My Wondering: How can I use higher order thinking questions to foster critical thinking skills?
Part A- Taking Actions As A Teacher
I am beginning my final internship in a new classroom so I have taken the first weeks to really get to know my students before I begin collecting data for my inquiry. My new class is departmentalized, so I see two different groups of students each day. I had every student in the class fill out an interest survey. I tried to find an interest survey that was already made, using sites like Teacher-Pay-Teacher and Pinterest, but I was not able to find one that I liked. I then decided to create my own interest survey using the questions I liked from a bunch of different surveys. The survey was given to the students as morning work and I asked them to complete it by the end of the school day. Many of the students really enjoyed filling out the survey and got it back to me right away. Some students however, did take much longer and I even had a few not turn them in. I used the surveys to help me get to know all the students in both my classes. I also used the information as conversation starters with the children. For example, one student told me about wanting to be a vet when she was older. This got us talking about what kind of animals she has at home. I found out that for Christmas, she got a pet rat. She was really excited to talk to me about all the things she does with her pet rat and how one of the two dogs she has a home does not like the rat. I feel that it is important for me to get to know the students in my classroom on a level that is a little more personal. This will help me when trying to develop higher order thinking questions to use as exit tickets and for morning work.
Part B- Reflecting on Learning- Formative Data Collection Analysis
One of the most powerful pieces of formative data that I collected, to help me with my inquiry, was the interview I completed with my collaborating teacher (CT). Another piece of powerful data that I collected this week were field notes while students were answering higher order thinking questions given by my CT.
While talking with my CT, about my inquiry, I learned that it was similar to her goal as a teacher. Her goal was to include more higher order thinking questions throughout her lessons. I also learned about the School Improvement Plan (SIP) which all teachers are required to have hanging up somewhere in their classroom. The School Improvement Plans states, “Increase student engagement in rigorous tasks that is differentiated based on students need and align with the content standards”. My Ct explained that one of the ways to do this was by asking the students higher order thinking (HOT) questions. I was struggling with developing higher order questions so during my CT interview I asked her where she looked for the HOT questions she gave to the students. She said that the curriculum guide gives her examples of HOT questions. Then we talked about the students’ ability to develop HOT questions and I was told that on each student’s desk there are Math Stems that they can use to help ask questions to other students. The next thing we talked about was what type of data did she think was best for me to collect to help me with my inquiry. We discussed pulling a focus group of 6 students and collect data from them because we both thought it would be too hard to collect data from the whole class. We also talked about taking field notes and using their Exit Tickets to help me with my inquiry. Eventually, I want to use the Exit Tickets to allow students to create their own HOT questions. I would like to use those questions as a warm up for the next day’s class. I believe this was important for my inquiry because it gave me a place to begin. I was a little worried that I would not be able to collect enough data to help me with my inquiry but after talking with her I feel much better. After this talk, I began looking more carefully at the students’ Exit Tickets and taking more field notes while the students are talking in their table groups.
The next piece of data I collected this week were field notes while the students were talking in their table groups. I chose 6 focus students to collect data from during the process of my inquiry. Three are from the morning class and 3 are from the afternoon class. They all have a wide range of abilities. One specific piece of information, from my field notes, that stood out to me this week was during math when they were given a problem. This problem was dealing with multiplication which is something the students have not learned yet. The teacher wanted to see what the students knew about solving a problem like this. The problem was, “Each car on a train has 200 seats. How many seats are on a train with 8 cars?” Walking around the room I noticed that Amanda (pseudonym) was correctly solving the problem. Since she is one of my focus students I stopped and talked to her about what she was doing. I asked her, “Why did you decide to solve the problem this way?” She responded, “a model helps improve my thinking more than an equation.” This is helpful to my inquiry because with the use of a higher order thinking question Amanda could use critical thinking to explain why she used a model instead of an equation like most students in the class did. I also noticed when talking with her I often had to ask more questions to help her get to an answer for the higher order thinking question. This showed me that I need to ask more HOT questions so that the students are more familiar with them and their ability to answer them may increase. So, as I move on with my inquiry, I am going to incorporate more higher order thinking questions into my lessons.
Based on the data I collected, I still wonder how can I know if my students are understanding the question that is being asked. I feel like that is important before I can know if using higher order thinking questions is fostering their critical thinking skills. I also wonder if I am collecting the correct and right amount of data to answer my inquiry question. How do I show that the students are able to answer higher order thinking questions?
