I know Critical thinking prepares students to educate themselves for the rest of their lives, in this sense I have been trying to work with activities that develop thinking skills, for example readings with reading comprehension questions and critical thinking questions to promote their reflection and develop levels of comprehension, but To be honest I have many dificulties because they only reach the low order skill level and only some of them reach the high order level analysis. Unfortunately, reading is not students' favorite hobby, that's why we are working hard in all public schools of Peru with "reading comprehension Programs" in all the areas to overcome this problem.
Can you give me some advice to help those students who can hardly develop thinking skills?
Hi Miriam Sheen,
ResponderEliminarYou asked if I could give you some advice to help your students who can hardly develop thinking skills. You also indicated that you have large classes of 35-40 students. In your background information you said that you have activities to develop thinking skills and you give an example of readings with critical thinking questions, but that most of the students are at the low order skill level and that reading is not their favorite activity.
One activity to involve student in reading and thinking about their reading is to use a critical reading format. Critical reading is comprised of an important set of skills aimed at comprehension. You can use the following structure on a daily basis in teaching students to read for understanding.
The basic idea is that students read aloud in pairs, taking turns reading and saying in their own words what they have read. Here us the basic format:
1. Place students in pairs so that at least one student can decipher the words fairly well (though you may have to help with some words).
2. One student reads the fist sentence aloud.
3. This is followed by the second student stating in her/his own words what the sentence means.
4. If the first student disagrees with the meaning the second student gave it, the two students can discuss the meaning until they reach agreement (or, again, they may need help from the teacher).
5. Together, the students write a paraphrase of the sentence.
6. Then the second student reads the next sentence.
7. The other student then gives the sentence meaning.
8. Students go back and forth in this way taking turns reading and comprehending, then discussing meanings if necessary until the passage is complete.
After this reading and paraphrasing activity, the students can be asked to state, elaborate, exemplify, and illustrate the thesis of the paragraph/reading passage. This can be done orally in pairs and then written by the pairs. One pair could then combine with another pair to compare their ideas and to negotiate meaning.
Then, the students can analyze the author’s purpose. For example they can analyze the parts of thinking of a character in a story.
1. The most important problem the main character faces in the story is . . .
2. The main purpose of the main character in the story is . . .
3. The most important information the main character uses in his or her thinking in the story is . . .
4. The main concepts or ideas the main character uses in his or her thinking are . . .
5. The main assumptions the main character makes (the things he or she takes for granted) are . . .
6. The main conclusions (or inferences) the character comes to is . . .
7. The main consequences of the main character’s behavior are . . .
8. The point of view of the main character: She or he was looking at ______ and seeing it______.
In general, the following format can be used in any reading assignment so that students are learning to give meaning to what they are reading. The format is:
1. Critical reading activity in pairs (described above).
2. A written assignment wherein children write out their understanding of at least some part of what they read in their own words.
To engage students, you might also want to consider some project activities where students illustrate their viewpoints or interpretation of the reading. They can do these projects in pairs or small groups. A few suggestions would be: acting out a favorite scene; role playing where one student would be the main character or author and other students can ask the main character/author questions; composing a song that tells the story; creating a collage that reflects the themes in the story; rewriting the story ending; creating a newspaper review of the story; creating an illustrated book cover for the story; comparing two versions of the same story.
Author: Cynthia Kieffer
Date: Friday, October 19, 2007 12:58:01 PM PDT
Subject: RE: Question for Cindy from Miriam Sheen