hi there and welcome to that's why so

this is conference week and i have

gotten a
bunch of questions about distance
learning today i'm going to answer one
of them
which is how do i bring higher order
thinking skills into my distance
learning
so in today's that's why i'm going to
talk about how you can bring it into
your distance learning
into your classroom learning into your
hybrid learning
and even into your own life with your
own kids if you want to
with this one one very simple way
so thanks for joining me on that's why
okay so let's talk about one easy way
to encourage students in meaningful
critical thinking
and incidentally yes that is my dog
with her squeak toy in the background
she wants to get my attention anyways
i'm going to keep going
so there's lots of definitions of
critical thinking depending on what
source you use where you're going for
information
and so on and so forth as a learning
theorist of course this
is one of the things that i love to do
is to find out
what critical thinking is how it's
defined how it's used
and what i came up with is a working
definition
that's going to be useful for you
teaching
and also a definition that kind of
aligns with a lot of the work
and the stuff that i've been doing in my
videos
that you've probably already seen or
you're you're going to see
as you watch some of these so critical
thinking
i define as the active process of
analyzing
synthesizing evaluating reflecting and
applying information
toward specific situations and contexts
now i say active active process of
analyzing synthesizing evaluating
reflecting and
applying because if you have students
that are sitting
in the middle of a lecture listening to
you talk or watching a video
that's not necessarily critical thinking
here's the reason why they're not
actively using
the information that's coming out of
those presentations
now of course the question from the
conference is
how do we do this in distance learning
right
but the way i'm going to explain it is
i'm going to share with you ways that we
can do it in distance learning but ways
we can do it in other
contexts and settings as well first
let's start with thinking about critical
thinking in relation to
our classroom and what i want to present
to you
is the bicycle model so in this
model let's imagine that the information
that you
give to a student in a classroom is a
bike
okay this is the content this is the
information
that you're providing in books videos
03:03
you know
03:04
vocabulary lists processes and so on
03:06
it's information
03:08
right so just like a bicycle you know if
03:10
we give a bike to somebody here's the
03:12
seat
03:13
here's the brake here's the pedal the
03:15
wheels so on and so forth
03:17
however unless the student does
03:19
something with that information they're
03:20
never going to learn how to ride the
03:21
bike
03:23
you can't ride a bike unless you get on
03:26
the bike
03:28
and you learn how to ride it which means
03:30
think about what it takes
03:32
to actually learn how to ride a bike we
03:34
have to pedal
03:36
we have to balance we have to get on the
03:38
bike
03:39
fall get back on the bike and keep going
03:42
as we learn
03:43
the skills to use
03:46
the bicycle critical thinking is about
03:49
skills applying skills
03:51
what do you do with the information
03:55
in terms of analysis synthesis evaluate
03:58
reflect and reply
03:59
these are the skills that students need
04:01
to learn but these are the skills
04:03
involved in critical thinking so
04:06
going back to the bike metaphor
04:10
even though you're providing the
04:11
information in order for kids to
04:14
critically
04:14
think about that information they have
04:17
to get on the bike
04:19
and ride the bike they have to
04:22
use that information they have to
04:24
analyze it synthesize it evaluate it
04:26
reflect and apply it
04:28
before they can get the skills for
04:31
critical thinking
04:32
and just like riding a bike it takes
04:36
practice
04:36
right and in some cases like some people
04:39
you know they get on the bike
04:41
they fall a lot they try again and they
04:44
fall
04:45
until they get it other people they use
04:48
training wheels
04:48
me my dad taught me how to ride a bike
04:51
he grabbed the back of the bike seat
04:53
and ran with me as i learned how to ride
04:55
that bike
04:56
okay so scaffolds are important
05:00
you can't just expect students to
05:02
analyze something if they've never
05:04
analyzed something before they need
05:07
scaffolds they need training wheels they
05:09
need
05:09
guidance in order to do this but here's
05:11
the difference
05:12
you are not riding the bike for them
05:15
you're not analyzing for them this is
05:17
something that you expect
05:19
students to do for you as a qp a parent
05:22
a caretaker
05:23
a relative whomever is teaching your
05:26
student right
05:27
as an adult you should also have that
05:30
expectation
05:31
that you know what opportunities do i
05:33
have
05:34
for my child to analyze to synthesize
05:36
evaluate reflect and
05:38
apply what opportunities do they have to
05:40
practice these skills
05:42
i'm going to show you how to do that
05:44
first remember
05:47
when it comes to distance learning less
05:50
is more so what i mean by that
05:53
and you've probably seen this in some of
05:55
my other videos is that when we go to
05:57
distance learning
05:58
everything that you get students to do
06:01
every platform
06:02
every new procedure even the skills to
06:05
communicate
06:06
online is a cognitive load in addition
06:09
to the information kids
