TPE A

The “Learning to Think” area struck me first—as a literacy teacher, teaching specific reading strategies is a crucial part of the curriculum. I never realized how important it is to name the way in which your students are thinking so that they can recognize that as a skill. Getting my third graders to think critically every time they read will be a challenge. Even with my pre-k students, however, I was able to teach them the skill of predicting and by the end of just four weeks, I had many students raising their hands to say, “I want to make a prediction.” That was a great moment in my teaching experiences so far.

I can see myself encouraging critical thinking skills in my students by providing a poster with questions and sentence starters to give their responses more depth. I really want to make sure that my students respect each others’ viewpoints and want to teach them to scaffold their comments with phrases such as: “I (dis)agree with your statement because…,” or “When you said …, it made me think/wonder ….”

I hope that I can apply these thinking skills not only to my students’ learning but also to my own thinking this year as I evaluate the ways I plan, problem solve, and deal with others’ ideas.