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Habits of Mind ... to create a thought filled school

17 December 2009Martin and Pat Buoncristiani

Thinking and Learning in Concert

Pat:

Teacher educator in

Melbourne for 15 years

Primary school teacher

Primary school principal

in both Australia and United States

Who were we?

Who were we

Martin:

Professor of physics

Scientific researcher

Secondary science educator

Worked with Art Costa and Bena Kallick in the USA and Australia.

Worked with clusters, schools and administrators in both Australia and the United States to incorporate Habits of Mind into the curriculum

Collaborated with NASA and the National Institute of Aerospace to provide workshops encouraging integrating teaching thinking skills into science curriculum.

Regularly present our research findings at national and international conferences.

The bottom line:We have both used the Habits of Mind in the classroom and with curriculum design and come to realize how important it is to the teaching of skillful thinking.

Who are we now?

AgendaSession 1

Habits of Mind: what we know and where we are

The tool box: unpacking a Habit; understanding how Habits develop.

Session 2Creating, Imagining, InnovatingAsking the right questions

Session 3Metacognition

MarzanoThe Thinking Notebook

And how do you feel today?

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Session 1

Habits of Mind

What we know & where we are

The toolbox

The Habits of Mind are central to our

core task, toteach children how to

thinkusing significant

content.

Art Costa Speaking aboutHabits of Mind

On your table you will find a poster for each of the 16 Habits of Mind

Write one word or short phrase that captures something about each habit on each poster.

processing Activating what you already know about Habits

of Mind

Where are you in your journey towards the implementation of HoM in your classroom?

... as a school wide culture?

Not all habits are good habits

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You cannot explicitly teach a Habit until you understand the skills and strategies that make it up.

You cannot monitor students’ progress with a specific Habit unless you have

some idea about how this habit develops.

Toolbox

Examples of how to:

Unpack the skills & strategies behind a habit

Explore how habits develop

Take Your Time!

Thinking before acting; remaining calm, thoughtful and deliberate.

Managing impulsivity

The key word in this habit is

managing.

Managing impulsivity means that sometimes a degree of impulsivity is desirable, for example, in brainstorming for new ideas.

How do you manage impulsivity?

What are the sub skills?

What strategies might you need to teach students?

You might choose to represent your thinking with a mind map.

Summarize your work clearly on a piece of A4 paper and we will share them around.

processing Unpacking Exercise

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Managing Impulsivity

Unpacking A Habitprocessing Toolbox

Examples of how to:

Unpack the skills & strategies behind a habit

and

Explore how habits develop

It is not a simple matter of having or not having a particular Habit of Mind.

Very young children can be amazingly persistent

We need to know how Habits develop

How habits develop

Unconscious Incompetence

Conscious Incompetence

Conscious Competence

Unconscious Competence

Work together! Being able to work in and learn from others in reciprocal situations. Team work.

Thinking InterdependentlyIn the beginning –– Enjoys working in a group because she works with friends– Working in a group means taking turns– Recognizes familiar situations in class when she works in a group

After some time working in groups –– Understands working in groups is about having one outcome for the group.– Group work is often about equal division of labor– Has difficulty working with people very different to herself

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After some more time –– Begins to incorporate other Habits of Mind like Listening with Empathy and Understanding while working in groups– Is able to add to others ideas, and recognizes that the product of the group is more than the sum of the parts– Can recognize situations at home, school and in the community where working in groups helps generate better results

After some more time –– Can effectively employ a range of complex cooperative strategies– Recognizes new and novel situations where it is appropriate to work cooperatively– Values diversity in a group as a positive influence

Lesson planning

We always plan for content

Infuse Habits of Mind

Where are your students developmentally?

Unpack the habit –which aspect will you teach explicitly?

Session 2

Creating, Imagining, Innovating

Asking the right questions

Creating Imagining Innovating

Try a Different Way!Generating new and novel ideas.Fluency, originality.

Creating –

Solving new problems, generating new ideas, original thinking.

