Michael Pohl seminar (Neil's take)

Michael Pohl Seminar - Coley Street 11/9/08

This session was hugely useful and timely as we ponder the new LNS curriculum vision and inquiry learning model - thinking is a core component of both these things. Today was thought provoking and challenging for me as a class teacher - what am I doing to foster a culture of thinking in my class? Some things but I'm nowhere near as committed to it as I should be. As well as the thoughts below I got a lot from the modelling of use of various tools, some new to me and some I haven't used much or for a while. Why is important to develop a culture of thinking in the classroom and school? Why teach thinking?

• John Hattie - “teaching thinking strategies” and “giving good feedback” had high positive effects on student achievement.
• The amount of information in the world is growing exponentially, therefore we need to think more and think critically.
• Thinking is one of our key competencies! This is one good reason for developing a culture of thinking.

Principle of Abandonment In order to move forward, we need to be able to leave something behind (rather than adding something to the backpack). - How would we at North cope with cutting something we’re good at/have done for ages/are comfortable with in order to try something new? Some thoughts/key ideas

• Important that teachers AND students become good questioners.
• Balance of divergent and convergent thinking activities is good - (wide - deep thinking)
• To think is to question (Dewey)
• It is important to be able to communicate one’s thinking (not just be able to think).
• Establish a language of thinking - get them young! Pervade the class with this language, visual prompts, etc
• Plan and Programme with a Thinking focus
• Share ideas/models etc - pass them on to students.
• Make the teaching of thinking manageable.
• We want to see good thinking transferred from the class to the playground and out of school time and as a lifelong habit.
• If we are going to do deBono’s Hats or any thinking tools, they need to be thoroughly understood (all hats) not just superficially.
• We need to help teachers see the long term, global, sizeable benefit of having a thinking curriculum and seeing that it is manageable and achievable.
• We should use SCUMPS in our trial unit in Term 4. SCAMPER/SCUMPS acronyms can be adapted to different contexts e.g. music, character analysis. Acronyms help make these tools more easy to remember and use.
• Questions and Questioning are the most powerful technologies of all (Jamie McKenzie)
• We as teachers should reflect on our use of closed and open questions and whether they are requiring divergent or convergent thinking.
• What matters more than the answers is the questions...
• We must involve students in the previous teacher’s domain of planning and questioning to encourage student engagement and student ownership of their learning.

Inquiry and Thinking We still need to start with a guided inquiry approach (e.g. with a contentious issue) Students can create question chains to get to higher order or deeper thinking - what if and how questions. It is really important to get questioning right in an inquiry model - take time over it, vary the questions, probe to get good questions. Also, make the questions those that will lead to new learning. It is good to get students devising their own questions as it leads to increased ownership. It is also important to build the skills that will be used in successive inquiries.