PROFESSIONAL LEARNING WORKSHOPS
Hooked on Thinking offer the following as examples of professional learning workshops presented in categories of: Curriculum for Learning; Information Communication Technology; Inquiry Learning; Thinking Skills; Gifted and Talented.
Developing a Thinking Curriculum.
Is your schools’ thinking curriculum making a jot of difference to student learning outcomes? Can you determine the cognitive complexity of your students’ thinking? Can your students determine the cognitive complexity of your questions? Do your thinking interventions target the right student, at the most effective time?
Workshop participants will learn how to maximise student learning outcomes through the innovative use of the SOLO taxonomy. A highly practical workshop exploring planning templates, thinking assessments and ict based “visual thinking” interventions that can align higher order thinking, the proposed Key Competencies, the New Zealand Curriculum Framework, and the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA).
(Suitable for primary, intermediate and secondary educators. Highly relevant for schools interested in integrating ICT into teaching and learning.)
The Constituent Skills of Critical Thinking
“I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don’t even invite me.” Dave Barry Argument 101
Do your students need to build critical thinking skills and produce well organised arguments? Do they need help in resolving arguments rationally and making better decisions? How good are they at evaluating and communicating their reasoning? “What are the conditions required for ICT to be of value in the teaching and learning process for critical thinking?”
Explore the nexus between critical thinking for excellence and argument mapping using Inspiration™ concept mapping software and Reason!Able argument mapping software. Workshop participants can expect to leave this workshop with a new sense of what it is to tilt at ideas and issues. Discover the strategies that will scaffold your students learning and improve your teaching. Explore the complexities of teaching a thinking curriculum. Assessment strategies and interventions also covered.
Thinking through Information Communication Technology
“What are the conditions required for ICT to be of value in the teaching and learning process?”
Participants will explore conditional landscapes for “thinking through ICT”, framed around the Best Evidence Synthesis (Alton-Lee 2003). Unpacking what is required for “thinking through ICT” to be of value in the teaching and learning process.
Questions, Questioning and Questioners
“Once you have learned to ask relevant questions, you have learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or whatever you want to know.” Postman & Weingartner, 2004.
How can you help your students to frame quality questions? How can you engage them in active questioning? How do students become expert questioners. Workshop participants will explore different questioning frameworks and the practical strategies that will promote deeper thinking and improve learning outcomes for their students.
Have you ever assessed your students questions? What insight will this give you to the levels of complexities of your students thinking? By making this process transparent to students you scaffold their learning, and allow them to achieve success.
This workshop is suitable for primary and secondary teachers, and is relevant to all curriculum areas.
Creativity and Innovative Thought
“Freeing oneself from the known”
“The hardest part in innovating is not the discovery of the great new idea, but freeing oneself from the known -the old familiarities that required such energy, emotion and dedication when they were created but which now perversely represent the strongest obstacles to change.” — Heinrich v.Pierer and Bolko v.Oetinger, in “A Passion for Ideas”
Free yourself from the known and explore the constituent skills of creativity and innovation. Can we really enhance students’ fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration? How can we enhance the constituent skills of creativity and innovation in an institutional setting? What are the conditions required for ICT to be of value in the teaching and learning process of innovation and creativity?
Explore the nexus between creative thinking for excellence and Inspiration™ Concept mapping software. Workshop participants can expect to leave this workshop with a new sense of change. Strategies for assessing thinking will also be explored. This workshop will challenge your perspective of Creativity.
How do you know that you have made a difference?
How do you measure student thinking processes, and what do you assess? How do you know if students are mastering the constituent skills of critical and creative thinking? How do you know if your thinking interventions have made a jot of difference to a students’ ability to think?
Workshop participants will explore all of these questions and more, gaining an insight into the ascending levels of student thinking. They will leave with practical strategies for enhance their planning, teaching and thinking interventions to improve student learning outcomes.
This workshop is offered with a primary and/ or secondary focus. Secondary workshops are linked to the ascending thinking complexity in NCEA.
Critical Thinking and ICT.
How well can individuals and teams in your organisation communicate, observe, inform and argue? How skilled is your organisation in interpretation and evaluation? If you need to produce well organised arguments, make better decisions, communicate more clearly and resolve disagreements with well structured reasons, then you need to learn how to think critically. This workshop will explore how learning through ICT’s can build individuals and organisations with strong critical reasoning and argument skills.
Creative Thinking and ICT.
Innovation and creative problem solving are essential for individuals and organisations wanting to meet the complex challenges of improving performance in today’s complex world. Creative thinking workshops offer explicit strategies, techniques and processes for enhancing individual, group and organisational creativity, including enhancing creativity through ICT’s.
Caring Thinking and ICT.
Establishing personal and organisational values is an essential prerequisite for making sound compassionate judgments. Caring thinking workshops offer participants explicit skills and strategies to respond to the ethical issues and concerns of our world. They include valuational thinking, affective thinking, active thinking, and normative thinking explored and enhanced through the use of ICT’s.
Strategies for Metacognition.
Refute notions of “there is never enough time for reflection” in your learning community. Explore simple and easy to implement strategies for planning, monitoring and evaluating “thinking about thinking” in your classroom, staff room and school.
Underachievement.
A complex and damaging issue. Underachievement is a learned behaviour that adversely affects many students in our schools. Develop strategies and initiatives to distinguish between underachievers and non producers and start to reverse the epidemic for your students.
Thinking Critically about learning from Web Sites. Can your students tell a great web site from a dodgy one? Can you? Develop student friendly criteria for assessing the credibility and reliability of information on the net. Develop teacher friendly criteria for assessing the learning opportunities in the task set. Use these criteria to develop rich student learning opportunities through ICT.
Who are the Gifted and Talented Students in your School?
Recognise that gifted and talented students are not a homogenous group. Explore the difference between potential and achievement, and the implications for your school, staff and teaching practice. Develop a set of characteristics that reflect your communities’ definition and approach to giftedness and talent.
How do you Identify Gifted and Talented Students?
How to cast a wide net. How do you identify the disenchanted, disengaged and underground gifted student? A close look at the behaviours and characteristics that help identify giftedness, and the identification strategies available.
Developing a School Policy for Gifted and Talented.
Meet the learning needs of the gifted and talented students in your school. Avoid the temptation to “cut and paste” policy. Design a policy that is responsive and sustainable. This is of particular importance with the recent announcement by The Minister of Education, with regard to changes in the NAGs.
Best Practice for Gifted and Talented Students.
How can you develop, implement and evaluate appropriate educational programmes for gifted and talented students? What does the research say about effective practice for gifted and talented students? Find out how to cater for gifted and talented students within your school environment, using exclusive and inclusive “best practice”. This workshop is highly appropriate for team planning and evaluation.
How to Differentiate the Curriculum.
Cater for your gifted and talented students, within a mainstream classroom, without losing your sense of humour. Explore desirable, manageable, achievable differentiation of content, process, product and learning environment. Leave with a resource of simple, effective and easy to implement differentiation strategies.
Social and Emotional Issues of Giftedness.
Understand social, emotional, developmental and educational characteristics of giftedness. Look at guidance issues, self-concept, self efficacy and strategies to meet the affective needs of gifted students.
Our Gifted Preschoolers.
Research has shown that development of gifted preschoolers is often overlooked because we fear “labelling” them too young. Dispel the myths associated with gifted preschoolers, and discover practical strategies for meeting their needs.