06:11
have to learn how to use the platform
06:14
think about how long it takes
06:15
you to learn a platform it's going to
06:18
take kids
06:19
that long if not longer because they may
06:21
not be comfortable with the information
06:22
at all
06:24
so what i mean by less is more is you've
06:27
got to
06:28
lessen the cognitive load fewer
06:30
platforms
06:32
more procedures and routines right
06:34
things that are more automated so it's
06:36
just the information that provides the
06:38
cognitive load and nothing
06:40
else so less is more no shiny objects
06:44
keep shiny objects to minimum but
06:48
here's the converse the corollary of
06:50
that that i'm going to introduce for you
06:52
do more with less so whatever it is
06:55
that you've put on the platform whatever
06:58
information you provide
07:01
the skills is the more
07:04
what skills can kids do with the
07:06
information you provide
07:08
are they analyzing are they evaluating
07:11
are they synthesizing or applying that
07:14
information to something
07:15
that's the more piece that i invite you
07:18
to think about when you're doing
07:19
distance learning and actually when
07:20
you're doing learning in general right
07:22
when you're thinking about learning in
07:23
general in other words breath
07:27
over depth and deep in learning through
07:29
higher order
07:31
questions i'll talk about that in a
07:32
second now here's the reason why
07:34
i talk about doing more with less i talk
07:36
about emphasizing skills and process
07:40
over giving kids more information
07:43
it's because one big factor of learning
07:46
that we always
07:47
underestimate is how much time it's
07:49
going to take a student to learn
07:51
something
07:52
this is not something that you as a
07:54
teacher can really control
07:56
other than instructional design and
07:58
multiple opportunities
08:00
to apply or interact with that
08:03
information right but other than that
08:06
it's still going to take time and that
08:08
time cannot be rushed
08:09
in many cases but what can you can do
08:12
is give students more opportunities to
08:14
interact with that information to
08:16
manipulate it that's what i mean by
08:18
depth over breadth
08:19
because if you give students a lot of
08:21
information
08:22
flood them with information try and
08:24
cover that information as much as
08:26
possible
08:27
you're still not going to maximize
08:28
learning that makes sense right
08:31
i mean think about even us our learning
08:33
capacity if you're inundated with lots
08:35
of information no matter what happens
08:38
you're not going to learn it unless you
08:40
have time
08:41
given time to learn it right even
08:44
even in college i used to have my days
08:46
where i would cram for a test
08:48
it's true if i cram for a test overnight
08:52
yes i may ace the test but i won't
08:55
remember that stuff a week later because
08:57
i didn't actually
08:57
learn it and that's the point that i'm
09:00
trying to make
09:01
to get students to learn information
09:04
they must have time to process it but
09:06
they also must have time
09:08
to interact with it there's where those
09:10
higher order thinking skills
09:11
come into play how do we do that how do
09:14
we do that in the classroom
09:16
socratic questioning let's go back to
09:18
one of the original
09:20
thinkers of critical thinking socrates
09:24
learned
09:24
that he could scaffold
09:28
the thinking process get students to
09:30
analyze
09:31
to evaluate to apply and synthesize
09:35
through a series of open-ended questions
09:39
and they're specific these questions
09:41
have to be open-ended
09:42
close-ended questions where there's just
09:44
an answer and i fill in the blank
09:47
doesn't inspire students to go further
09:50
students to learn open-ended questions
09:53
specific open-ended questions can really
09:57
activate specific thought processes the
10:00
ones that you want
10:01
it also grounds learning into lived
10:04
and personalized experiences
10:08
when you ask deliberate open-ended
10:11
questions of the student
10:12
you can get them to analyze you can get
10:15
them to apply
10:16
that information to their own context
10:18
because in order to
10:20
answer an open-ended question you have
10:23
to draw from your own experience
10:25
and that's the beauty of an open-ended
10:27
question
10:28
the nature of how a student answers it
10:31
the kinds of answers that come out
10:32
because
10:33
in reality an open-ended question means
10:35
not everybody should be
10:36
answering the same thing right not
10:38
everybody should have the same answer
10:40
their answers are going to tell you a
10:42
lot about the kind of learners they are
10:44
about the kinds of experiences they've
10:46
had about the
10:47
um the ways they're thinking and
10:49
processing the information
10:51
that's the beauty of an open-ended
10:52
question it's just juicy
10:55
with all kinds of information for you
10:58
here are some examples of open-ended
11:01
questions
11:02
that i will share with you that can
11:04
activate certain
11:06
critical thinking learning processes now
11:09
the thing about critical thinking is
11:11
it's complicated right
11:13
thinking itself is a complicated thing
11:15
we can't
11:16
group everything into compartments and
11:19
boxes for example i
11:21
um even though there are questions that
11:24
you can
11:25
ask that nurture evaluation it doesn't
11:28
mean these are
11:29
the evaluation questions in this box and
11:32
these are the analysis questions in this
11:34
box
11:35
there's a lot of overlap because