Imagining –

Visualization (non-verbal thinking)

Innovating –

Finding new ways to solve old problems.

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“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you

desire; you will what you imagine; and at last you create what you

will.”

George Bernard Shaw, playwright.

Creative thinking in practice

Why is creative, innovative thinking so important?

(Sir Ken Robinson)What are the sub skills –

unpacking?

Where would you expect your kids to be at their stage of

development?

Questions that make the thinking explicit

Use the language of thinking

Habits of MindBloom’s TaxonomyCognitive tools:

deBono’s thinking tools6 thinking hats

New BloomRemembering: can the student recall or remember the information? define, duplicate, list, memorize, recall, repeat, reproduce state

Understanding: can the student explain ideas or concepts? classify, describe, discuss, explain, identify, locate, recognize, report, select, translate, paraphrase

Applying: can the student use the information in a new way? choose, demonstrate, dramatize, employ, illustrate, interpret, operate, schedule, sketch, solve, use, write.

Analyzing: can the student distinguish between the different parts? appraise, compare, contrast, criticize, differentiate, discriminate, distinguish, examine, experiment, question, test.

Evaluating: can the student justify a stand or decision? appraise, argue, defend, judge, select, support, value, evaluate

Creating: can the student create new product or point of view? assemble, construct, create, design, develop, formulate, write.

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Direct Instruction In Thinking Skills

• Do students know how to perform the thinking skills?

• Can students describe the steps in the thinking process?

• Can they correctly label the skills when they use them?

• Do they apply the skills spontaneously when solving problems?

Use the language of thinking

Let’s look at these two pictures

What do you think will happen when …?

Let’s work this problem

How do you know this is true?

Do you think this is the best alternative?

Let’s COMPARE these pictures

What do you PREDICT will happen when …?

Let’s ANALYZE this problem

What EVIDENCE do you have?

As you EVALUATE these

alternatives …?

Good teachers know how to ask GOOD QUESTIONS.

Good teachers also know how to LISTEN

Questions for Cognitive OperationsInput

What are some of the things you can see happening in this picture? (describe)

What word goes with this picture? (identify)

What are some of the things you see happening when the goldfish is eating? (observing)

Processing

What information might help us solve this problem? (analyzing)

What other machines might operate the same way as this one? (compare)

What suggests to you that Columbus believed that he could reach the orient by sailing west? (explaining)

Output

What are some of the things that might happen if you mixed these two colors? (predicting)

What might be some fair solutions to this problem? (evaluating)

What do you think might happen if we put a saltwater fish in freshwater? (hypothesizing)

Questions for HoM

What other strategies could we have used to get the same answer? (thinking flexibly)

Is there a way we can confirm that our predictions are correct? (striving for accuracy)

What do you think the character was feeling that led him to say those words? (listening with empathy and understanding)

Would a more thoughtful response have led to a different outcome? (managing impulsivity and thinking flexibly)

As you read, what do you do when your mind wanders but you want to remain on task? (managing impulsivity and metacognition)

Matching questions activityprocessing

Match the questions with the specific thinking skills they would encourage.

Then match the second set of questions with the Habits of Mind they would activate.

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Session 3

MetacognitionMarzano

&The Thinking Notebook

It’s all about the teaching!

Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) meta-analysis of100 studies involving 4000+ control groups.

Least effective teacher

14 percentile points

Most effective teacher

53 percentile points

Average teacher

34 percentile points

Mike Schmoker's "Results Now,“ Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2006

Teaching = x6 to x10 more important than ALL other factors combined.

Marzano:

Same socioeconomic population

Least effective teacher - 27 percent of students will pass;

Most effective - 72 percent of students will pass

A life-changing difference! Surprised?

