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Subj: Thinking!
Date: 97-03-28 15:19:58 EST
From: CBRAN00@UKCC.UKY.EDU (Cathy Brandt)
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HI folks,
Thought I'd share the following list of questions with you which I believe will lead kids to higher levels of thinking.
Source unknown - ditto distributed to teachers
Cathy
Deaf Education
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Subj: Re: Thinking!
Date: 97-03-28 15:23:17 EST
From: meccariu@UNLINFO.UNL.EDU (Malinda Eccarius)
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Neat list of questions, Cathy!
I would like to add another dimension--purpose for questions. I learned from a book by Hilda Taba (published by Addison Wesley in 1971 and probably out of print, but used for many "newer" theories), that not only the questions we ask but the order we ask them in and the purpose for which we ask them will influence whether children learn to think from answering them. She has sequences of questions for developing concepts, developing generalizations, identifying attitudes, feelings, and values, and applying generalizations. The questions build on each other to develop a particular thinking skill. I have used these sequences for teaching and diagnostic teaching for years, with considerable success, even where thinking was not expected by other teachers or parents.
Yet another dimension--what do we do when students don't understand the questions, and too much cognitive space is taken up by comprehending to allow enough for formulation of a meaningful response? There are a variety of prompt types which can, in themselves, develop thinking. They allow the student to get past the question comprehension problem and think about connecting what he or she knows about the topic to formulation of that knowledge into a comprehensible response. Intuitively, after years of use, these prompts have arranged themselves by level of difficulty,(for some children that sequence does not hold true, of course). For example, giving a multiple choice is usually easier than rephrasing the question, and an analogy is generally easier than a refocusing statement (e.g. "Listen to the question again.") The point of the prompt, of course, is to focus the child on the thinking task required by the question, not on the "language of the question." Don't get me started on the grouping of questions by first word rather than on the cognitive process required to answer them!!!
Happy Weekend. :)
Malinda Eccarius
Deaf Education
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Subj: Re: Thinking!
Date: 97-03-28 16:51:26 EST
From: meccariu@UNLINFO.UNL.EDU (Malinda Eccarius)
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Cathy,
Wow! What a quick turn around. It must be Spring Break!
The charts are in "A Teacher's Handbook to Elementary Social Studies: An Inductive Approach." by Taba, Durkin, Fraenkel and McNaughton.Addison Wesley, 1971 (2nd edition). I think it is out of print, but maybe a college library has it squirreled away somewhere. Of course, I do a lot of modifying.
>How do we guide kids to the thinking process if they don't understand the question?...>
Actually, I think we are thinking backwards. Students don't understand the questions until they understand the thinking process. Furth told us that nonverbal cognition develops normally in deaf children, and the WISC-R norming supports that finding (mean is actually 110 for the deaf population, as opposed to 100 for hearing). Then, all we do (smile) is clarify the concept nonverbally and then build the language in that context. I use visualizations for that, and I am NOT talking about semantic maps, but actual visuals of concepts, where the RELATIONSHIP rather than the information is clarified. A good visual will illustrate the same concept with any set of similarly related pieces of information. With the visual comes print, through the air language in the child's modality, and expressive application opportunties for the child. It is amazing how much less time it takes for a child to understand a question, an abstract relationship, or any other academic demand, when the discussion is based on the right visual, developed together and used as needed (then gradually removed).
Only my way of doing it. There are probably as many more as there are teachers.
Malinda
Deaf Education
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Subj: Re: Thinking!
Date: 97-03-29 12:46:26 EST
From: meccariu@UNLINFO.UNL.EDU (Malinda Eccarius)
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>Malinda,
I am unable to visualize your visualizations Jay,
My drawing capabilities on the computer are very limited.
However, I think
I can give you a number of examples without drawing.
I would like to start with an analogy. In the long struggle
to have ASL
accepted by hearing linguists as a true language, one of the most
telling
arguments was that it evolved through use by the people who
needed it, to
be the most efficient form of communication for them. Its rules
developed
because they made motoric and linguistic sense, just as
articulation and
meaning rules in other languages developed. Now, analogous to
that, over
centuries, ways of visualizing ideas have evolved. Pictures are
the
obvious example, with aspects of pictures being emphasized
depending on
their purpose (the animals in cave paintings are more elaborate
than the
hunters, suggesting to archaeologists that those people were
representing
the spirits of the animals they hunted, rather than their own
spirits).
