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Thinking Flexibly Overview
Thinking Flexibly Overview
The ability to think flexibly or see a situation through another perspective is a skill that will benefit my students both socially and academically as they continue with their education. This skill requires my students to continuously take in data through all of their senses and willingly shift their perspective to reach the desired result or solution. Flexible thinkers are prepared to face challenges with a global perspective that is well thought out because they have taken the time to gather information from all data points. This skill set is also very useful in the daily lives of my students outside of the classroom because as teenagers they are placed in various situations that require them to make well thought out decisions based on factual information and an empathetic viewpoint. Not only do I expect my students to be flexible thinkers, but I work to show them what it looks like to be flexible within the classroom during our lessons when I realize that my lesson may not be going as well as I would have hoped. My students know that if there are misconceptions within a lesson that have not been clarified, I will change the presentation in an attempt to see the content through their eyes and help engage more students. The tools listed below are just a few ways that I work to develop a flexible environment within my classroom so that students are developing useful strategies that can be applied in all of their classes. This habit of mind is directly linked to the empathy that we encourage in our classroom norms, and while it can be challenging to teach, my students are learning to consider additional opinions before forming one of their own both inside and outside of the classroom.
By designing this lesson to teach my kids how to purposely think flexibly I am ensuring that they can reevaluate how they are approaching problems and consider multiple perspectives. In this lesson I have focused on providing multiple points of view for students to see one specific scenario and understand there is not one dedicated path to an answer in most instances. Flexible thinking in science allows students to step back and see the whole picture so that they are not discouraged if their first attempt is not as successful as they would have hoped.
Teaching Flexible Thinking
Teaching Flexible Thinking
Teaching my students to think flexibly meant I would need to show them how we are all unique thinkers that take our own paths to a solution. In this lesson students are given an assignment with a limited set of instructions and asked to complete a task that can be very simple but also challenging if they do not trust in themselves to think through the problem. Flexible thinkers do not let challenges get them "stuck" in a situation because they are able to adapt their thinking and use the resources around them. In this lesson there are visuals, discussion prompting questions, and a building challenge that all act as a catalyst for flexible thinking to take place. While many of my students were not initially aware of how often they are using flexible thinking in the classroom, I believe this lesson brought to light some of the skill sets they already possess and I continue to develop with my daily activities.
Choice board activities provide students with various means to show mastery in content that are not simply multiple choice questions or some other traditional testing format. The images above are two students completed choice board activities. The images also showcase the directions each student receives with the choice board which ensures that they are engaging with different types of activities during the lesson as they are absorbing content and checking their progress along the way.
Choice Board Activity
Choice Board Activity
Choice boards are one of my favorite activities to use in my classroom because they allow students to have more control over how they learn and show their mastery. When I am designing choice boards it is not just about putting different activities in the assignment, I make sure that the assignments encourage flexible thinking in my students. The assignments must also be differentiated so that every student can find at least two tasks they can complete independently. This type of assignment supports flexible thinking by challenging students to show proficiency in the same standard through different approaches. If a student struggles to answer a multiple choice question, they may be able to still show that they understand content through another means like designing a poem or rap about the content within specific guidelines and that is why these tasks are so important. Students gather information through all of their senses in this activity which may include props, research on the internet, notes to jog prior knowledge, or collaborative conversation. As they gather this data they must then present their findings in multiple ways. Having students choose their learning pathway is also a great way to increase their confidence in their abilities within science. The choice boards I have shown in this example demonstrate how I am actively supporting and developing flexible thinkers in order to better prepare students to continuously gather data and shift their thinking based on new or revisited information.
combinepdf.pdfStation learning, like choice boards, presents content materials through different mediums that students can work through. In the above stations students worked in groups through the stations after they had been previously introduced to the content. This particular station activity features six separate stations that are differentiated for all learning levels and English proficiencies, Featured above are the station examples, slides that correspond to the learning exercise, and student work from the stations.
Station Activities
Station Activities
Stations are used in my classroom to increase autonomy, promote flexible thinking, and align with the small group learning model. I will typically use stations once a week to give my students more peer supported learning and practice some of the skills associated with flexible thinking. The questions students answer in station activities are both objective and subjective so that they are giving their own opinions and analyzing informational texts. Additionally, choice boards will have puzzle components for students that are kinesthetic learners and can help their peers move through this type of assignments. As students move through the stations they must critically think through tasks and design questions for one another that help guide them through their learning. I have found that one of the best ways to have students challenge their own point of view is to have them work collaboratively and exchange ideas about situations in order to hear a multitude of opinions in a single setting. While they are working together the are practicing the skill sets we have developed for a flexible thinker like actively listening, perceiving a bigger purpose, rewiring their own opinion based on new information, and processing various sources of information simultaneously. In the example I have provided students are working through our chemistry unit and utilizing their both prior and recently acquired knowledge, with the help of their group, to complete the activity.
Activator activities are the first way that I am able to peak student interest in our content for the day. Above I have shown an example of an activator activity in my classroom in where we were beginning tot learn about the Periodic Table. In the activator students are given a bag of buttons and asked to work in groups to sort the buttons. They were not given any directions other than they would need to sort the buttons in a limited amount of time. Once the activity ended students were asked how they chose to sort the buttons and why organization was important which led into the organization of the Periodic Table.
Engaging Activator Activities
Engaging Activator Activities
Daily activator activities pave the way for students into the lesson plan for the day. They are meant to give just a hint of what we will learn and to ignite any prior knowledge around that subject area. These activities encourage flexible thinking by allowing students to answer an open ended question or to give an interpretation of something that has been presented and then adjust that perception as the lesson progresses. As students are forming their initial opinions about information, they are using flexible thinking skill sets to avoid getting "stuck" on a singular concept. Activators allow students that are still working on their flexible thinking to hear a broad range of perspectives and reflect on how they are aligned with their own or differ and why they may not be the same. In this activity I am not looking for my students to necessarily agree or disagree with one another, but to expand on their own understanding with the help of their peers. In the activity I have highlighted students work collaboratively to organize a group of buttons. Once they have finished I asked students to do a rotation around the classroom so they are able to see how other groups organized their own buttons. Once we regrouped they were tasked with explaining how another group organized, and how that was similar or different than their own. The overall goal of this activator is for my students to being to think about organization in terms of the Periodic table and why it is essential to group things in a specific order. During the explanations students shared what they liked about other groups and how they may have changed their own organization style. What seemed like a simple task was actually practice with our flexible thinking strategies and looking at a solution through a different lens to support the expansion of personal perspectives.
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