As our society advances and technology becomes an ever increasing influence in our lives, higher cognitive thinking becomes an essential job skill. Teaching critical thinking through complex cognitive tasks is important in developing skills like problem solving, decision making, and experimental inquiry.(Marzano). The Yale Medical Group lists 7 recommendations for developing children's critical thinking skills. Through integrating Complex Cognitive Tasks, similar to those discussed on readwritethink, we can reinforce and build students who can perform the critical thinking and problem solving tasks required by most career paths today.
When designing a complex, project based lesson there are a few things to keep in mind
Each project should:
Include well defined guidelines and goals, but still require the student to develop their own plan of execution
Have the flexibility to allow for problem solving and developing solutions
Involve a small amount of personal research on the part of the student
build from previous course work
Teachers need to:
give guidance when needed
have multiple progress check points throughout the project
provide guidelines for reference materials.
How To Evaluate:
Utilize a Ruebric
Preferably for each level of evaluation or include each level as a part of the final ruberic
Paas, F., Van Gog, T. (2011).Principles for Designing Effective and Efficient Training of Complex Cognitive Skills [Abstract]. Human Factors and Ergonomics Society
As our society advances and technology becomes an ever increasing influence in our lives, higher cognitive thinking becomes an essential job skill. Teaching critical thinking through complex cognitive tasks is important in developing skills like problem solving, decision making, and experimental inquiry.(Marzano). The Yale Medical Group lists 7 recommendations for developing children's critical thinking skills. Through integrating Complex Cognitive Tasks, similar to those discussed on readwritethink, we can reinforce and build students who can perform the critical thinking and problem solving tasks required by most career paths today.
When designing a complex, project based lesson there are a few things to keep in mind
Each project should:
Teachers need to:
How To Evaluate:
Things To Remember:
Reffrences:
Marzano, R. (2009). Researched Strategies. Retrieved from http://www.marzanoresearch.com/research/researched_strategies.aspx
Yale School of Medicine (2011). Cognitive Development. Retrieved from http://www.yalemedicalgroup.org/stw/Page.asp?PageID=STW026012
Paas, F., Van Gog, T. (2011).Principles for Designing Effective and Efficient Training of Complex Cognitive Skills [Abstract]. Human Factors and
Ergonomics Society