Be an Agent of Change

"Be an agent of change by teaching critical thinking" in your classrooms; a direct quote from our math teacher last week.  That is a powerful statement.  How do we teach critical thinking?  By checking for what students might already know that might help them in this problem; for application of the previous knowledge; for what predictions can they make; challenging them to engage, to connect; to become problem solvers, detectives? 

How do we wake up their minds? It has to be safe. It has to be relevant, interesting, or funny.  Once we get them to connect with the work, we have to help them develop analytical thinking habits - some basic questions they can ask themselves (and each other) to check what they already know and see how what they learned fits or shifts the prior knowledge.

I think maybe I don't like the term "critical" thinking because of negative associations I have with the word critical.  For me it connotes judgement and more of a closed mindset.  I want to cultivate open, distinguishing thinking in my students.  Distinguished thinking.  I like the sound of it!

Emerging Literacy

Wow, what a full week of insight into literacy.  Reading Fox has given me much insight into the emergence of literacy which was then very exciting to take into the classroom with our Kindergarten Buddy (KB from here on out).  I am trying to figure out if she is what Fox would call Alphabetic, perhaps, threshold Alphabetic.  She understands that letters represent sounds, can name them, give their sounds, and even knows what letters are used in her classmates names.  While doing the Emergent Literacy Profile with her, I noticed that she is reluctant to look for picture cues, so focused is she on the words and sounding them out. She shows great perseverance when attempting to decode a word, even unfamiliar names.  She does not use picture cues for clues, is even reluctant to do so with prompting.  It seems that she feels so close to getting the word that she does not want to take the time to look at the picture.  While she is being a word detective, I am in awe of being an emergent literacy detective!

I am excited to spend more time her today to see if she uses the analogy strategy to decode words.  Given that she understood the rhyme and beginning sound part of the ELP so well, I suspect that this will be fun for both of us.