The relationship between critical thinking and 2nd language learning

I was sent a research paper on making reasoning skills visible this week. Newcastle University researchers looked at the different ways such skills could be developed by those studying English as a second language, and the role technology can play.

In this post, we’ll now refer to these students as L2.

Some of the key focuses were on:

• how highly cognitive and collaborative tasks, written in English, can be very useful if planned carefully.
• the use of a technology enhanced space and whether it can help.
• whether Computer Supported Collaborative Learning Environments help internalise new language knowledge.
• software Digital Mysteries being used by L2 students to monitor communication, higher level thinking and reasoning skills.

The full paper is freely available to read (just click here) but here’s a summary.

Some general highlights:

Previous research (Paul and Elder 2012) suggests critical thinking has three elements: analysing, evaluating and improving thinking. They believe the quality of thinking depends on the ability to reason. Therefore, learning to reason is a core skill.

The very nature of what L2 students are learning means they need to think critically. This is arguably (Robinson 2005) because any task which needs two or more steps to complete, refers to events in the past OR demands reasoning, are more complex (cognitively) than those with a single step or those which refer to events in the ‘here and now’. Something such as joining in a group discussion (in English) requires higher thinking skills.

Using certain technology to assist groups of L2 learners can be helpful, as long as it’s ‘whereby interactions are not only between learners and the (software/hardware) but also between learners themselves’.

The use of Digital Mysteries “not only triggers useful task-related discussions, but also makes the students’ thinking more visible thus more accessible to an external observer such as another student or a teacher”.

Some details on the study...

Participants: Nine postgraduates (ages 21-29) on an Applied Linguistics and TESOL Masters programme.

Before the study: They’d already been introduced to Digital Mysteries as part of a module on Thinking Skills.

Set up: They were randomly divided into three groups.

Mystery (problem solving activity) used: Shopping and Land Use Change. It explores recent changes in urban land use and shopping patterns - all through the eyes of a single mother, Gail. (If you’d like us to transform that task into a FREE Thinking Kit activity, please email natalie@reflectivethinking.com with the subject ‘Land Use’.)

One of the main things explored was the presence of reasoning skills and thinking-in-action.

Some highlights from the results and conclusions:

• Digital, resizable slips (picture cards) encourage joint reading and facilitated thinking.
• Complex, higher level thinking was shown by L2 students being asked to create and name different categories for the cards, as more than one step was needed to complete. Not only did they have to understand the content, they then had to compare and contrast it to others.
• “Parallel, as well as collaborative, thinking was observed, moving between individual thinking, thinking together, and mediating each other’s thinking.”
• Differently shaped arrow sticky tapes did two things: forced students to decide what  connection certain cards had (cause, effect or general), which then externalised students’ interpretations too - making their thinking visible and ready for evaluation.
• A particular process of thinking skills can be introduced, through the way a task is set up, e.g. Separating comprehension from grouping eases mental workload.
• Computer Supported Collaborative Learning allows for ‘face to face communication as it specifically encourages talk and the promotion of thinking skills’.
• Software such as Digital Mysteries ‘can play a significant role in this form of training’.

To round off our blog post, we wanted to share one of the closing lines of the paper:

“We believe that the integration of the teaching of critical thinking skills and more specifically reasoning skills into the L2 classroom can be supported through new technologies. Rather than something that is done to students… (it) should be viewed as part of a broader ecology...where the affordances of the environment as a whole, including peers, teacher and technology come together.”

Skip to section 6 of the paper for the full conclusion.

Top 10 skills for the future

A while ago, I came across a 'top 10 skills for the future' image, formed by the World Economic Forum following their Future of Jobs report.

It really caught my attention and a lot of other people found it useful too. After recently experimenting with creating images for our Twitter page (@refthinking) and this blog, I loved the idea of mixing it up a little and adding some images.

Feel free to share it, but please let us know by mentioning us if it's a tweet, as it's great to see it being shared even more!

For a large version, please click here.

If you have iPads in school and want to increase development of some of these top skills, try our tool, Thinking Kit: www.thinking-kit.com.

(20) 16 ways to use the Thinking Kit

(20)16 ways to use the Thinking Kit

The new year is in full swing. Teachers across the world are back to work, sharing thoughts, ideas and resources...ready for what 2016 may bring.

With this in mind, we thought when better than to share 16 ways to use the Thinking Kit. Using the Thinking Kit Creator (currently free), educational activities can be created on any browser. The user saves the activity, gets a code, then uses that code in the Thinking Kit App (free) to download the activity onto iPads (or get students to). This teams two really strong themes together - learning using iPads AND digital content creation, whether by teachers or the learners themselves.

