovided a basis for both imaginative response, and successful critical thinking. If students

could generate ideas, they could then comment more successfully on authors creativedecisions and their effects. Later, they may then be able to apply these ideas in their own

writing. Indeed, the very term creative tends to imply a gift or talent that not everyone

possesses and which can inhibit student confidence if they feel they are not very creative.Thus, I decided I wanted to find techniques and activities which would help students

stretch their thinking and assist them in developing their own ideas.

Swartz et al define creative thinking as the generation of possibilities in the activeuse of our creative imaginations6. Swartz comments that when we are using methods that

work, we often dont leave these comfort zones or trial new possibilities. Thus, when we do

act differently (creatively) we are involved in divergent thinking which leaves theopportunity to come up with original ideas. Thus, it is proactive thinking, rather than

merely reflective, which De Bono (1993) also highlights as significant. Indeed, Robinson

further defines creative thinking, commenting:

Creative thinking is a break with habitual patterns of thought. Creative

insights often occur by making unusual connections, seeing analogies

between ideas that have not previously been related. All of our existingideas have creative possibilities. Creative insights occur when they are

combined in unexpected ways or applied to questions or issues with

which they are not normally associated.7

Robert Fisher perceives the creative insights described by Robinson as allowing the

possibility of speculation. He comments that children soon learn, from an early age, to stopspeculating, because they inevitably make mistakes, and instead learn to rely on adults as

the voice of authority. So, the dynamic shifts from the learner to the teacher, hence a child

6 Debra McGregor7Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative, 2001


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will stop asking Is that a? but instead will ask What is that? Reminiscent of Deweys

comments, Fisher notes that thinking something new usually takes effort, which is one

reason why it is harder to teach an old dog new tricks8 and as a result, teachers mustensure that students feel safe to offer their own ideas in the classroom.

Of course, as Astington and Olson comment, a major problem is that.thinkingdoes not have any behavioural indices9, meaning it is not always easy to measure what

thinking is taking place. Judgments of thinking can only be based on what students say,

write, or through their own comments on their own thinking. The value of trying toestablish metacognition in students has therefore been highlighted by many researchers.

Anne de AEchevarria and Ian Patience thus comment, the plenary in a Thinking Skills

lesson is distinctive because it puts thinking under the spotlight. Students are asked to share

not only what they have learned about the subject, but also what they have learned aboutthe process that made the learning possible10. Thus, Rexford Brown envisages being able

to create a literacy of thoughtfulness11where students can transfer the thinking skills they

have developed to new problems and situations, similar to Hyles theory behind his

thinking maps: that by having visual patterns through which to map thinking, studentsthinking will sub-consciously use these patterns to develop their own thoughts and ideas in

different environments. And so, as Art Costa comments, thinking can become a vehicle bywhich the mind is activated and engaged to experience the joy ride of learning 12.

Having completed research into developing thinking skills in the classroom, I waskeen to try and find ways of challenging students thinking via a variety of activities.

Firstly, I wanted to develop assessment criteria for good thinking, so that I had a

clear list of characteristics I was trying to achieve. For this, I chose to generate thefollowing list based on the reading I had undertaken, defining good thinking as:

challenging, effortful, original, meaningful, and also linked to learning. I decided that

initially I needed to evaluate the thinking that was already occurring in my classroom, andafter four lessons with my Year 8 students went back to my lesson plans and reconsidered

how much thinking I felt had actually occurred. Looking back at the lessons I had planned,

I noticed that I was including activities that were promoting thinking, which I was pleasedwith, but also realised that these activities had been planned with the thought of extending

students understanding of the play rather than to extend their thinking to then reach

understanding. As discussed, Piaget comments that thinking means to understand, and thus

I felt that my planning should have been undertaken with the conscious thought how can Imake students think and thus understand? rather than this will help them understand the

play.

With this in mind, I began to plan for thinking in my lessons. Having completed my

research, there were several areas I wanted to look at, the first being discussion. To try and

achieve a discussion which included exploratory thinking that challenged students, I

8Teaching Children to Think, 19959 The Cognitive Revolution in Childrens Understanding of Mind, in Human Development, 3810 Teaching Thinking, 200811 Schools of Thought: How the Politics of Literacy Shape Thinking in the Classroom, 199112 Developing Minds: A Resource Book for Teaching Thinking, 2001


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initially tested the type of discussion that students would experience if just asked to

discuss. I found that students tended to have a very short conversation that involved an

exchange of ideas rather than an interaction between ideas, and very little discussion thattook thinking further. To try and improve this, I then tried modeling exploratory talking,

and then let students have a go at this themselves. However, students reported back that in

fact they found it difficult to sustain their discussion, and so we generated a series of wordsand questions that students could use to develop their conversation, either by using them to

ponder their own thoughts or to interrogate those of others13. Students also had a tick sheet

which they could use to keep track of whether they were using these phrases. This provedmuch more successful, as students had phrases to rely on which would help their thinking

and discussion become more exploratory. When evaluating the activity, students

commented:

Our conversation went really well, as while we were sequencing our thinking, it was also a

big bundle going from one thing to the next. I was coming up with lots of ideas, and had to

ask questions to make other people think and keep the conversation developing.