11:38
thinking itself is
11:39
complex it's multi-dimensional so
11:42
a lot of these questions overlap i don't
11:44
want you to get hung up on
11:46
oh yeah i need an analysis question
11:48
right away or i need a synthesis
11:50
question
11:51
there are questions that activate those
11:53
things
11:54
but understand that a lot of times when
11:56
you're asking a really good
11:57
open-ended question you're probably
11:59
hitting a number of critical thinking
12:01
skills
12:01
okay so analyzing and to kind of help
12:05
out with getting us all on the same page
12:07
i did a quick
12:08
definition of each one these are not
12:11
written in the literature they're just
12:12
more like i pulled out webster's
12:14
dictionary and i went from the stuff
12:15
that i already know
12:17
analysis is to study how different parts
12:20
make the whole and what that means think
12:21
about analysis right
12:23
when i think visually of analysis i
12:24
think of a magnifying glass that's
12:26
looking very closely at certain parts of
12:28
things
12:30
and what does it mean to maybe the whole
12:33
puzzle what does it mean to me what's
12:35
the big picture
12:36
right so some questions that you can ask
12:39
that touch on analysis compare x to
12:42
z right um comparing things
12:46
is a great way of getting students to
12:48
analyze
12:49
how is it similar a difference to
12:51
different to
12:52
whatever else it is right why
12:56
is it different what are the reasons why
12:59
you think these are different what are
13:00
the reasons why you think these are the
13:01
same
13:02
venn diagrams are beautiful at these
13:06
analysis questions
13:07
having students create diagrams that
13:09
compare and contrast and stuff like that
13:11
are
13:11
wonderful ways of engaging in that those
13:14
higher order thinking processes
13:17
what problem are you trying to solve and
13:19
i'm not talking about you
13:20
asking a student to repeat the problem
13:22
you gave i'm talking about when a
13:24
student looks confused going
13:26
what can you tell me what problem it is
13:29
that you're confused about or trying to
13:30
figure out
13:31
if you can get kids to ask questions
13:34
about the problems that they're trying
13:36
to work out and
13:37
face you have given them a life skill
13:40
that is going to serve them well for the
13:43
rest of their life
13:45
so what problem tell me the problem that
13:47
you're trying to you're thinking about
13:48
or solving in this case
13:50
why does it matter instead of kids going
13:53
uh did i miss anything important today
13:55
instead you can say what do you think
13:57
was important about what you learned
13:59
why does this matter in the big picture
14:01
why does this matter to an engineer or
14:03
to a mathematician or to a scientist
14:05
right
14:05
why do you think that matters that we
14:07
know this stuff and what does it mean
14:10
what does it mean when you look at these
14:12
data and and
14:14
have written this graph what does that
14:15
mean what's the overall
14:17
meaning and big picture of it right
14:19
these are great analysis questions for
14:21
that
14:22
synthesizing is to bring different parts
14:24
together to
14:26
make or create something new
14:29
one of the most powerful ways of
14:32
synthesis
14:33
and engaging in critical thinking is
14:35
recontextualizing
14:36
what recontextualizing means is to take
14:39
information from one source
14:41
or several sources in certain modality
14:44
and when i mean modality it's like a
14:46
form
14:47
of how that information is embedded so
14:52
text is a modality video is a modality
14:56
an audio file is a modality a picture is
14:58
a modality
14:59
a sculpture is a modality right it all
15:03
conveys
15:04
information and sometimes emotion too
15:08
so when we ask students to take
15:11
information from one source
15:14
and recontextualize it into something
15:16
else
15:18
like for instance take this this
15:21
information from this book
15:23
and create a picture from it or take
15:26
this movie and write a summary about it
15:30
right we're asking students to interpret
15:34
the information
15:35
from this one modality then we're asking
15:38
them to evaluate and think about
15:40
how that information translates into
15:42
this other modality
15:44
beautiful powerful thinking processes
15:47
right there when you can have students
15:49
re-contextualize
15:50
synthesize create things so some
15:52
questions you can ask
15:54
about this what are you going to make
15:56
why
15:57
what's the best way to teach this
15:59
information i'm saying
16:01
with this question to the student
16:04
i've given you this information how
16:06
would you teach this to
16:08
your classmate right think about the
16:10
critical thinking there
16:11
to ask a student to teach it to somebody
16:13
else how will you
16:15
solve this problem with the things that
16:16
you have
16:18
a big question that came up in the
16:20
conference was
16:21
how do i have stem challenges when kids
16:24
all have different things
16:26
it's not actually a problem the problem
16:29
is this
16:30
how do i get kids to engage in critical
16:33
thinking processes with all these
16:34
different things
16:36
it's the process that we want kids to
16:38
really think about
16:39
it's not the thing that they make it's
16:42
the process
16:43
of them making the thing that we want to
16:46
push on that we want to add rigor to
16:49
right so a stem challenge when you say
16:51
create
16:52
a thing it's not the thing that we're
16:55
analyzing it's
16:57