Some pictures simply remained pictures, and became artistic
expression,
very communicative and varied, but functionally artistic. Other
pictures
gradually became less and less iconic and more and more symbolic,
and
became print. A third group of pictures became highly organized,
in ways
that were functional for human vision and thinking patterns. In
some
cases, what remained in the end was the organizational pattern
itself, and
either pictures or print could be used within the pattern.
Now, of course these categories overlap, but I would like to
concentrate on
the third. Here are some examples which, in Northern European
influenced
culture, are almost universally accepted and recognized:
The timeline.
It can use pictures or print or any other symbols, but
the left to
right organization conveys the passage of time, sequence of
events,
cyclical nature of some temporal concepts (like life cycles), and
appears
in many textbooks, comic books and cartoons, even scrolling of
images on
some TV shows and computer programs.
The map.
Here, I mean the road map, the spatial layout of any
physical
environment upon which journeys, events in a story organized by
setting,
addition of elements to show physical change over time, or
diagram of the
internal workings of a machine or the human body. Movement over
this
visual during a discussion gives students constant opportunities
to refocus
and stay with the teacher, relieving their minds to concentrate
on the
language of spatial relationships and the information being
conveyed about
those relationships in this specific instance.
The matrix.
I always call these parallel comparison charts, where
relationships
of categorization, similarity or difference can be observed
together and
discussed through isolation of certain aspects without losing
sight of the
big picture.
Diagrams.
If used appropriately, basic visuals such as Venn
Diagrams pinpoint
very specific concepts and relationships. Sometimes I catch
myself trying
to force information into an inappropriate diagram, just for the
sake of
using it, but that leads, invariably, to confusion for the
students.
Grouped Referents.
This is a little harder to explain, but I can give you a
visual of it. Say
I am working with a student on the Solar System. As we move
through
experiences, vocabulary pops up (usually content vocabulary) that
will be
needed in discussion again and again. Rather than simply
creating a
bulletin board of words, what I want to do is create an
organized, print
based referent that will help the students recall some of the
characteristics and associations related to those lexical items
(may be
words or phrases, of course). So, the first few words go up:
As we talk, the planet Mars is introduced. "Let's add Mars to
the bulletin
board. Which group do you think it goes in? With Sun and Earth?
Tell me
why. Because it starts with a capital letter? You are right, it
does, but
other groups might get capital letters later. Why does Mars
start with a
capital letter? Because it is a place. Right. Okay, let's put
it with
Earth and Sun for now and see if we want to change anything
later."
Sun might get moved to a star group, turning Earth and Mars
into a core of
"planets" and gas giant might go there, or stay and create a
group of
category names like "star" "moon" "asteroids" and "comets." It
depends on
the focus of the lesson. All of these elements can be multiply
grouped,
and by demonstrating that flexibility, and having students, with
mediation,
decide on the grouping and say why, puts the focus on the
concepts. After
a few teacher guided grouped referents, the students begin to do
it
themselves, and to answer questions no one would have believed
possible.
I think Deaf educators need to pay attention to the
instructional design
specialists. As I study this area, I realize how often we
confuse our
students and slow down their learning by our use of visuals. I
cringe to
think of some of the things I have done, and when I think about
it, those
were usually the lessons that just didn't fly.
Hope this helps.
Malinda Eccarius
Subj: Re: Thinking!
Cathy--
A few years ago I decided to learn Spanish. When I went to
Costa Rica
and began to use my Spanish I began to understand why our deaf
kids have
so much trouble with questions. When I was in a conversation, I
could
participate fairly successfully until I was asked a question. At
first I
thought I was having difficulty because my mind just froze. I
finally
realized, though, that questions posed a different problem for me
than
when I was simply contributing to a topic. When you are speaking
a
language you only partially grasp, you can often catch enough of
what's
going on to contribute something meaningful to the conversation
even if
you don't know exactly what was said. The give and take of a
normal
conversation gives lots of opportunities to talk about a whole
range of
things and still be an appropriate conversation partner.
However, when
someone asks you a question, you must catch every single word.
You must
know what the question word is, the meaning of every single word,
and
their grammatical relationships with one another. This is a much
tougher
task than simply getting the gist of a conversation and then
telling your
own story. I came away from that experience with a much greater
respect
for the challenge that our kids are having as they are trying to
learn
English.
Carolyn Bullard
Uploaded by: BJ Lawrence/ Kent State University/ Deafed Major
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Date: 97-03-31 02:31:43 EST
From: bullard@LCLARK.EDU (Carolyn Bullard)
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