Our thinking unravelled when we were talking.

We were coming up with questions and giving reasons, as well as evaluating and adding to

other peoples ideas. I managed to come up with questions which contributed to our

conversation. I knew I was thinking well because we tracked our conversation on paper andwrote a lot!

I knew I was thinking well because I came up with lots of ideas.

We evaluated peoples views and I gave a lot of my own, which werent always obvious

ones.

I was pleased with many of the positive responses, especially the comment that thinking

had unravelled which indicated to me that exploratory talk had taken place because ideas

had obviously been extended through the discussion. Negative comments about this tasktended to focus on the group dynamic (I knew I was thinking well in my head but some

people were straying off task) which reflected some of the observations I had made when

watching groups in their discussions. Inevitably, what I then had to do was think harder

about the groupings I used. Although they had previously been planned, I decided toexperiment with this area further. Whilst I initially had planned mixed ability groups, I later

planned groups in terms of, what Robin Alexander describes as, cognitive pace14.

Although more successful, this required further intervention to assist some students intaking their thinking further, because there was not a member in the group willing to take

the lead role.

I found that as students became more familiar with the phrases we had used in the

exploratory talk, they consequently began to use them spontaneously in later discussions,

13 Appendix 114 Talking, Thinking, Learning and Dialogic Thinking


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interacting with ideas rather than just expressing their own. I felt this showed real progress

in their thinking skills. Following this, I then tried using De Bonos thinking hats with the

class, which I had not used with younger students previously, although I had found themsuccessful with older students. Again this proved successful, giving both structure and

challenge to develop students thinking which some students preferred. Students

commented in their evaluations:

I like this because I made my points, but then had everyone elses ideas to think about as

well which made it more complex.

This made my brain conk into action because I had to fit my thoughts to a certain way.

Although I was thinking about stuff for my own colour, I tried to think how it might bedifferent if Id been a different one.

This made me think more because I had a specific thing to focus on and someone to

control us.

What interested me here was that students still were clearly engaging with the other waysof thinking, and the above comments suggested that students were doing this

independently, even more discussing their ideas with others. Therefore, this activity was

successful as it provided the structure necessary for some and, by trying to contain othersthinking, almost motivated them to think outside the box or hat they had been designated.

Also, their comments suggested a real awareness of thinking as a useful skill in itself,

which can be of variable quality, reflected upon and improved.

Importantly, by focusing on students discussion and the questions they asked one

another, I also worked harder on the questions I was asking, planning them carefully to

develop thinking. Obviously, using open, higher questions was something I was alreadyvery aware of, but I focused more on the questions that I would use to continue a whole

class discussion after my initial questions had been asked; ultimately, this meant my

questions would need to respond to the students points in a spontaneous but meaningfulway, which would then develop their thinking rather than redirect it. I found this difficult,

often because I already had preconceived ideas about where the discussion would lead, and

as a result found myself responding to students with comments such as Yes thats

interesting, what else? rather than taking their idea on board and exploring that further.Later, I forced myself to take more time to phrase my questions; in fact, as a result of me

taking the time to consider the question I should be asking, it often gave students the

chance to intervene for themselves, responding to what the previous student had said.

Continuing my work on questioning, I also spent time trying to use more provoking

questions when asking students to work in groups. When initially experimenting withexploratory talk and De Bonos Thinking Hats, I had given students one question to

consider. I then experimented with giving more questions written in such a way to

encourage creative thinking, rather than, as I found I was accustomed to do, writing

questions to test understanding. And so, when looking at Blakes poems with my Year 8


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class, I set students differentiated questions, to discuss in groups, that I had written and

then rewritten. For example, one original question on London was Who do you think

creates the rules that control people? Not only was this original question ultimately closed,with a right or wrong answer, but focused on the text rather than the thinking that would

promote understanding of the text. Rewritten, I asked the question, Why do you think

people make rules for themselves to live by? which was both open, focused on creativethinking and, simultaneously, promoting understanding of the text. The work which

students produced on the basis of this group work, and the questions asked, far exceeded

my expectations, with 70% of students achieving above their attainment at the time15. I wasexceedingly pleased that by reframing the questions and having worked on students

discussion skills, they were able to generate such ideas about the poems independently.

