“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think”
– Margaret Mead
In the preliminary stages of teaching, it sounds strenuous to process the term “OUT OF THE BOX”. Every demonstrator struggles but this term that used to nuisance initially has eventually become the key to success for all the children at our branch. Teachers take pride in the fact that they help children to shape their minds. Teachers here fully understand that children need to be able to do much more than repeating a list of facts; they need to be sharp thinkers who can make sense of information, analyze, compare, contrast, make inferences, and generate higher-order thinking skills.
They help them to get engaged in an astounding amalgam of VTR (visual thinking routine) and CPA (Concrete Abstract Pictorial) that helps them not only to use their own minds but also helps them to make choices. These strategies are inclusive and fully respect all learners’ as they use visual images to engage puzzles, and intrigue students while building ability and confidence in decoding complex and diverse material.
Visible Thinking Routine
Here, teachers do not take teaching just as a profession, but as the process of attending to children’s needs, experiences and feelings, and intervening so that they learn not only particular things but go beyond the given. They are doing it assertively as they are trained and are getting training on regular basis on the aforementioned strategies
- Provide opportunities for play.
- Pause and wait.
- Don’t intervene immediately.
- Ask open-ended questions.
- Help children develop hypotheses.
- Encourage thinking in new and different ways.
Children get used to thinking the way their capability allows them to and then reflect freely on their thought process using different mediums again according to their skill level. Thus this practice of being a liberated learner habitually raises their skill level.
“Education is nothing more, nor less, than learning to think”
– Peter A. Facione
