Using Art to Practice Reading When you're teaching a reading skill, can you replace some of those dull sample texts with glorious artwork?
How To Run A Novel Study When you read a book with students, avoid getting bogged down with the nitty-gritty. Just pick one big idea and have fun reading! No quizzes, no memorizing, no essays. Just develop your students' love of reading.
I Compared Characters, Yet Stayed At “Remember” I set up an Analyze question, but never actually asked it! All of these questions are at the "remember" level.
Think Like A Psychologist Looking to help your students go deeper into any content area? One technique is to teach them to "Think Like A Disciplinarian." This idea, part of the Depth and Complexity Framework, teaches students to analyze ideas from the point of view of a specific profession or discipline.
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.
Garden Path Sentences Garden Path Sentences seem to begin one way, but quickly fall apart, forcing the reader to start over and interpret words in a new way. A simple example is: "The old man the boat."
How I’d Change this Question from my Textbook Here are a dozen ways to transform a not-so-critical-thinking question from one of my district's textbooks.
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.