When reviewing the questions I had generated in the same manner for a different activity,

students commented:

The questions made me think a lot and at the end of the exercise I had more ideas than at

the beginning.

The questions were helpful for making us think because it allowed me to come up with a

variety of ideas. I give it a 9/10 because I had good ideas.

The questions made you think a lot because you had to extend your answers.

The questions kept getting harder as you went through, so some of them were challenging

and made me think more.

I wanted to work on other activities that would challenge thinking. I decided to takeDe Bonos random word technique and use it as the stimulus for students creative

thinking about the text under discussion. I wanted to extend this idea, and so used objects

and pictures, as well as words, to try and extend students thinking by asking them to comeup with ways in which they linked to the text. Intentionally, I always included words,

pictures or objects that I had not considered for myself, to try and reduce the possibility of

trying to get students to reach my thinking rather than having the chance to generateentirely new ideas. Students responded really well to this activity, often coming up with

unusual ideas which obviously had required thought and also had probed their

understanding of a topic or idea. This idea of forcing together different things not normally

associated, was something I tried to extend when studying Richard II with students. I gavestudents a six by six table, with the bottom axis labeled good to bad, and the vertical axis

labeled popular to unpopular. Students had to roll die to determine their position on the

chart, and had to generate an example of a kings behaviour which would fulfil the criteriaof the axis, such as both really popular and good16. Students were clearly challenged by

this, particularly at times when characteristics that appeared at odds with one another were

linked, such as bad but popular. Students commented, when evaluating this activity:

It made me think because there were always choices to be made.

15 See Appendix 2 for examples of students work.16 See Appendix 3 for examples of students work.


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You had to think a lot more because you dont know what will come up on the dice next,

so you had to really think about what you were going to say.

It was hard to find things that made the king both good and unpopular. It was a challenge.

You were constantly having to think about new scenarios and how they compared to

others.

It made me think because I thought of all the things a king might have to do or has had to

do, what characteristics that takes and if that would make them popular. We had to make

lots of ideas!

I also experimented with this idea to assist students in preparing for their own

creative writing. Students were working on a poetry unit, writing their own poems on

relationships with other people, and had to make unusual links between their feelings and

objects, explaining their similarities. Students work again was superb, making verycreative links to represent their feelings17. I continued this process, using other types of

stimulus to engage students thinking because it was obscure and not immediately obvious.One particularly successful clip was named Balance: an animation available on Utube.

We looked at this clip, associating it to the characters in the text being studied and using it

to further our discussion about the way the characters treated each other, and how we asindividuals behave.

These activities were amongst the most successful I felt that I trialed because they

extended thinking, challenging students to make links that werent obvious. However, otherareas I was pleased with included using emotional hooks, which although perhaps obvious

in terms of engaging students, also proved successful in engaging students in exploratory

talk about a topic, because they began to compare the stimulus from their own society withthe situation in the text under discussion. In particular, I tried to get students to track how

their thinking changed by asking them to record simplistically about how they felt about

the situation in the text, and then later how they responded to the stimulus. Then, we triedto gauge why their responses were often at odds, which often developed very detailed

debates about how the situations between the two were different, but also the way the

material had been presented and its effect on the reader, thus probing more evaluative

thinking. Another technique I was pleased with was using thinking maps more creatively.Although I had always used thinking maps a great deal, I tried to use them more

experimentally, and so I began to alter and adapt the maps. For example, I used the bridge

map to help students track how situations were both similar and different, using a mirrorimage of the bridge map to help them see both sides of the argument. I also adapted the

bubble map: instead of just using the bubble map to generate ideas about the characteristics

of a character, I used a bubble map which had concentric circles, like a water droplet. Iasked students to generate ideas about a character in the text, with one idea in each bubble,

however, students also had to assess those characteristics and whether they made us as

readers sympathise with the character or not, placing those that did close to the centre of

17 See Appendix 4 for examples of students work.


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the bubble, and those that were less appealing further away from the centre. What was

interesting, was that students later discussion about the character was more considered

because they had had an opportunity to assess which aspects of her behaviour wereunderstandable or appealing to them, or not, and therefore assessing why they responded

the way they did.

Alongside trying to find ways of extending students thinking, I wanted to try and

increase students metacognition. To do this, I primarily tried to use questions to help

students interrogate the thinking they had undertaken, including:

How did I do that?