Part A- Taking Actions As A Teacher
I am beginning my final internship in a new classroom so I have taken the first weeks to really get to know my students before I begin collecting data for my inquiry. My new class is departmentalized, so I see two different groups of students each day. I had every student in the class fill out an interest survey. I tried to find an interest survey that was already made, using sites like Teacher-Pay-Teacher and Pinterest, but I was not able to find one that I liked. I then decided to create my own interest survey using the questions I liked from a bunch of different surveys. The survey was given to the students as morning work and I asked them to complete it by the end of the school day. Many of the students really enjoyed filling out the survey and got it back to me right away. Some students however, did take much longer and I even had a few not turn them in. I used the surveys to help me get to know all the students in both my classes. I also used the information as conversation starters with the children. For example, one student told me about wanting to be a vet when she was older. This got us talking about what kind of animals she has at home. I found out that for Christmas, she got a pet rat. She was really excited to talk to me about all the things she does with her pet rat and how one of the two dogs she has a home does not like the rat. I feel that it is important for me to get to know the students in my classroom on a level that is a little more personal. This will help me when trying to develop higher order thinking questions to use as exit tickets and for morning work.
Part B- Reflecting on Learning- Formative Data Collection Analysis
One of the most powerful pieces of formative data that I collected, to help me with my inquiry, was the interview I completed with my collaborating teacher (CT). Another piece of powerful data that I collected this week were field notes while students were answering higher order thinking questions given by my CT.
While talking with my CT, about my inquiry, I learned that it was similar to her goal as a teacher. Her goal was to include more higher order thinking questions throughout her lessons. I also learned about the School Improvement Plan (SIP) which all teachers are required to have hanging up somewhere in their classroom. The School Improvement Plans states, “Increase student engagement in rigorous tasks that is differentiated based on students need and align with the content standards”. My Ct explained that one of the ways to do this was by asking the students higher order thinking (HOT) questions. I was struggling with developing higher order questions so during my CT interview I asked her where she looked for the HOT questions she gave to the students. She said that the curriculum guide gives her examples of HOT questions. Then we talked about the students’ ability to develop HOT questions and I was told that on each student’s desk there are Math Stems that they can use to help ask questions to other students. The next thing we talked about was what type of data did she think was best for me to collect to help me with my inquiry. We discussed pulling a focus group of 6 students and collect data from them because we both thought it would be too hard to collect data from the whole class. We also talked about taking field notes and using their Exit Tickets to help me with my inquiry. Eventually, I want to use the Exit Tickets to allow students to create their own HOT questions. I would like to use those questions as a warm up for the next day’s class. I believe this was important for my inquiry because it gave me a place to begin. I was a little worried that I would not be able to collect enough data to help me with my inquiry but after talking with her I feel much better. After this talk, I began looking more carefully at the students’ Exit Tickets and taking more field notes while the students are talking in their table groups.
The next piece of data I collected this week were field notes while the students were talking in their table groups. I chose 6 focus students to collect data from during the process of my inquiry. Three are from the morning class and 3 are from the afternoon class. They all have a wide range of abilities. One specific piece of information, from my field notes, that stood out to me this week was during math when they were given a problem. This problem was dealing with multiplication which is something the students have not learned yet. The teacher wanted to see what the students knew about solving a problem like this. The problem was, “Each car on a train has 200 seats. How many seats are on a train with 8 cars?” Walking around the room I noticed that Amanda (pseudonym) was correctly solving the problem. Since she is one of my focus students I stopped and talked to her about what she was doing. I asked her, “Why did you decide to solve the problem this way?” She responded, “a model helps improve my thinking more than an equation.” This is helpful to my inquiry because with the use of a higher order thinking question Amanda could use critical thinking to explain why she used a model instead of an equation like most students in the class did. I also noticed when talking with her I often had to ask more questions to help her get to an answer for the higher order thinking question. This showed me that I need to ask more HOT questions so that the students are more familiar with them and their ability to answer them may increase. So, as I move on with my inquiry, I am going to incorporate more higher order thinking questions into my lessons.
Based on the data I collected, I still wonder how can I know if my students are understanding the question that is being asked. I feel like that is important before I can know if using higher order thinking questions is fostering their critical thinking skills. I also wonder if I am collecting the correct and right amount of data to answer my inquiry question. How do I show that the students are able to answer higher order thinking questions?