Teaching Thinking Skills
Just as important as it is to teach the students facts and figures that they’ll need to know, it’s also important to teach them how to think on their own. It’s well known in teaching circles that unsuccessful students are often bad goal setters. These unfortunate students often blame their shortcomings on other people, circumstances, or just bad luck. Because they labor under the oppressive weight of these failures, they rarely learn to take responsibility for their actions. This is one of the ways that their thinking fails them and this error can replicate itself if it is not corrected. It’s important to remember that everything starts with a thought and these thoughts lead to action.
One of the best things a teacher can do for his/her students is help them to set a series of realistic goals, make a list of steps to move them forward, evaluate their progress, and help them to set new goals that propel them to higher attainment at least once a year. Some teachers with the time and inclination might want to help students with personal goals as well. One of the other important things a teacher can pass along is problem-solving skills. These also help the thinking process. With this in mind, this simple thing is probably one of the best things teachers do for their children. Something that may improve their self-esteem and add a sense of security that even safety nets such as life insurance plans may not provide.
Remember. Until you students can learn to deal with their personal problems on their own, they won’t be able to do well at their schoolwork. Generally, there is a cycle to problem solving where you begin with the problem and then brainstorm around it until you come up with a list of solutions. Then the job is to pick though all possible solutions until you feel you’ve arrived at the most effective one. That solution is then implemented and evaluated for effectiveness before moving on to the next set of problems.
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Most students generally like the brainstorming sessions but they often forget that the purpose is to be nonjudgmental about the other possible solutions presented. Since children tend to act first and then think later, the second step which is analyzing the problem is the step where they need the most practice.
There is another technique that teachers can use to help their students with confidence since confidence helps immeasurably with all the thinking processes. They can look to finding and highlighting the nonacademic talents each student might have. Every classroom has a budding writer or painter in it, and these children will blossom with the right tutelage. Some teachers have even gone so far as to allow students to design some of their own projects that include music and dance and these students were proven to do better academically as well with these added freedoms. In one example reported, a young lady wrote a rap song that contained all fifty words that had been previously included in the class. While some students will choose to stick to writing the more traditional essays and such, others will flower given the chance to express themselves in other ways.
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