Extending Thinking Strategies

Bill Blynt
Sep 07, 2009

In order to adequately prepare students for assessment challenges, it is important to provide them with multiple opportunities to practice the skills tested. As state assessments begin to include more Extending Thinking questions, teachers must build this type of activity into their classroom practice and lesson design.  It is important that each unit of study include a minimum of one extending thinking activity or lesson. This activity should require students to use one of the extending thinking strategies. Using these strategies regularly has been determined, in the research of Bob Marzano, ASCD and the US Department of Education, to be the number one strategy leading to increased student achievement.

As districts and teachers begin to develop or revise their Student Learning Maps, a particular focus of this activity should include Extending Thinking Essential Questions into each unit of study. Extending Thinking Essential Questions are framed using content acquired in earlier acquisition lessons in concert with one of the Extending Thinking strategies. If the strategy is new to the students, an acquisition lesson teaching the strategy should be utilized before students are asked to use it. If the strategy has been taught, a quick review of the strategy will suffice before the content-based Extending Thinking lesson or activity is introduced.

Confusion exists regarding Extending Thinking. Extending Thinking about content is not just a second lesson to master content; many times rigorous content needs more than one lesson in order for students to master it. These are just a series of acquisition lessons. Only when the lesson requires a student to show a deeper understanding of content AND to demonstrate this understanding by performing an Extending Thinking strategy does the lesson rise to the level of an Extending Thinking lesson.

Although different people identify the Extending Thinking strategies with different labels,  LEARNING-FOCUSED has identified eight strategies that are critical for students to master in order to be successful. These strategies are:  abstracting, classifying/categorizing, constructing support, analyzing persp ectives, deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, error analysis, and comparing/contrasting. As Extending Thinking Essential Questions are put into units and displayed in Student Learning Maps, it is often helpful to list the specific strategy required in parentheses. This provides specific directions for the teacher and helps students initially understand what strategy is being practiced.

The goal of any instructional program is to make students independent learners. Once students have been implicitly taught the strategy, and have had multiple opportunities to practice the strategy, it is anticipated that when faced with a new assessment task, they can identify what strategy is required. Because they have had multiple experiences with each strategy, key words help them identify which strategy is required. Once the strategy has been identified, students can then work through the steps in the process, utilize an appropriate graphic organizer and complete the task efficiently and correctly. Students who have frequent opportunities to practice these important strategies will be in excellent shape to be successful on state assessment tasks. Frequent and targeted practice makes proficiency possible.

Click here to view the LEARNING-FOCUSED Strategies Connecting Extending Thinking notebook and flipchart.