Back issues of The Skilful Thinker Newsletter:

• Knowledge and Critical Thinking
  20 February 10 : Issue Eight
  I have been thinking for some time about the important link between knowledge and critical thinking and the difficulties a 12 year old has with gaining high quality knowledge, with which to think critically, when their research skills are only beginning to develop. I have been keeping in mind this quote by Robert Ennis, ‘but ultimately, of course, familiarity with the subject and situation calling for critical thinking is essential for critical thinking.’   Read More
  
  
  
• Inquiring Minds
  12 September 09 : Issue Seven
  The best way to get a sense of how we should approach “inquiry learning” in the classroom is to look at how inquiry plays a role in our lives outside school. “Inquiry”, in its broadest sense, and as we use this word, refers to the activity of a person explicitly posing questions in a way that prompts that person to try to get answers to them. These questions can be about anything, they can be organized in a variety of different ways, and they can be generated in a multitude of different contexts. Inquiry is a proactive process, and it stands in contrast to situations in which the answers to such questions are simply given to you without your asking for them and it is your job to passively accept what you are given, perhaps so that you can later show that you have absorbed what you are told by giving it back.   Read More
  
  
  
• Thinking-Based Inquiry
  6 April 09 : Issue Six
  Six years ago we began using inquiry to develop our students' research and thinking skills. It soon became apparent that while we had put them in a more realistic research mode they had made little real progress with their thinking skills. At the 13th International Conference on Thinking in Harrogate, England, Dr. Robert Swartz and two Israeli educationalist, Dr. Adam Lefstein and Dr. Yoram Harpaz introduced us to inquiry approaches that placed a real world problem at the heart of the inquiry.   Read More
  
  
  
• Bringing Skilful Thinking Into Writing Programmes
  8 February 09 : Issue Five
  Our Action Research project began out of a casual discussion with some teachers regarding how they are bringing thinking into their programmes. It soon became apparent that bringing thinking into writing was proving very challenging for all and that the benefits to student achievement in doing so, hadn’t been explored.   Read More
  
  
  
• What do we want to see our students do in their lives as a result of our teaching thinking in our classrooms
  14 October 08 : Issue Four
  Bad Thinking Habits and Good Thinking Habits
  When I think about this question I try to imagine examples of thinking challenges and responses to them by our students that will make me think that our efforts have been successful. The automobile is a piece of technology that has, for many years, been an essential and abiding part of modern life. Think of how much time most of us spend in automobiles, and how much of a fixture automobiles, gas stations, and parking areas are in almost every major populated area on this planet. Most of us buy automobiles one or more times in our lives. Our students will also. And that usually requires some thinking.     Read More
  
  
  
• Can we teach students to monitor, assess, and improve their own thinking?
  28 August 08 : Issue Three
  Carmen Vasquez is about to give her students an assignment to write a persuasive letter to one of
  the main characters in a novel they are reading. This assignment is not part of a writing program,
  but rather is integrated into a lesson she has taught in which she had two main objectives: giving the
  students practice in developing an understanding of the traits of the characters in the novel through
  identifying their histories as portrayed in the novel, and developing skill at decision making. The latter
  is played out in the lesson as the students “become” one of the characters and have to decide the best
  thing to do at a crucial juncture in the novel. To do this they need to predict the reactions of the other
  characters to the options they are considering.     Read More
  
  
  
• THE TITANIC SINKS, WHO WAS TO BLAME?
  29 June 08 : Issue Two
  On my visit Glenda’s Year 6 class, Room 20 were working on a social studies investigation into the sinking of the Titanic. The thinking skill emphasised during the unit was causal explanation. The Scenario that set the scene for Room 20’s guided inquiry was, ‘In 1912 Captain Smith was on the bridge of the R.M.S. Titanic. It was the largest ship in the World and thought to be unsinkable.!     Read More
  
  
  
• Episodes of skillful thinking don’t jus happen. They need to be taught
  1 May 08 : Issue One
  Welcome to the new networking newsletter of the Teachers of Thinking Aotearoa Collaborative! I am delighted to be a part of this new network. It fulfills one of our long-term objectives at the National Center for Teaching Thinking in the USA – to make the good work of teachers in fostering the skillful thinking of their students available to all teachers everywhere. We view committed teachers as the real experts on what works in classrooms to foster learning and yet, in the normal situation, this expertise is kept behind closed doors! Newsletters like this one will open those doors!     Read More