Developing Thinking Skills

Developing Thinking Skills Using games and photographs in geography teaching Aim: To apply the concepts from the GPS seminar to our teaching in the geography classroom. Objectives: To review key terms from’ thinking about learning.’ To see how we can develop children as effective geography thinkers. To examine a variety of strategies to meet pupil’s needs in geography.

The National Strategy •

Geography is included as a Foundation subject (TLF strand). This strand includes thinking skills. The revised NC requires all subjects to address the following thinking skills: – Information processing skills: sorting, classifying, sequencing, comparing, contrasting, analysing relationships. – Reasoning skills: draw inferences, make deductions, use precise language to explain thinking, make judgements based on reasons or evidence. – Enquiry skills: ask relevant questions, pose and define problems, plan what and how to research, predict outcomes, anticipate consequences, test conclusions, improve ideas. – Creative thinking skills: generate and extend ideas, apply imagination, look for alternative innovative outcomes. – Evaluation skills: judge the value of what they read, hear and do, develop criteria for judging the value of their own and others’ work or ideas and to have confidence in their judgements.

Constructivism • • •

This is simply implying that we learn from what we already know. Radio commentary of rugby compared with hurling! We need a mental framework through first hand experience and a language to interpret what is being said. So as teachers we need to: ’Start where the students are at’ this is an expression of constructivism.

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Existing knowledge structures are called schema. If new information can be interpreted through existing schemata students will have a better understanding of a topic. There is a very important mid-point between existing knowledge and new information. At this point some connection is made but there is a mismatch between the new and the established knowledge. This is termed cognitive conflict (“my brain hurts miss”).

When this is resolved we get the ‘Ahah! Moment.

How do we encourage students to access existing knowledge? • •

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Brainstorm ideas. Mind movies, appeals to lower achieving pupils as well as more able ones as it uses visual images. This starts the process of developing visual memory skills. Quite a risky strategy, know your class before you do this one, they need to trust you if it is to be successful so don’t do in lesson 1 with a group! Living graphs. Students are given a pre prepared outline of a line graph. They are given a number of statements relating to events or things people might have said in the context of the graph. They have to decide where on the graph the statement would be best placed. This helps give the figures and lines on graphs a context and allows students to link the abstractions of the graph with people and events. May be an element of cognitive conflict here for some students. They encourage discussion and remember learning is a social activity! Experience suggests that students get most out of these once they have done a few.

Living graphs example •

Place these statements in the most appropriate place on the graph: • Mrs Sheila Jones arrives home from work and starts to cook the evening meal. • Miss Terri Frain gets up after a hard night marking exercise books and has her first cup of coffee. • Mr Allan Smith, an office clerk, takes the metro (a train) from Newcastle city centre to South Shields during his lunchtime to deliver some important documents. • The Robinson’s washing machine switches on automatically on the timer. • Patsy Mc Bride, age 11, switches off the TV and bedside light in her room. • Jane Thompson arrives at work at an insurance office. • In the power station control room they reduce the output.

Metacognition • • • •

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Thinking about thinking so that we have a conscious awareness of it. It means we slow down the thinking process . When faced with a geographical issue or problem, if a student thinks ‘What is this about?’ What have I done before that can help me?’ then they are using metacognition. Story telling is a good way in to metacognition with students. It also helps unlock understanding of one of geography’s big ideas: causation. Story telling needs to be carefully planned. Pupils work in triads, each is given a number:1,2,3. Two students from each group are then sent out of the room! They could go to the library or be given a a task with a TA, a bit of creativity needed here! Read the story to number 1 they are not allowed to take notes, but can ask questions. The number 2’s come back in and are told the story by the 1’s. Eventually number 3 tells the story back to number 1. PHEW! Debrief is crucial here: ‘What did you remember!’ ‘How did you remember it?’ Make the point that remembering is a skill that can be learned. Skills you may like to draw out are: listening, visualising, selecting important info., sequencing, discussing, questioning, co-operating. Could be adapted by getting groups to be larger, each group member has to listen out to particular features of the story e.g. what happens to particular characters.

Zone of Proximal Development. • Stepping stones, what a pupil can do on their own and what they can do when supported by more able peers or the teacher. • As teachers we need to try to move pupils through their ZPD, helping them to do independently what they can presently do with the help of others. • Odd One Out is good for this.

Odd One Out • Helps students have a secure vocabulary. Example. • Helps them see the bigger picture as they are encouraged to see similarities and differences between key terms. • It is fun and makes the teacher think as much as the pupils, particularly in guiding them to a decision. It can be used at any point in the lesson.

Other games to use. • Taboo ..\map skills word docs\Taboo task.doc • Wizard. • Fact or opinion. • Most likely to…example • Maps from memory. • Making connections.

Using photographs in geography. •

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Place a photo in the centre of a large piece of plain paper. Ask the pupils to come up with 3 questions to do with the natural environment; 3 questions to do with how people earn money; 3 to do with the society in the photo and then 3 that start with the question:' Why?’ If a photo has people in it provide some speech bubbles and blu tac find out as much about that person and his/her life as you can, come up with 10 to 20 questions, can be done in groups, 5 Q’s per group blu tac’d to photo. Cropping photos: cut in half and get pupils to draw in the other half of the photo, then compare with the real thing and ask Q’s such as how and why their picture differed. Does this tell them anything about their images, perceptions, stereotypes of people or places? Freeze frame, a drama technique. Give a small group a photo with several people in it, act out the situation and freeze it at the point when the photo was taken. ..\photos\refugee.doc This can lead into further discussion e.g. push/pull factors.

Using Photographs

..\photos\GeoResources - Geography website Ca ..\photos\kenyaimages.ppt

Your turn to experiment • We have looked at a number of Thinking Skills strategies. • You have 1 minute to write down as many as you can remember. • Now work in a pair and choose 1 strategy. • Produce an activity based on that strategy. • This will be posted on Learning Space so the whole group then has access to a range of resources. • Oh and the strategies were:

In no particular order….. • Living graphs Mind Movies Story telling Odd One Out Brainstorm Taboo Wizard Fact or Opinion Maps from memory Making connections Freeze framing Various photo activities (more on these later)