Teaching Extending Thinking Explicitly

Barbara McSwain
Jan 25, 2010

Red Mill Elementary in the West Shore School District in central Pennsylvania takes the teaching of Extending Thinking Strategies seriously. They know in 2011 that 75-80% of state test items will come from Extending Thinking. The most common thinking strategies identified by research are:

  • Classifying
  • Comparing/Contrasting
  • Inductive Reasoning
  • Abstracting
  • Error Analysis
  • Constructing Support
  • Deductive Reasoning
  • Analyzing Perspectives

For students to master a thinking skill and to be able to apply it STRATEGICALLY in a real life situation, focus on one Extending Thinking strategy per lesson. An Acquisition Lesson may take 1-3 days on the average. Extending Thinking should occur after one or more Acquisition Lessons on the most essential standards. It should be an expectation of every grade level to expose students to multiple thinking strategy activities over a course of a year. In order for this to occur, each grade level should examine each lesson to apply the most appropriate Extending Thinking strategy.

Students should be taught the strategy explicitly before applying it to content beginning in Kindergarten. Red Mill uses the following Acquisition Lesson to teach Classifying and Categorizing to Kindergarten students:

Topic: Classify

Essential Question: How do you classify objects into categories?

Activating Strategy: Using a Sorting Map graphic organizer, students will sort objects by choice in small groups.

Key vocabulary to preview: category, sort, groups, organize

Teaching Strategies:

1. Distribute several objects (pencil, eraser, paper, puzzle pieces, etc.) to groups. Each group will have the same type and number of objects.
2. Groups think aloud about how they are going to classify objects.
3. Use a sorting map, for chosen attributes.
4. Students will draw pictures of chosen category.
5. Write the category next to the student pictures.

Summarizing Strategy:

1. Students will take a gallery walk around to visit other groups sorts.
2. As a class, create a list of when objects need to be classified.

As a classroom teacher, you may want to add your own Assessment Prompts to the Red Mill Acquisition Lesson plan. Remember to continue to teach and cultivate the use of all eight Extending Thinking strategies throughout the school year. You may want to refer to the LEARNING-FOCUSED Strategies: Connecting to Extending Thinking notebook and the Extending Thinking flipchart to assist you with signal words, appropriate questions, lesson plans and graphic organizers.