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Validate what you are doing

A new piece of the puzzle

Instructional strategiesClassroom Instruction That Works, Marzano, Pickering, Pollock ASCD 2001

1. Identifying similarities & differences2. Summarizing & note taking3. Reinforcing effort & providing recognition4. Homework & practice5. Nonlinguistic representations6. Cooperative learning7. Setting objectives & providing feedback8. Generating & testing hypotheses9. Cues, questions and advance organizers

Strategies that make kids

thinkabout their thinkingand their learning

Research supports teaching thinking in the disciplines (rather than in content free courses).

�Student motivation to learn thinking skills is high when they see a “need to know”;

�Integrating instruction of thinking skills with discipline content improves both learning of the skill and the content.

M.Pressley and K.Harris, Educational Leadership, Vol. 48, N0. 1,pp 31-33 (1990).

B.Beyer, “Improving Student Thinking”, Allyn and Bacon (1997).

Lesson Planning for Thinking

Habits

Of Mind

Cognitive Tasks that require

thinking skills

Thinking skills

Content

Stop and think about how you are thinking.

By thinking about our thinking we are able to:

•Select from a repertoire of strategies when we are faced with problems or new knowledge and experiences

•Monitor the successfulness of our selection and use of these strategies

•Modify and adapt our selection and use of strategies

Stop and think about what you are doing.

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Metacognition refers to the conscious application of an individual’s thinking to their own thought processes with the specific intention of

those processes.

understanding, monitoring, evaluating and regulating

DefinitionThese strategies help students to think about

their own learning.

They encourage metacognition.

Identifying similarities and differences

Identifying similarities and differences by:

Comparing/contrasting

Classifying

Creating metaphors oranalogies

Teach it in a highly structured manner!

Use graphic organizers

to identify similarities and differences

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Chaos Order

What were you thinking as you imposed order on that chaos?

This is THE metacognitive question.

The ‘how did you do this?’ question

Very young children can think metacognitively

Metaphors – things are connected by an abstract or non literal connection

The food chain

What is the metacognitive question here?

How does thinking of this as a chain help you to understand it?

Visual

What’s the metacognitive question?How does imagining an iceberg help you understand how people behave?How does this image help you understand bullying?

Non-linguistic representations

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Left–Right Brain

Left hemisphere

rational thought

controls language, mathematics, abstraction and reasoning.

Memory is stored as language.

Right hemisphere

emotional and intuitive thought

controls visual, spatial sense, social skills, holistic thought, intuition, art and music.

Memory is stored non-linguistically.

Knowledge

cat

Words + Images

Deeper understanding

Camouflage

to exploit the natural surroundings to disguise something

timelines

maps

mind maps

bodies and dramatizations

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ThinkingNotebooks

A tool with which students can think about their own learning and how they

learn best.

Note making becomes a thinking activity.

Setting it up

1. Sturdy notebook – not loose leaf2.Leave a few pages for a table contents3.Number every page 4.Teacher notes and content pasted on LHS 5.Annotation of notes in colour6.RHS – creative processing and thinking

• Reflect on• Explain• Justify

7.Initially teacher teaches techniques. The metacognitive goal is for students to select, monitor and regulate their own techniques.

On the LHS the teacher had provided the notes about the assignment:•Topic•Resources•Hints•Due date

On the RHS the student then provided her own understanding of the best way to go about completing the project.

Thinking about her thinking/learning she produced this flow chart of the steps involved in completing a school assignment.

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Try it out for yourself!

Select the notes on either metacognition, thinking flexibly or creating, imagining and innovating.

Paste the notes on the LHS of your note book.

Use colored pens to annotate:•Topic sentences

•Important vocabulary•Difficult words

•Interesting ideas & things to find out more about

On the RHS create non linguistic representations of some or all of the information.

On line ideasShare and receive access to these resources

http://www.instituteforhabitsofmind.com/

Art and Bena’s sitehttp://www.habits-of-mind.net/

Our sitehttp://ThinkingAndLearningInConcert.org

Australian National School’s Networkhttp://www.ansn.edu.au/habits_of_mind_hub

Mindful by Designhttp://www.mindfulbydesign.com/

Tony Buzanhttp://.iMindMap.com