Getting the Balance Right
It’s no secret that education is full of buzzwords around thinking skills. In the modern context, some of the favourites are: creative thinking, critical thinking, cognition, higher order thinking and 21st century skills. These abilities are undoubtedly integral to success, but they are not the only ingredient, and when bandied around with no elaboration or substantial discussion, the buzz becomes as meaningless as white noise.
The question is, what lies beneath the rhetoric, and how can this be unlocked in order to maximise outcomes for our students? Ultimately, the goal behind the critical thinking movement is to improve the depth and scope of thinking. This will allow students to respond to questions and situations with insight and ingenuity, and it is this depth and scope which constitutes academic success. Attainment of response quality occurs as a result of targeted practise of both fundamental content-related knowledge and thinking skills themselves. Though skills and content have historically been constructed as a dichotomy, they in fact share a symbiotic relationship. Thinking skills are needed to make sense of subject knowledge and thus, neither can exist in isolation; it is the combination which unlocks student success.
Examination of high-level senior questions reveals that to answer most successfully, students require a considerable knowledge of fundamental literacy and/or numeracy skills in collaboration with critical and creative problem-solving abilities. It is this recognition that underlies the purpose of Mighty Minds Fundamental and Cognitive Skills online subscriptions.
These services are not unrelated classroom “extras”, but rather, a tool which should be used to support and enhance the existing work that is occurring in the classroom; they address the “core business” of teaching. The theory and questions that students access through the subscription are directly linked to subject programs and the national curriculum, and students’ progress is tracked to allow for immediate identification of areas of concern. Students are provided with targeted revision, and the online platform enables self-, peer-and teacher-marking. There is great flexibility around the implementation of the subscription, which can be rolled out during class time to complement other activities, or assigned for homework and/ or revision, depending on the specific needs of each group of students.
When it comes to the Cognitive Skills, the Mighty Minds frameworks provided allow for the explicit instruction and practise of criticality, analysis, evaluation and creativity, thus bringing concrete meaning to words that are otherwise vaguely or inconsistently taught across subjects. When coupled with fundamental literacy, numeracy and science skills, as well as general content from across the curriculum, these questions allow students to solidify basic understandings in order to achieve greater results on more complex tasks.
Most online subscriptions have a high uptake initially but overtime the usage falls away; a primary reason for this is that teachers are getting busier and simply run out of time. A key feature of the Mighty Minds subscription however, is its ability to save time and decrease the burden that is increasingly piled onto classroom teachers.
In making the decision to subscribe to Mighty Minds Fundamental and Cognitive Skill packages, it is useful to consider the following:
- How do you currently know what classroom activities and homework students have completed and the standard to which they have completed these?
- Do students have opportunities to self-evaluate, reflect, revise theory and complete activities that address their weaknesses when they engage in class and homework activities?
- Do students have tangible ways to measure their own improvement?
- Does cross-curriculum teacher collaboration occur to improve individual student outcomes? I.e. Do you know which skills (both fundamental and cognitive) each student has covered in other subjects and which they need to further address?
Even if each of the above points were currently being addressed within a school, there is no doubt that this would be placing a significant workload on all teachers involved. The Mighty Minds teacher portal reduces the pressure on teachers - as we (Mighty Minds) manage and provide a coordinated approach that aligns with current programs to ensure that there are no gaps in students’ learning of fundamental and Cognitive Skills.
Other advantages of a Mighty Minds subscription are:
- They enable individual students to take ownership of their own learning.
- All tracking, data, activities and theory are on the one platform. This allows for collaboration across the school.
- Mighty Minds manage the weekly activities and keep the lines of communication between the teacher and individual students open.
- Both hard and online copies of the weekly tasks and Cognitive Skill activities are available.
This straightforward, yet thorough approach facilitates personalised and holistic learning in addition to the instantaneous feedback about the learners in your classroom. Adoption of such a program will turn the “noise” around critical thinking into discernible and meaningful “sound”. By coupling Cognitive Skills with Fundamental Skills, students will be given the opportunity to firmly grasp the basics and build their pathway to success.