Thinking tasks

Thinking tasks are a great way to check and reinforce knowledge that the students already have.

Thinking tasks are very effective for learning that is secure. They are helpful when you want to check that your students have made the right links and that they’re ready to use the knowledge to answer a more complex question or to solve a real life problem.

New learning involves several levels, so this method could apply to reinforcing any of these:

  • The individual facts.
  • The big picture.
  • The application of the whole topic.
An image showing three students working together on a problem
These approaches only work for knowledge that is already secure. If you use these methods too early in the learning process, the students may use guesswork and reinforce wrong information. Problem-based learning (where students are given a problem and are expected to learn while they solve it) has been shown to be ineffective.
Hypothesis testing

A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for something, usually when there is limited evidence. It is the starting point for further investigation and it can be the first step to developing a theory.

Hypothesis testing as a thinking task is an active learning method. This is because it requires students to apply their knowledge, rather than just repeating what they have been taught.

An image showing three students working on a practical task
How does hypothesis testing work?
Think of a question which would require your students to apply their new knowledge. It needs to be one they don’t know the answer to (and one which cannot easily be googled!). Here’s some examples of good hypotheses to test:

Mechanics: I think it’s the switch, not the bulb.

Physics: Increasing the weight of the pendulum decreases the weight of the swing.

You could also start with a question that that needs a hypothesis. For example:

Modern history: Why did we invade Iraq?

Building: Why don’t we have the bedrooms downstairs?

An another alternative is to use “What if…?” questions. For example:

Building: What if bedrooms were on the ground floor?

Gardening: What if you took hardwood cuttings in the summer?

Once you have formulated your hypothesis, you can then use it in the classroom. 

An image showing a pile of pieces of paper with question marks on them

There are lots of ways to use hypotheses in the classroom. This is one approach to using it in action:

  1. Pose the question.
  2. The students come up with a possible explanation (a hypothesis).
  3. The students carry out an experiment or gather other evidence to test their hypothesis.
  4. An alternative is for you to suggest the hypothesis, and then the students test it. A shortened version would be for you to ask “What if…?” questions, instead of the students testing the hypothesis.
Concept cartoons

Concept cartoons are images which promote this type of hypothesis testing. 

Below is an example of a concept cartoon. This example is for condensation, and shows four people making hypotheses about why the glass is wet.

An image of a concept cartoon about condensation. Four cartoon people make statements, each a hypothesis on why the glass is wet.

The cartoon provides the hypothesis which the students then discuss. They can create an argument for their point of view, or design an experiment to test it. This works in a practical subject like science. When experiments are not possible, as in history, students gather evidence for their point of view.

Activity icon
Activity 1: Testing hypotheses

You will need: An outline of a course you are teaching.

Aim: To come up with a few ideas you could use in your classroom using this method.

Task: Come up with a task for your students where they generate a hypothesis and test it, or simply test a hypothesis that you provide. The students will come up with an experiment, or research some evidence, to test their hypothesis.

Summarising

In this method, the students create the big picture after you have taught them the details.

This is in contrast to Advance Organisers, where you give your students the big picture before teaching the fine detail. The research shows that summarising is a highly effective method.

An image of a yellow highlighter pen resting on a book with some text highlighted

There are lots of different techniques which use summarising and note-taking. Here are some ideas.

  • You could talk or present to the students while they take notes, or you could play a video or recording of someone else talking.
  • You could give your students something to read, and then guide them through the process of highlighting, crossing out less relevant parts, and reducing the text to a summary.
  • You could get your students to work in pairs or groups, and work on a summary together in writing or through discussion.
  • You could also get your students to make a Graphic Organiser to present their summary in a graphical way.

There are some strategies for summarising here with details on how to use them in the classroom.

Activity icon
Activity 2: Summarising
The aim of this activity is to practise your summarising skills. These are the skills you need to teach your students so that they can make sense of a new section of a course. We can’t assume that they already have the skills to do this, so it’s important to start with something small and simple.
  1. Read the following text, and use the technique outlined.
  2. Use a highlighter and a pen to highlight the important parts of the text and to cross out the waffle.
  3. Suggest a title and subtitles, and write them in the margin.
  4. Use the other suggestions found in the text to summarise the text further.
  5. Aim for a summary of 100 words or less.

“Summarising and note-making” comes second in the list of the most effective classroom methods, as published by Marzano/ Dean in What Works in Classroom Instruction. It seems that students who have this skill will be able to achieve 2 grades higher in their exams. This may seem a bit of an exaggeration until you test your pupils and find out just how bad they are at it!

When you open the page of a book, you need to be able to extract the information from it. However, for many students, the words just swim around on the page. Unless you have the motivation to read the words through, the task often just seems too hard.

You will need to start by training your students with a very simple task so that they develop their skills on something which isn’t too challenging, or you’ll be trying to teach a skill and a concept at the same time. Allow plenty of time for the task – students take some time to warm up.

You could then use a 2-page spread from the textbook. Photocopy it and have the textbook open as well. Two students can work together, one reading the text from the book while the other highlights the keywords and crosses out the less important material.

You will need to prompt them to look for chances to put things into a table, or list or as a mind map.

Finally, they should write out the summary using the titles they have chosen. The whole task of practising on something simple and then doing a longer one can easily take an hour.

At first you may think that you are wasting valuable teaching time, but the evidence doesn’t support this view. For example, research was done into this by dividing students into three groups. The first group was given full typed notes, the second group was given the chance to copy full notes, and the third group made their own notes. This research showed that the third group, who made their own notes, achieved higher marks on the end of topic tests. This was despite the fact that their notes were incomplete, scruffy and sometimes incorrect!

It all goes to show that learning has to be an active process, not just “copy and repeat”. (382 words)

Find out more

Here’s a video from Marzano/ Dean on thinking tasks. It gives some ideas on how to apply the approach in the classroom.

Image credits

Header image: https://blog.goldenkey.org/2012/09/24/golden-key-axon-2012-part-1/

Three students image: https://www.mheducation.com/blog/announcements/mcgraw-hill-education-teams-up-with-idea-academic-partnership-to-improve-students-critical-thinking-and-career-readiness-through-data-analytics.html

Image showing students looking at a model: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-dustin-swanger/attracting-students-to-st_b_6271278.html

Question marks image: http://blogs.nature.com/naturejobs/2015/04/23/job-search-probing-questions/

Concept cartoon: https://discoro.wordpress.com/2015/11/29/concept-cartoons/

Highlighter pen image: https://blogs.voanews.com/student-union/2013/06/18/how-to-spend-your-summer-as-a-premed-without-making-yourself-miserable/

What's next?

Metacognition