How did you do that?

What was happening in my head when I had a good idea?

What steps did I take to reach my idea?

What could I do to think about this more?

Students found this hard, and while they could often say whether they felt they had had tothink or not, they often struggled to say how their thinking had developed, and how theyhad created ideas. To try and assist students in doing this, one activity I trialed was using

thinking gauges, where students recorded when their light bulb moment occurred and

then tried to record the stages they had undertaken to reach that point. I also tried asking

students to monitor their thinking throughout the lesson, almost keeping an internalmonologue of their thoughts. However, students continued to find this very difficult, and so

I tried to make this analysis more manageable by asking students to vocalise how they

reached an idea when they were interacting with me, asking How did you reach that idea?to try and make them aware of the steps they had taken. This proved more successful than

asking students to reflect on a longer cognitive process.

Although trying to challenge students thinking was at times frustrating, I was

pleased by the evaluations undertaken at the end of the year in which I asked students to

assess the year in terms of their perceived progress, enjoyment and the thinking they had

undertaken. What pleased me was that students could pinpoint activities that they felt hadchallenged their thinking, making comments such as The hats made me see thing in a

certain way which was hard and the pictures made me come up with new ideas. One

student commented Miss, this year has made my brain hurt. This pleased me, as I wasreassured students recognised that they had had to think hard, and that I had succeeded in

planning for thinking, which is what I tried to do in every lesson.

However, there are further areas to consider and other avenues to explore. Im veryaware, following an observation, that the way students share their creative thinking in my

lessons could be improved. I took this point on board as I felt I had inevitably beenconcerned with trying to monitor the ideas students were generating as evidence of whether

the activities I was using were proving successful, meaning I hadnt thought about how

valuable this sharing of ideas was in moving all students forward.


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Attending the course Talking, Thinking, Learning and Dialogic Thinking was

particularly useful because it gave me a way of taking the project forward next year. Whilst

I want to continue planning for thinking, I also want to work on how students share theircreativity by experimenting with Robin Alexanders ideas. In particular, I recognised the

pseudo open questions he identified teachers as using, focusing instead on the need for

authentic questions which respond spontaneously to the students point rather than trying todevelop the conversation to reach a preconceived idea. To avoid doing this, or artificially

involving others in the group through less meaningful questions, Alexander commented

that a teacher should focus on one child alone in feedback, which may be undertaken infront of the class, or while other students are engaged in another task, having a genuine

conversation exploring their ideas and extending them through the conversation. I was

interested in this idea, and would like to experiment with it, planning for such feedback

with one student every lesson.

I have found this project exceedingly helpful in making me think more consciously

about thinking itself, and how to make it challenging and exploratory. I feel I have

developed further my repertoire of activities to encourage thinking, and obviously intend tocontinue developing these ideas to plan for thinking to achieve learning, sharing these ideas

as part of the CPD programme. I would also like to focus on a different thinking skill, suchas evaluation, and create ideas about how that may be developed further in my teaching.

Bibliography

Anne de AEchevarria and Ian Patience: Teaching Thinking, 2008

Robin Alexander: Talking, Thinking, Learning and Dialogic Thinking, 2009

Astington and Olson: The Cognitive Revolution in Childrens Understanding of Mind, inHuman Development, 38

Brin Best and Will Thomas: The Creative Teaching and Learning Toolkit, 2007

Sue Cowley: Getting the Buggers to Think, 2004Edward De Bono: Teach Your Child How to Think, 1993

Rexford Brown: Schools of Thought: How the Politics of Literacy Shape Thinking in the

Classroom, 1991

Jerome Bruner: The Process of Education, 1966


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Art Costa: Developing Minds: A Resource Book for Teaching Thinking, 2001

John Dewey: How We Think, 1910

Alec Fisher: An Introduction to Critical Thinking, 2001Robert Fisher: Teaching Children to Think, 1995

Paul Ginnis: The Teachers Toolkit, 2002

Mike Jefferies and Trevor Hancock: Thinking Skills: A Teachers Guide, 2007Debra McGregor: Developing Thinking Developing Learning, 2007

Norman (ed): Thinking Voices: The Work of the National Oracy Project, 1992

Jean Piaget: The Genetic Approach to the Psychology of Thought, in Readings forReflective Teaching, Andrew Pollard (ed.), 2002

Robinson: Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative, 2001

Appendix 1


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Appendix 2


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Appendix 3


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Appendix 4


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Documents

Developing Thinking Skills in Yr 8 Students