Let’s Examine Thinking Tasks
As educators, it is more important than ever to teach students how to think critically and out of the box.
In my previous blog, I began a book review of Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics by Peter Liljedahl. My key takeaway from that blog was that thinking activities, puzzles, or task disrupt habitual habits of behavior and thinking for students. I would also argue that they disrupt habitual habits and thinking behaviors for educators too because this approach challenges educators to change their approach to teaching. For thinking tasks to be successful, educators cannot rescue students when they get stuck. Instead, we can differentiate the level of difficulty, create tasks with multi-tiered responses, and teach our students how to collaborate with each other. That is our challenge as educators.
This week let’s review different types of thinking tasks educators can be use to support students’ thinking ability.
To begin with, Peter Liljedahl states that thinking tasks need to be specific to the developmental stage and cognitive development of your students. So, a task created for second graders comparing two numbers between 100 and 200 is inappropriate for fifth graders. A fifth grade task comparing numbers would be more appropriate if the numbers involved tenths, hundredths and thousandths.
Next, educators need to instill the idea that problem solving is what we do when we don’t know what to do. It involves getting stuck, applying what you know and trying multiple ways to get unstuck (pp. 19, 20). This is why thinking tasks cannot be tied to review or practice of a skill. It needs to challenge students to extend their thinking and apply their knowledge to novel situations.
One example that comes to mind is the first grade teacher who challenged her students by placing a large group of counters (crayons, buttons, blocks, markers, etc.) on the table for each group of students. The students returned from recess to find the piles, and the teacher told the students she was reorganizing and needed help counting her things. She asked each group to count the number of items in their pile and write it down to share afterwards.
The teacher used this activity as an introduction to grouping and counting by tens, and while her students worked she noticed that most groups tried to count one-by-one and used strategies to try to remember their count. She also noticed a group that created groups of ten to count. After the activity, the teacher’s students reported how many were in their piles and how they got that number. The students also compared the different strategies each group used when counting.
The activity the teacher planned not only provided a great informal assessment on grouping and counting by tens, but it also encouraged students to tap into their existing knowledge and extend their thinking to solve a unique problem. It was a highly engaging numeracy task.
Peter Liljedahl describes three types of tasks that make good thinking tasks: highly engaging, numeracy tasks and card tricks. Liljedahl describes a highly engaging task as one that is hard to not get involved in and try to solve. He describes card tricks as those that can be explained mathematically, and the numeracy task as those that are relevant to students’ lives. On his website, Peter Liljedahl » For Teachers, educators can explore different thinking tasks that they can use in their classrooms.
As a tutor, I can use different thinking tasks depending on the lesson and student. I used a similar strategy as a Special Educator, but the focus was more on review and practice. However, both strategies, review/practice and thinking tasks, help students transition into the classroom. As an educator and tutor, I need to decide when to use a particular strategy to support students’ growth.
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