Generating ideas is an essential skill our students must learn how to do and do it effectively
How using the critical thinking process will develop stronger ideas across all subjects
Welcome to my first newsletter! I can’t think of a better first post than this topic as it helps our students in SO many different subjects. Helping our students learn how to generate better ideas is SUCH an important skill. It doesn’t matter if we have our students developing ideas for writing a poem or paragraph or topic in history or a science project - the skill of generating ideas is the same! And it is in our curriculums (Canada) and standards(US).
Generating ideas is actually quite a complex task. It involves important critical thinking skills - like analyzing and evaluating - which are also skills we need to explicitly teach.
Let’s dig in!
STEP 1 - Brainstorm ideas
Students will have been assigned a purpose or task for which they need to generate ideas for. Here is a writing example…
The students have been asked to write a paragraph that expresses an opinion and also requires supporting details.
Prompt: Should students be allowed to wear hats in class?
Students should be encouraged to generate their ideas in a brainstorm first. If they launch right into writing their paragraph, they might not come up with their best ideas.
STEP 2 - Use critical thinking skills
Notice that in this student’s brainstorm of ideas, not all of the ideas suit the purpose for the writing. At this point, student’s need to analyze (compare) their ideas to the prompt and then need to evaluate (make a decision) if their idea matches the prompt.
You can talk to students about the difference between ideas that are on topic (I love my hat) but not relevant (Hats make kids feel safe) to the prompt. Students often provide ideas that are on topic but not relevant.
Also addressed in this example is the difference between specific (form of systemic racism) and vague (it’s not fair).
This process could be repeated if students needed to write a multi-paragraph piece of writing. They would then be generating ideas for possible supporting details for their arguments.
STEP 3 - Don’t forget the success criteria
Use this skill-based success criteria to give students effective feedback, form small groups, for the basis of conferences, and for use on exit cards (more on assessment for learning strategies in a future post!).
Notice the difference in the success criteria lists. The skill-based list (this is the good one!) makes clear what it is students need to be able to do to be successful. The second set of criteria is more qualitative in nature - either they did or didn’t do it. Sometimes we don’t even know what we are looking for. I was VERY guilty of doing that. In this task, are we looking for a student’s ability to generate ideas or follow a formula to write a paragraph? Which is more important? 'Recipes’ are easy to follow. Adding quality ingredients is the hard part!
STEP 4 - Write the paragraph. To be honest, if you are just looking to see if students are able to generate ideas, they don’t even need to write the paragraph or do the final ‘thing’. But in reality, students are usually asked to complete a task in which these skills are embedded - but unfortunately not always explicitly taught.
Student example - I think students should be allowed to wear hats. Students should be allowed to wear hats because hats make kids feel safe, hats are a form of personal expression and not allowing students to wear hats is a form of systemic racism.
Scroll down to below the science/geography example for my final thoughts :)
Here is how a science/geography example might look:
Prompt: Identify an important environmental issue and explain why it is an important issue. Back up your explanation with supporting details.
With a prompt like this, students could actually go through the generating/brainstorming of ideas process three times! First to identify a topic (important environment issue). Second, they would generate/brainstorm some reasons why it is important - and select the strongest one. Finally, they could generate/brainstorm ideas for their supporting details.
Generating topic ideas.
In the second image the student has used critical thinking to compare their ideas to the prompt. They decided that ‘water’ and ‘it is important’ are too vague and going for nature walks is not relevant to the topic. The student then selects the idea they like best from the remaining good ideas.
Generate reasons why deforestation is important and the process of critical thinking is repeated.
Generate supporting details for loss of biodiversity.
Write the explanation.
I think an important environment issue is deforestation. Deforestation is an important issue because it causes the loss of biodiversity. Biodiversity can lead to the extinction of animals due to a loss of habitat. The loss of one species can have a domino affect on other species - even humans. As well, the loss of biodiversity due to deforestation can cause certain species of trees to disappear forever.
Are you excited?! Can you imagine how much better your student’s work will be once they learn how to effectively generate ideas?! Model this process for your students. Try the prompt for the first time in front of them. Using a think aloud is such an important strategy to use when teaching. Let your students get lots of practice with it - in groups, pairs and/or individually - and all the while you are giving them feedback based on the success criteria to help them improve.
I hope you try this tomorrow with your kiddos!
Next time we will tackle the skill of ‘to explain’ - which our students are asked to do all the time!
Bye for now!
Lori
(Let’s chat in the comments!)
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