CueNotes - CueThink: Recent Episodes
CueThink
Podcast series offering classroom instructional and implementation ideas for critical thinking from the educators at CueThink - an innovative peer-to-peer iPad application for math problem solving. To download handouts and learn more about CueThink, visit http://www.cuethink.com/cuenotes
Empower and foster student engagement in providing peer feedback. A sense of control, purpose and confidence can positively influence student motivation and achievement - choice is a key element. The annotations TIC-TAC-TOE template provides student choice as well as scaffolds.
Sense-making and perseverance are key skills for students independent of content area. Pressed for time to cover topics, teachers genuinely feel they help students with hints and tricks - when in fact allowing for failure and grit in problem solving produces more enduring learning. How do you cultivate this culture of productive struggle and perseverance?
How do we get inquiry and student learning to “stick”? First consider how to introduce new apps or technology. Acknowledge that the audience is just starting and that learning the tool should be separated from learning new academic concepts. Keep in mind as well that “learning is more durable when it is effortful.”
Using Polya’s four phases of problem solving - UNDERSTAND, PLAN, SOLVE, and REVIEW - students work becomes dynamic, iterative and metacognitive. Students unfamiliar with this process may need guidance to start, work, reflect and connect. This might initially be sequential but does not need to stay as a linear process.
Help students engage in understanding before rushing to solve. Close reading, typically associated with ELA, “peels the onion” uncovering layers of meaning in a text for deeper comprehension. Using three reads, students close listen, then close read to ground their thinking, reasoning, delay answer-getting and surface misconceptions.
Students typically do not associate math class with oral presentations! Guidance is often needed as students think out loud and present their mathematical pondering. These strategies enhance students’ recording ability and confidence, and create conditions to support students in recording their mathematical thinking through audio.
How to get students thinking meta-cognitively with CueThink. How to give them an opportunity to share what they create, both with peers and at home.