PTS Name: Engaging and Supporting All Students in Learning
Element: Engaging students in problem solving, critical thinking, and other activities that make subject matter meaningful
Indicators
As teachers develop, they may ask, “How do I…” or “Why do I…”:
- Provide opportunities for students to think, discuss, interact, reflect, and evaluate content?
- Help students to learn, practice, internalize, and apply subject-specific, learning strategies
and procedures?
- Support all students in critically investigating subject matter concepts and questions?
- Engage all students in problem solving activities and encourage multiple approaches and solutions?
- Encourage all students to ask critical questions and consider diverse perspectives about
subject matter?
- Provide opportunities for students to learn and practice skills in meaningful contexts?
- Help students to analyze and draw valid conclusions about content being learned?
Descriptions
Examples may include, but are not limited to:
- Building higher order thinking skills (using Bloom’s Taxonomy, levels of application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation) into student activities
- Providing opportunities for students to practice asking and responding to higher order, open-ended questions via interviews, debates, mock trials, etc., to promote critical and creative thinking
- Engaging students in experiments using the scientific method to develop strategic thinking and problem-solving skills
- Providing structured activities that help students use facts and data to form opinions and
make decisions
- Presenting students with real world issues and problems to consider and act upon (e.g., ecological concerns, animal rights, hunger/homelessness, isolation of the elderly, etc.)
Problems of Practice
Challenges with this element frequently include:
- Assuming that students struggling with skills don’t have the ability and capacity to think about and understand age/grade appropriate topics or concepts (e.g., watering down or over simplifying the subject matter for thirteen-year-old eighth graders who read and write on a fourth grade level)
- Asking the same types of questions for all learners and/or posing recall or comprehension questions to the struggling learners while posing higher order questions to students who are deemed advanced
- Asking complex questions without coaching students on strategies to help understand and solve
(ex. how to deconstruct the problem)