how did you make it tell me the process
16:59
that you use to make it how can you make
17:01
it better
17:02
right why did you make what did you make
17:06
from these things
17:07
lots of questions out there
17:10
so how do you solve the problem with the
17:12
things you have
17:14
what did you leave out and why
17:17
what can you do with x how can you use
17:20
y um blanks right um what can you
17:24
combine to make whatever and what did
17:27
you do notice these are kind of
17:28
open-ended yes
17:30
and i wrote them vaguely to help you
17:34
uh you know take some of these things
17:36
and make them your own for whatever
17:38
context it is
17:40
here's my recipe for critical thinking i
17:42
take whatever it is that we create
17:44
whatever it is that you want to teach
17:46
then i sprinkle a few of these things a
17:48
few of these questions
17:49
into the mix to get them to analyze and
17:52
synthesize and evaluate and create right
17:55
this is how we get the critical thinking
17:57
we're making more
17:59
with the amount of information with the
18:01
less we're making more we're making them
18:03
do
18:03
more with this evaluating and reflecting
18:08
is to judge the credibility or
18:10
usefulness of something
18:12
and to reflect on it by judging it again
18:14
so
18:15
what was the most important thing you
18:17
learned out of this information i love
18:19
that right
18:20
um having students analyze the
18:23
importance think about the importance
18:24
evaluate the importance was it important
18:28
was there anything that was missing why
18:30
or why not
18:31
in one of the panels yesterday we talked
18:34
about how do we
18:35
include missing voices in our classroom
18:39
how do we look for those missing voices
18:41
that we're not hearing
18:43
and one of the panelists she had this
18:47
lovely exercise where she said when we
18:50
read a book we ask about what voice is
18:52
missing
18:53
we ask about what perspectives are being
18:54
represented and then what other
18:56
perspectives
18:57
can you have what's great about that is
18:59
you can actually have
19:00
students apply that to almost any book
19:03
let's take
19:04
three little pigs what perspective was
19:06
that written in
19:09
what if you rewrote or retold the story
19:11
from the wolf's point of view
19:13
right it it allows you to think about
19:18
you know different perspectives biases
19:21
critical thinking evaluating what voices
19:25
need to be in there
19:26
what additional things do you need to
19:28
know or consider
19:29
how can it be better and then what else
19:32
can you use to make
19:33
you know sorry where else can you use
19:35
this information
19:37
that you've learned how do you apply it
19:38
to different things so
19:40
a little short video but here's the
19:42
thing about this
19:45
when i provide these opportunities
19:48
multiple times to students by the time
19:50
they're done with your class
19:52
it's going to be razor sharp kids are
19:54
going to have
19:55
lots of experiences with these skills as
they move on
and as you notice these are questions
that you can ask
students online in distance learning you
can ask
them in discussions you can ask them as
discussion questions right
so i invite you to take these questions
adjust them make them your own
as you teach your classroom now before
i'm done
if you really like my training and
you're wondering what you need to do for
the fall
i invite you to join me for disaster
proof your elementary teaching
so if you're an elementary teacher and
you're looking to get started and you're
wondering how do i create this really
strong foundation
for the fall no matter what happens even
if you're starting online you're
starting
hybrid you're starting fully in the
classroom that's okay
because you know what we don't know what
this pandemic is going to do to us let's
face it right
so disaster proof your elementary
teaching is to prepare
you and your families and your students
for anything that can happen
so we start our training it's a three
day three hours-ish
training august 5th through 7th live and
then
afterwards i have teamed up with renee
heinrich
from science schoolyard to kick off a
10-day challenge
so that bite-sized in 10 days you will
have
a plan a solid plan and a family packet
to start your fall with success we will
share tips tricks and templates and
other just
amazing stuff in this training and i
hope you will join us
the link is in the um video description
below
the other thing is i invite you to
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if you don't know if you've subscribed
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if you join disaster proof your
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education about learning in general you
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if you are a high school teacher or um
a higher ed professor i am creating a
challenge for you as well
it's not done yet but stay tuned watch
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um further on and i will be announcing
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okay the other thing is you need this
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distance learning toolkit
in that toolkit our tutorials our tips
are
links to a ton of really good
things stuff that you can incorporate
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like we went to town on this we've got
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in this video and i'll see you soon take
care everybody
bye
you
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