Habits of Mind
Professional Learning Group
Tutorial 2: Pedagogies for “Thinking interdependently”
5 April 2011
Thinking Interdependently is an important Habit to develop in students because:
1. Negotiating relationships and adjusting to different personalities is an important real-world emotional intelligence that will be rewarded.
2. Team-based inquiry and problem-based learning is very common in university courses.
3. If functioning appropriately, a collaborative approach to learning and problem solving is typically more effective than individuals working alone.
4. “Group work”, executed poorly and with little prior thought, does not enhance student knowledge or skills.
A list of words associated with Thinking Interdependently could be:
CollaborativeTeam work
Cooperative
Collective approaches
Direct accountability
“pulling your weight” / Building on individual strengths
Improving quality
Negotiation
Problem-solving
Cross-fertilisation / Compromise
Leadership
Peer instruction
Valuing background knowledge
We can improve students’ ability to think independently but it takes some preparation and planning to move students beyond “group work” to actually thinking as a team and being more knowledgeable and skilful as a result.
These are 5 pedagogies to use in the classroom to enhance students’ productive habits in working collaboratively and thinking interdependently.
1. Jigsaw technique
2. Hot potato
3. Chain writing
4. Inside-outside protocol
5. 1-2-4-8-16-class [extended Think-Pair-Share]
You may already use these or variations of these in your classroom practice.
1. Jigsaw technique
Students form into groups of 4 or 5. These are called “original groups”. Each member of these teams is given a number from 1-4 or 1-5. Then, all students with the same number form a new team called “expert groups.”
Each expert group should consider only one aspect of the topic or discussion. This activity can work in conjunction with 6 Thinking Hats or a note-taking exercise on the basis of reading. They can also be used to research a particular element of a topic. The purpose of expert groups is for the members to be ‘expert’ enough in that topic to be able to share with their original groups when they re-form.
For example, if the inquiry activity was “how the carbon tax impacts Australia”, expert groups could form around:
· impacts on households
· impacts on electricity industry
· impacts on government revenue
· impacts on the renewable energy sector
These experts would then present back to their original groups after a period of reading, research and discussion in their expert groups.
The most important feature of this activity is that all ‘experts’ share their knowledge appropriately and that each student keeps a record (on a retrieval chart or in a summary table) of everybody’s material.
Students are forced to think interdependently about their topic because each person brings some unique expert knowledge to the table.
2. Hot potato
Students form into small groups or 2 or 3.
Before the lesson, the teacher should prepare butchers paper, A3 handouts or similar which contain a topic, problem or issue relevant to the subject.
For a class of 25 students, about 12 of these separate topic prompts are required.
Students have a small amount of time to write as much as they know about what’s on their page, before it is moved on to the next group. Younger students do respond to bells, stop-watches and a general sense of urgency. This shuffling of the “hot potato” page should continue 5-6 times or until ideas are exhausted.
At the end of the activity, the pages should be displayed around the room and students should be free to walk around to read them.
The best follow-up activity to a hot potato is students forming a written response to the topic on the basis of their new knowledge from the activity.
Useful for revision, tapping background knowledge, attacking a problem/case study from a variety of perspectives etc.
3. Chain writing
Particularly useful for practising paragraph writing or essay writing, Chain Writing activities work with students of all year levels.
Similar to a Hot Potato, the teacher should write 25 topic sentences or paragraph questions at the topic of a blank A4 page.
These 25 pages are distributed to the class. Each student has 3-4 minutes to read what’s already on the page, then continue to write the paragraph, following on the ideas from the previous student. This can continue 7-8 times until the paragraphs are mostly completed.
They should then be returned to the student who wrote the first contribution.
At the end of the activity a SCAMPER or MAS is very useful to get students to reflect on the completed paragraph in front of them and to improve upon what is there.
4. Inside-outside protocol
Split the class into 4 groups.
Group 1 is given a problem/question to discuss, solve or evaluate.
Group 2 is given a different problem/question to discuss, solve or evaluate.
Group 3 are observers of Group 1.
Group 4 are observers of Group 2.
Group 3 and 4 are not allowed to enter the discussion. As observers of Group 1 and 2 respectively, they are only allowed to take notes about how those group members are interacting, who is doing the majority of the talking and what conclusions the group is reaching.
At the end of the allocated time, Group 3 and 4 are given new problems/questions to discuss and Group 1 and 2 become the observers.
A representative from each of the observer groups report back to the whole class on what they have observed.
5. 1-2-4-8-16-class
Students consider a piece of reading or undertake some note-taking about a topic, problem or question. This preliminary work could even be done for homework the night prior.
Students then form into pairs, where they must add some extra material to their notes on the basis of the talking that happens in their pair. It is best to provide some silent time for the whole class to add their points after the discussions have taken place.
The pairs then form into 4s, where everybody must have an opportunity to share something from their own findings, then to add something new to their notes.
This is repeated as the groups become 8s, and then if numbers permit, 16s. The protocols for how the groups function become different as the groups get larger. At each point it is important that students continue to listen to everyone’s answers and then have time to add something new to their notes.
When the class comes back together for a whole-class discussion it is important to discuss the concepts as a whole.
Dimensions of Growth within “Thinking Interdependently”
Meaning / What does this Habit of Mind mean?
What concepts are associated with it? / Ask students to come up with different words for interdependent and discuss things in natural or ma-made world that are interdependent. Discuss how this is different to independent.
Capacity / How do we engage more skilfully in the Habit?
What repertoire of skills and strategies are required? / Make students more skilful at working collaboratively on tasks that might normally be done independently (see pedagogies above).
Alertness / When and where should I be or not be engaging in this Habit? / Discuss situations when working collaboratively is better than independently.
Value / Why would I choose to engage in this Habit? What benefits does it bring me as a learner? / Discuss the reasons why interdependent thinking is useful.
Provide students with opportunities to think both independently and interdependently and ask them to reflect on which was more effective and why.
Show students examples of university problem-based learning cooperative learning assessment.
Commitment / How well am I engaging in this Habit of Mind and what goals might I set to get better at them? / Ask students to reflect on their own practices when working with others. Ask them to evaluate whether structured cooperative learning (see above) is more effective than merely ‘group work.’
Questions to ponder…
1. What does “group work” look like in your classes?
2. How do you know that students are more intelligent or more skilful at the end of it?
3. Is the thinking interdependent or dependent?
4. Is your general classroom “talk” a sustained conversation based on Socratic questioning?
- 2 - Dan Walker, BSHS, April 2011