{"id":32,"date":"2015-12-12T22:47:41","date_gmt":"2015-12-12T22:47:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/heatherrhind\/?p=32"},"modified":"2016-01-15T19:22:11","modified_gmt":"2016-01-15T19:22:11","slug":"time-to-think-about-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/heatherrhind\/2015\/12\/12\/time-to-think-about-thinking\/","title":{"rendered":"Time to Think about Thinking"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everything comes down to time. \u00a0Since the last face 2 face this has been made more clear to me than ever before – time to plan, time to mark, time to write reports and…always at the bottom of the list…time to breathe (not to mention, write a blog – oops!)<\/p>\n

While the never-ending list is common to all teachers and an annual source of stress\u00a0at those reoccurring ‘crunch times,’ I have been increasingly\u00a0cognizant \u00a0of how much more I\u00a0want to make the way<\/em> I spend my time in and out of class\u00a0result in something\u00a0meaningful\u00a0<\/strong>for my students.<\/p>\n

With the focus of my research question revolving around achieving deeper thinking\u00a0and\u00a0collaborative learning, I experimented with using essential questions as the foundation for the unit I’ve just completed teaching. \u00a0Though when introduced the students responded with “Awww….this is gonna be like TOK (Theory of Knowledge), isn’t it?” I found coming back to a fundamental and multifaceted question really grounded the unit and elicited thinking beyond the immediate context of the lesson. \u00a0To encourage refection around the essential question, I also had students complete a “Connect, Extend and Challenge” thinking activity at the end of most lessons. \u00a0This made thinking visible using Padlet (thanks @aianovskaia<\/a>\u00a0for the suggestion) and allowed students to monitor how their own thoughts and the thoughts of their classmates changed and developed with new knowledge.<\/p>\n

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In a unit revolving around atomic structure, our essential question of “How do we understand something we cannot see?” really tied into practical experiments – even for a unit in chemistry that is traditionally dry and very theory-based. \u00a0It was great to consider how scientists could have come up with such ground-breaking new ideas simply from observing and finding new ways to explain experimental results. \u00a0A highlight for me was having groups of students use\u00a0an online simulation to ‘see’ the results of Bohr’s experiment and try to apply their learning to explain what was going on!<\/p>\n

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While I feel that the learning that took place in this unit went some way toward meeting my goal of ‘deeper and collaborative learning,’ the sacrifice has been time. \u00a0Because we spent more time on discovering new ideas, extending fundamental facts to applications and building an understanding together (without lessons being teacher-led or ‘spoon-fed’) I am now behind in terms of course content. \u00a0Unfortunately, in an IB course where the end-game is an external exam, it is vital that the students complete all core content in a given time.<\/p>\n

So back to my conundrum. \u00a0How do I achieve deeper, collaborative and student-driven learning while adhering to an externally imposed timeline? \u00a0I am still working on this balance and optimistic that it can be achieved. \u00a0For the time being, I strongly believe that the extra time we took over this unit will be regained. \u00a0As the students build skills in critical thinking and their ability to acquire knowledge, subsequent units (regardless of complexity and volume of content) should become more manageable because the students are discovering, for themselves, how they learn best and most efficiently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everything comes down to time. \u00a0Since the last face 2 face this has been made more clear to me than ever before – time to plan, time to mark, time to write reports and…always at the bottom of the list…time to breathe (not to mention, write a blog – oops!) While the never-ending list is … Continue reading “Time to Think about Thinking”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[9],"class_list":["post-32","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-action-plan","category-face-2-face-sessions","tag-action-plan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/heatherrhind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/heatherrhind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/heatherrhind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/heatherrhind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/heatherrhind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/heatherrhind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/heatherrhind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/heatherrhind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/heatherrhind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}