Just Teach Them to Think

Carol Gardner
May 19, 2008

 "If only my students would think!" All students can become proficient in using the thinking skills necessary for academic success, but only if we teach them. Extending Thinking to Raise Achievement provides numerous lessons for explicitly teaching thinking skills. It also provides suggested picture books that can be used to introduce and reinforce higher level thinking within content areas.

Dateline Troy by Paul Fleishman is a wonderful resource for introducing abstracting to secondary students. On one page the author paraphrases a story from the Iliad. On the facing page is a collage of contemporary news articles reflecting the same theme as the literature excerpt.  

My Teacher for President by Kay Winters is a great model for constructing support. The author constructs support as to why her teacher should be President (The book includes a lesson plan for this one). Inductive and deductive reasoning are often confused. The Web Files by Margarie Palatini and Richard Egielski begins as inductive when Ducktective Web and his partner try to "quack" a case of missing peppers. The detectives put the clues together to name a suspect. Deductive reasoning is used to prove the guilt of the "dirty rotten rat".

Seven Blind Mice by Ed Young is another good choice for teaching inductive reasoning. This simple picture book clearly makes the case for collecting numerous observations in order to see a pattern and reach a conclusion

For many more ideas and strategies take a look at Connecting Extending Thinking.