Rigor and Critical Thinking

Adding Higher Level Thinking Skills to Your

CurriculumPrepared by Peggy

Ellison

Rigor is the goal of helping students develop the capacity of understanding content that is complex, ambiguous, provocative, and personally or emotionally challenging. (Source: Teaching What Matters

Most: Standards and Strategies for Raising Student Achievement by Strong, Silver, and Perini, ASCD, 2001)

It has real life implications.

The Definition

Rigor

Complexity: To what extent is the curriculum organized around complex, interrelated concepts?

Emotional Engagement: To what extent does the curriculum arouse strong feelings?

Provocativeness: To what extent is the curriculum concerned with central problems in the discipline that challenge students' previous concepts?

Rigor

Improves students’ ability to understand complex concepts

Ability to synthesize and evaluate information to apply to new situations

Not difficulty but complexity

Rigor

Ambiguity: To what extent does the curriculum focus on symbols and images packed with multiple meanings?

The RigorMeter is a tool that is used to ensure that students are exposed to complex performance tasks.

The rigor meter is a fusion of the theory-based best practices of Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy (RT) and the Depths of Knowledge (D.O.K.).

The rigor meter facilitates the movement of knowledge from fragile to deep understanding.

The Tool

Why do we need rigor? Rigor moves us from fragile to

deep knowledge Fragile knowledge –

- Inert knowledge: Student remembers for testing, but does not remember outside of class.- Naïve knowledge: Simple explanations- Ritual knowledge: Routines that work well in class but not real world

Deep knowledge – a true understanding of concepts and knowledge. The student processes the information. They can explain, apply, compare and contrast, generalize, justify, and give examples.

Perkins (1993)

Moving the Standard from Fragile to Deep Knowledge Level 1 – Remembering – provides the basis for the study of

various subjects by identifying facts (recognizing, listening, describing, retrieving, naming, and finding).

Level 2 – Understanding – Explains ideas and concepts (interpreting, summarizing, paraphrasing, classifying and clarifying).

Level 3 – Application – Uses information from another familiar situation (implementing, carrying out, using, and executing).

Level 4 – Analysis – breaking information into parts to explore understanding and relationships (comparing, organizing, deconstructing, interrogating, finding).

Level 5 – Evaluation – Justify a decision or course of action (checking hypothesizing, critiquing, experimenting judging).

Level 6 – Creation – Generating new ideas, products, or ways of viewing things (designing, constructing, producing, planning, and inventing).

How do we tell when a student has moved beyond fragile knowledge to deeper levels of understanding?

We analyze their performances for understanding.

We listen to what they say. We examine the assignments they

complete. We expect they will be able to explain,

give examples, and successfully apply what they have learned in new contexts.

Rigor is Not…

fifty math problems for homework when fewer will achieve mastery

more worksheets for the student who finished the assignment early

using a seventh grade text book with your high performing sixth grade students

covering more material in a shorter period of time

cold or impersonal for a select group of students.

Why is Rigor Important?

Rigor is meant to improve students’ ability to understand complex concepts, but sometimes is misunderstood to mean students should work with difficult concepts.

Sometimes even the most difficult of subjects is not also a rigorous lesson. When teachers take some time to analyze their current lessons for rigor they can find where it is already present and where it might be added.

Tammy Andrew (2009)

What is happening in the average classroom?

Behaviors Percentage

Evidence of clear learning goals/objectives

4%

Worksheets 52%

Lecture 31%

Monitoring with no feedback 22%

Use of high yield research based instructional strategies

2%

Communication rich environments with writing and rubrics

2%

Fewer than half the students engaged

82%

Bell to bell learning Less than 1%Learning 24/7 Classroom Observation Project, 2004, Direct Observation of 1,500 K-12 Classrooms

How do we get there? Think and plan with critical thinking and rigor in

mind Question students using DOK (Depth of Knowledge) Pair skills from Level 2 (needed for CRCT) with

Levels 3 and 4 tasks for extension – this will help students retain information if it is applied and used at higher levels

Assess students to determine present levels and compare results to the curriculum

Differentiate instruction based on student needs Compact some of the curriculum and add tasks and

assignments where needed Use scaffolding only as needed to move students

CCPS Rigormeter

“Marries” Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy and DOK

Comparing Blooms and DOK

Knowledge/RememberingThe recall of specifics and universals, involving little more than bringing to mind the appropriate material”

Comprehension/ UnderstandingAbility to process knowledge on a low level such that the knowledge can be reproduced or communicated without a verbatim repetition.

