Developing a Thinking Classroom

Developing a Thinking Classroom

A workbook for professional learning teams

by Clinton Golding

Creating a culture of thinking is about more than just using a thinking tool or a graphic organiser with your class. To support students in learning to think, teachers must understand the theory of thinking themselves and be able to model it for their class. Trying to create a thinking class when you haven’t trained your own thinking is like trying to teach someone to play guitar when you haven’t learned yourself!

Developing a Thinking Classroom provides background information supported by activities for teachers – not students! – to work through. It focuses on changing teachers’ approaches and attitudes so they can change the culture in their classrooms. Change in education is often seen as ‘hard’ but perhaps it can be easy. With the different ways of looking at teaching and learning presented in this book, you can create a culture change in your classroom.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

A thinking workbook for teachers, not students
How to get the most from this book
Structure of the book
What is thinking?
Thinking behaviours
Dimensions of thinking
Conditions for good thinking
A thinking culture and environment
Some foundation rules for a thinking classroom
Social dimension of thinking
Types of classroom discussion
Thinking treasure: Content that motivates and engages good thinking
Rich concepts
Essential questions
Thinking behaviour: Describing, using and evaluating good thinking
Evaluating thinking behaviours
Creating your own thinking behaviours
The role of the teacher in the thinking classroom
Closed attitude
Open attitude
Whoever is doing the work is doing the thinking
Thought-encouraging questions
The student in the thinking class: Progress by thinking
Right–wrong progress
Better–worse progress
Developing a thinking classroom
Bibliography

Age Suitability: 7-15

ISBN-10: 1741014360
ISBN-13: 978-1741014365