Activities involve one main goal/objective/question and snippets of information or images to help learners complete/answer it.

The Thinking Kit App can be used individually, but works brilliantly as a group activity too. It seamlessly allows for multi-touch and engages learners in face to face collaboration as they learn. There is a dedicated Reflection Stage and lots of tools to help them become better problem solvers, critical thinkers and team players.

So, without further ado, let’s get started…

1. Simple grouping tasks - add lots of images, pieces of text or both then get learners to sort them accordingly. Get students to use the ‘group tool’ to give groups a name and sort the snippets into them.
   
   E.g. Lots of images of animals and facts on vertebrate and invertebrate - students must then create mini groups, e.g. ‘mammals’ and drag and drop the relevant snippets into them.
   
   
   
2. Reading - break up a large topic into lots of digestible snippets which students can read together to answer an intriguing question about the topic.
   
   E.g. Introduce your class to a piece of literature by giving them key points of the book before they read the full text. Or do this afterwards as a reflection activity.
   
   
3. Ordering task - Get learners to sort the snippets/images into some kind of order, whether that’s chronological, size or even relevance.
   
   E.g. For history, add key moments in time and get students to arrange them correctly.
   
   
4. Custom background - Add a map or image and get students to move the slips into the correct space
   
   E.g. Use a map as the background and have students put countries in the correct place on it, or have a human body as the background and get learners to place the names of bones in the correct place.
   
   
5. Problem solving - Have an engaging story based problem accompanied by an open question to answer.
   
   E.g. A maths murder mystery - learners must piece together elements of the story and clues, do the maths involved and put forward an argument as to who could have been the killer.
   
   
   
6. Questions and answers - Add 10 question slips and 10 answer slips then get students to match them up. To make it a bit harder, don’t answer some of the questions - they can add them with the Note Tool.
   
   E.g. A more ‘fact-based’ subject would go well with this, perhaps scientific reactions or checking understanding of storylines in a book.
   
   
7. Quickly create an activity on breaking news - The Thinking Kit Creator is ideal for getting something together for the following day (or same day) if a sudden or unexpected event occurs which you want to address with students.
   
   E.g. There may have been a natural disaster or a world crisis. Educators could use the current high awareness of it to create an activity and get students to understand it better/share their views.
   
   
8. Learners on a school trip - With access to a camera, smartphone or tablet, students could take these devices on a trip and record their own evidence. They can then create a Thinking Kit activity and use their own images and notes to work on it themselves or as an activity for other groups.
   
   E.g. An example is ‘Does Warkworth need a bypass?’ Students would go there, take pictures of the place, record some local statistics and possibly ask some locals’ opinions.

9. SOLE session review - If you haven’t heard, SOLEs are “created when educators and/or parents encourage kids to work in groups that they form, and are free to change, to answer big, open questions by using the internet” (SOLE toolkit). The origins lie in Professor Sugata Mitra’s Ted-Prize winning talk here. For more information go to School in the Cloud. Give students a big question and carry on a SOLE session as usual. Following their research, the groups could make a Thinking Kit activity with what they have discovered. They could then ‘do’ the activity at a later date or get their fellow students to!
   
   E.g. In the Greenfield Arts’ session, they used the question ‘What makes us human?’ Before/after the class discussion they had, to answer this question, groups could use their gathered information/views to create activities for each other.
   
   
10. 
    Encourage discussion on difficult issues - An activity can be created on a more sensitive issue in a ‘different’ way to the norm. The snippets could include different points of view, facts and engaging images. Working through these in small groups will be less intimidating than as a whole class, it will be easier/less daunting for students to speak up and those at the end who feel more confident, can then engage in a whole class discussion.
    
    E.g. Topics such as bullying or sex education can be broken down and discussed as small groups as an introduction. A ‘scenario’ can be given through a Thinking Kit activity and students can begin to understand ‘taboo’ subjects through relatable stories and even ‘give advice’ to the characters in them.
    
    
11. Work on different strands of the same topic - Split the class into groups of three, then give each group a different strand of topic to research. They then create an activity themselves to share this with other groups, so they learn through each other.
    
    E.g. The topic may be key figures in history - each group focuses on one, creates a Thinking Kit activity, and gives the code to another group for them to learn about a different strand to what they created theirs on.
    
    
12. Ice breaker activity - Thinking Kit could be used to help students get to know each other better, whether that’s because they have just met (new class) or they have had a long break. Students could create an activity about themselves for others to use or get into pairs, then their partner creates one about what they have discussed.
    

