Inquiry/ Critical Thinking

Philosophical Chairs

Philosophical Chairs are a great strategy that hits several different aspects of WICOR. It is easy to prep for and implements for pre or post activities for units or projects. Here, you will find a video of middle school students during a philosophical chair activity as well as a link to help you get started with sentence stems to help get your students started.

Philosophical Chair Resources

Follow the link below to view resources to prepare for your Philosophical Chairs activity.

Setting Up For Philosophical Chair

Costa's Levels of Questions

Costa's levels of questions can be used to create our higher order thinking questions that we use to provide purpose and drive academic discussions in class. Here you will find question stems, broken down into the three levels, to use to help generate your HOTS questions for your lessons. HOTS questions are a great way to focus student learning on a particular skill or concept you are looking to assess in class. Remember, HOTS questions do not have to change your HOTS questions every day. The HOTS questions may span anywhere from a few days to a week depending on your lesson!

HIGHER ORDER THINKING QUESTION STEMS

Follow the link about to see how to better use HOTS questions in the classroom.

Costas_Question_Stems_by_Content_Area_1.pdf
Creating High Level Prompts.pdf

Socratic Seminar

Socratic seminars are a fun and engaging way to assess your students. It promotes critical thinking and close reading of a passage that you have pre selected. This passage should be engaging in the manner that it prompts students to several questions about the topic of discussion. It is important that students have time to read and annotate the passage as well as create questions to bring to the Socratic seminar sessions. To ensure that a few students are not dominating the conversation, have students use a visual to show when they are ready to speak. You can do this by using cards that students can throw into the center of the circle. Once they've thrown 3 or 4 cards, they've earned their points and they must wait for the rest of the group to contribute. These are just a few ideas.

10-2-2

The 10 2-2 method of teaching allows the instructor to provide students with information, instructions, or model what the activity or lesson is for 10 minutes. The instructor then allows the students to process for 2 minutes and collaborate for another 2 before moving on to their next 10 minute chunk of the lesson.

10-2-2 Note-Taking Structure for All Classes.pdf

Compare/Contrast

Have students spend time comparing and contrasting two critical concepts, ideas, or strategies from a day’s lesson.

Picture Prompts

  • Identify a picture or visual representation that exemplifies a concept. Generate probing questions that engage students in examining the picture closely to begin to form foundational understandings of the concepts.

  • Can be used to develop specific vocabulary or access prior knowledge.



Collaborative Study Groups

In CSGs, students identify a specific question from a content area, collaborate to develop and deepen their understanding through Socratic inquiry, and apply their new learning in order to enhance classroom performance.

If you are interested in viewing a Collaborative Study Group or would like more information please contact Mrs. McDaniel.

Add, Subtract, Multiply, & Divide

  • Identify 3-8 words or phrases that represent important concepts. Write each word on a separate index card.

  • Groups will get 3 min. to write as much as they know about the word. Then they will pass it to the next table.

  • Groups read the new card. Groups will have 2 min. to add new info, subtract wrong info, multiply with examples, and divide into subcategories.



Classify, Criticize, or Distinguish

  • Have students spend time classifying, criticizing, or distinguishing concepts or strategies to solve problems.

  • This could be used in an error analysis activity.