Critically Thinking About Engagement

It is the last post of the 4Cs series on the blog, but that doesn't mean that the Cs are going anywhere.  The 21st Century 4Cs are a great way to examine what we are asking students to complete in the classroom. Communication, Creation, Collaboration, and Critical Thinking over lap, and if we are hitting just one of those things on a regular basis odds are our students are more engaged. 

Critical Thinking is less likely to happen when our students complete a worksheet (digital or paper), turn it in, and never think about it again.  The more opportunities we generate for extended learning and thinking, the less overwhelmed our students will feel - for example: a week long critical thinking piece vs. 5 "assignments" in Schoology.  To loosely site Alan November**: who ever is doing the work is doing the learning. So if you are putting together extensive slide shows, you are doing the work and the kids may not be doing the learning.

To round out the 4Cs teacher tool bag, let's add two critical thinking activities:

Closed to Open Questions:  The first step is to teach student to identify the difference between open and closed questions - closed question ex.: What happened after ..... (concrete answer); Open question ex: How would the story change if chapter 3 never happened.... (many answers).  

Step 1: Have students brainstorm a list of questions about their learning (applies to any subject / let's connect if you would like to brainstorm).  You could have them do this on a shared Google doc, in breakout rooms, on a Padlet, etc.

Step 2: Have students identify all questions - open or closed.

Step 3: Have students work together in small groups to move all closed questions to open questions.

Step 4: Utilize the questions as checks for understanding, exit / entrance tickets / part of a summative assessment 

** this is a lot of work.  the work is done by the students. the person doing the work is doing the learning. this would be great chunked out over several days.

EduProtocols: Do you every ask questions (to the sea of black screens in your Zooms) and crickets???  EduProtocols is one way you can get students to discuss the content is a structured conversations and writing in the content (shout-out Rudder & The Fundamental Five). Each protocol linked below is a Google Slide template that you can make your own and use with your students. The protocols will help guide student processing and engage in critical thinking.

Cyber Sandwich: Students work in partners with shared accountability to think about and process the content.  When planning you may want to pair your F2F kids with your Zoom kids (1:1), or you might think about using this in conjunction with Flipgrid to let students "talk" bringing in the asynchronous students that may not be attending Zooms or F2F. Bonus Resource video here.

Sketch and Tell: This protocol can be done whole class, small group, or asynchronous - you would just need to share the slide show accordingly.  In the activity each student has a slide that is divided into to "columns" - sketch and Tell.  In the sketch column students will use only the drawing tools in slides to create a visual representation (no images from Google search).  In the tell column students "tell" about their sketch.  Bonus step - if you are doing this activity whole class or small group, have the students leave each other comments in the speaker notes (plug for sentence stems goes here).

Thin Slides:  Looking for a quick entrance, exit, or formative check?  Great!  This protocol can really take a less is more approach.  1 word (or phrase, but I would challenge students to find a succinct word) + 1 image (I might encourage students to use an emoji here) + 3 minutes.  You can have the students share or just use this as teacher data.