Application/applyingThe use of abstractions in concrete situations

Analysis/ AnalyzingThe breakdown of a situation into its component parts

Synthesis and Evaluation/ Evaluating and CreatingPutting together elements & parts to form a whole, then making value judgments about the method.

Recall – recall of a fact, information

Skill/Concept – use of information, conceptual knowledge, procedures, two or more steps, etc.

Strategic Thinking – developing a plan or sequence of steps, requires reasoning, more complex, more than one possible answer.

Extended Thinking – investigation (research) and thinking about the process and purpose and multiple conditions of the problem or task.

New way of thinking about Blooms with action verbs

Evaluation > Evaluating Synthesis > Creating Analysis > Analyzing Application > Applying Comprehension > Understanding

Knowledge > Remembering

What is DOK?

The degree of depth or complexity of knowledge reflected in the content standards and assessments - How deeply a student needs to understand the content for a given response/assessment.

You must think about what else you need to add to make a lesson deep.

Understanding DOK

DOK is about intended outcome, not difficulty.

DOK is a reference to the complexity of mental processing that must occur to answer a question, perform a task, or generate a product.

Why is DOK Important

Mechanism to ensure that the intent of the standard and the level of student demonstration required by the standard matches the assessment items (required under NCLB)

Provides cognitive processing ceiling (highest level students can be assessed) for item development

Instruction, assignments, and classroom assessments must incorporate the expectation of rigor for students associated with the DOK levels of all standards and elements.

Novice Expert

Expert vs. Novice ThinkersAdding rigor to the curriculum moves

students from:

Apply - Assessing Rigor

How can you implement this instructional tool in your classroom?

What are the barriers? What are the opportunities? What needs to be modified?

How do you analyze your curriculum to determine if it uses rigor?

Questioning To teach students to think, you must

first teach them to question. Do you use questioning to help students

develop independent thinking skills? Do you use questioning to help students

link difficult concepts? Do your assessments contain questions

that require open-ended responses?

Analyzing your assessments for rigor Use your Rigormeter to assess quality of

questioning Do your questions contain the main

ideas in the stem? Do your questions or choices have

distracters? Does the format used for questioning

allow opportunities for higher order thinking?

Why do we assess students? Instruction – allows the teacher to

determine how well students are learning and whether teaching and whether teaching strategies are working.

Formative – to provide feedback to students and teachers on learning and progress

Summative – to assign grades, or certify mastery at the end of instruction

Good Instruction Matters

The single greatest determinant of learning is

NOT socioeconomic factors or funding levels -

IT IS INSTRUCTION.Mike Schmoker

Thought

The five key disciplines of thought: inquiry, knowledge acquisition, problem solving, communication, and reflection. Reflect on these disciplines as you view the video.

The Brownie Problemhttp://www.pps.k12.pa.us/143110127103415203/lib/143110127103415203/video/ri/media/html/m38.html

Measuring Thought

Apply: Rigor – Questions to consider

Based on your understanding of rigor, why do you think rigor is so rare in schools today?

What are your experiences with rigor?

When do you find it challenging yet enjoyable?

When is it severe and painful?

Comparing Payment Plans

Activity: Answer the following question. Note your plan of attack. What are you thinking? Does this require rigorous thinking? A video store charges $8 to rent a video game

for five days. Membership to the video store is free. A video game club charges only $3 to rent a game for five days, but membership in the club is $50 per year. Compare the costs of the two rental plans. Justify your answer.

Sources Teaching What Matters Most: Standards and Strategies for Raising Student Achievement (2001) by Strong, Silver, and

Perini, ASCD Hands On, Minds On Workshop, (2010) Clayton County Public Schools, Monique Drewry, presenter. “Deep and Fragile Knowledge” is based upon the work of David Perkins. Perkins, David. Smart Schools. New York:

Simon and Schuster, 1993. Retrieved from http://www.learner.org/workshops/socialstudies/pdf/session1/1.DeepFragileKnowledge.pdf

Andrew, Tammie Identifying Rigor in the Curriculum: How to Determine if a Lesson Contains Rigor (2009) from http://www.suite101.com/content/identifying-rigor-in-the-curriculum-a108196

Webb, Norman, (1997) Depth of Knowledge Wheel from http://www.dese.mo.gov/divimprove/sia/msip/DOK_Chart.pdf