    

    
    

13. Revision - Educators could create an activity for students to ‘do’ when early on in the teaching of a topic. They could do it upon completion of teaching of that topic, then again a few weeks later to see how much they have remembered. Alternatively, students could create one on their own. Understanding, interpreting and then reiterating points in their own words can be great for retention of information. When they do this a few weeks later then again nearer an exam, the information will be more likely to soak in.
    
    
14. Record of learning - Use the ‘reports’ feature of the Thinking Kit App to review how students have done in a particular task. Students can print or email these reports too, which include the list of content of an activity, screenshots of the process of doing an activity and anything they have added, e.g. named groups or notes.
    
    
15. Whole class discussion - When students have completed a session on the Thinking Kit App, one (or more) group’s session can be played to the whole class as a point of discussion. Using this dedicated Reflection Stage on a projector for example, can open up the class to share their views and get into a debate.

16. Differentiation - If learners are at different levels of their understanding of a topic, or you would rather lightly ease some groups in, you can create different versions of the same activity. Just get the core of information in, save it, add more things (whether they are images/information to make the task easier… or more complex things being added to broaden the activity) then click ‘Save As’.

We hope these have been interesting to read through and that you enjoy creating your own activities or getting students to themselves.

Thinking Kit is out now. The Thinking Kit App is always free, and the Thinking Kit Creator has a completely free 30 day trial. All you need is your email address and your name! Register at www.thinking-kit.com/signin. No other details are required to sign up.

It's fascinating for us to hear about all the ways Thinking Kit is being used. Let us know how you've used Thinking Kit by emailing info@reflectivethinking.com.

Getting kids thinking

The theme of this month's (September 2015) issue of UKED Magazine is 'Getting kids thinking'. Our Director, Dr. Ahmed Kharrufa, wrote a piece, which is on page five.

The article, 'Appreciating the value of skills: Evaluation beyond subject-specific knowledge', looks at how we can evaluate, measure and reflect on important skills rather than only students' level of knowledge on a topic.

To read the piece, please click here.

Externalization: Making thinking visible

During collaborative group work, some of the main processes in the acquisition of knowledge are the construction, transmission, and comprehension of explanations. These activities result when trying to explain some concepts or when resolving conflicts about certain understandings/beliefs. This is because during such activities, some assumptions that are usually implicit, have to be made explicit. Furthermore, during the process, missing knowledge is identified and is subsequently filled by deductive and/or inductive learning mechanisms. These activities do not normally occur during individual learning.

Accordingly, technologies (or even technology-free activities) that are designed to foster collaborative learning, need to focus on increasing the probability of such useful group activities to occur. The more students' thinking is made visible to others (visually or verbally), the more likely it is that it will be followed by discussions aiming at explanations/conflict resolution.

This process of making thinking visible is usually termed externalization of thinking. Encouraging externalization can involve making very simple changes to the activity design. For example, instead of asking students to just put items in groups, ask them to specifically name these groups and write down the name of the group. Instead of asking the students to find a relation between items, ask them to be explicit about the type of the relation: whether it is a causal, temporal, or special relation for example. Asking for this bit of extra information means that students have to be more explicit about their thinking. The more explicit they are, the more chances that there will be a need for providing an explanation, or solving a disagreement in the group.

A screenshot from a mystery - students have named their groups, e.g. 'Attractions of the New World'.

Exploring the explorers

Although many around the world have already started the summer holidays and some will soon be going back after their winter break, for most schools in England, this week is the final week of term!

To celebrate this, we've made a lot of our iPad apps either half-price or completely free, temporarily.

An example of one of our apps is an exciting history mystery about a Spanish explorer who set off to the New World. It is now £0.79 in the UK, $0.99 in the US and $1.29 in Australia. It's aimed at 11-14 year olds.

In pairs (small groups or alone are options too), students work through this topic together to discuss the motivations behind Pablo's venture.

They are given lots of illustrated slips/cards of information and asked to sort through them. To do this, they go through different stages (a structure based on Moseley et al.'s (2005) integrated model for understanding thinking and learning. Firstly, they gather information and read the slips, then they move towards building understanding by classifying the informaion and identifying relations. In the sequencing stage, they then focus on reasoning and understanding.

To download 'Digital Mysteries: Spanish Exploration and Conquest', half-price until 21st July, click here.

If you would like more information on Digital Mysteries, please go to www.reflectivethinking.com/digitalmysteries-ipad.

A screenshot of the grouping stage

8 things to look out for in today's classroom

Short post today, but I came across this graphic on Twitter (by Sylvia Duckworth) and thought it was very engaging.

You can read more into each point on the original author's blog (George Couros).

When I shared it on Twitter, it was extremely popular so I thought I would share it with you too.

Thanks,

Natalie