Developing Thinking Skills in Our Children—
One of Our Most Important Jobs
Thinking—remembering information, understanding it, applying it, analyzing it, synthesizing it, evaluating it and creating new ideas with it—is a natural part of being human.
Developing and strengthening these natural thinking skills of our students is an important part of Phonetic Reading with Silent Elephant “e”.
In fact, developing and strengthening thinking skills is an important part of our “jobs” as parents, teachers and grandparents.
As parents, teachers and grandparents we always want to stimulate the thinking of those we love to explore their world near and far. We constantly want to be helping them understand their world at deeper levels.
What does it take to be ready to take on the “job” of helping our children and our students develop their thinking skills?
The simple answer is: ASK QUESTIONS!
We need to think of ourselves as one of the people in their lives who asks them questions—questions that cause them to reflect, think critically, and reflect on their thinking.
We want to be one of the people in their lives who is wondering about the world with them and asking them questions about their world—questions that will stimulate awareness, curiosity and deep, critical thinking.
Our questions don’t always have to have complex answers. Our intention is to stimulate awareness, curiosity and thought at whatever their age and at whatever concept development learning stage they are in.
Since developing thinking skills is so important, Silent Elephant “e” promotes discussion of the content being studied by utilizing all thinking levels of questions. Children are asked questions to show they recall what they have read and understand what they have read. Then they are asked higher-level questions to guide them to apply their new knowledge, to analyze their new knowledge, to synthesize their new knowledge and to evaluate their new knowledge. Finally, they are asked questions to guide their thinking to create new ideas with their new knowledge.
Let me share a little about Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy of thinking. Benjamin Bloom was an educational psychologist who in 1956 developed a questioning order for educators. The intent of his question order was for educators to promote thinking skills within their students beyond just remembering facts. He wanted educators to guide their students to practice their ability to apply, to analyze, to synthesize and to evaluate knowledge.
Bloom shared that although remembering facts about what we read is important (we have to know what we read), to truly utilize a concept we are reading or learning, we need to take that information into deeper levels of thought.
In other words, we need to think about what we are learning and think critically about our thinking about our learning. We need to analyze and evaluate how our new learning fits into everything else we know and how it changes what we already know.
We need to analyze and evaluate in order to make sense of the new content and be able to utilize it in our lives and to create new thoughts from it.
Here are two ways of looking at the levels (stages) of thinking that Bloom shared:
This form gives us words at every level to guide our questions. These words help us develop an understanding of our student’s stage of learning—concept development. All levels are important, as they build upon each other. We have to have knowledge and understanding of a concept before we can apply it, analyze it, synthesize it or evaluate it.
This is another way of looking at the stages of thinking. This form focuses on experiences within the stages. These questions also help us think about where the learner is now when processing the new concept. Can they recall, explain, illustrate, operate, question, defend, and/or design?
Even after teaching many years, I refer back to my light bulb grid to make sure I am asking questions to stimulate my students’ thinking.
In my next blog post, I will share how I use questioning to stimulate deeper thinking skills as I teach. It’s so fun to watch my students begin to realize their natural abilities to contemplate what they know and are learning. Their eyes sparkle with the power of this understanding.
If you are questioning whether someone in your life is dyslexic and you’re not sure what to do, feel free to contact us.