How to make students think?

Far too often, we would hear teachers bemoan about students being passive and overly reliant on teachers for instructions and learning. “It was as if they had left their brain at home”, they would sigh. Soon enough, in the midst of the hustle and bustle, teachers would give up trying and continue to put in all the effort (and even the learning) for the students! Year after year, unless something drastic is done in class, a burn out is unavoidable and the students remained passive.

Here's a useful tip I’ve learnt from my mentors.

Give your students problems to solve frequently and you must not render any help at all during the activity.

This allows for two key things to happen.

Firstly, students are no longer passive learners, stating the obvious. They have to dig deep within themselves to activate critical thinking skills, resilience, team work to problem solve. Secondly, teachers will be able to observe and gather teachable moments to be used post activity. You will also get to know the students better.

What you do after the activity is equally important. Using questioning techniques further enhances the thinking process. Get students to share their experience. It could include what they did to solve the problem, what went wrong, what did they observe and what they’ve learnt etc. During this segment, it is important to accept all answers to boost students’ confidence. You should also not allow anyone to shrug away in silence or hide behind “I don’t know”. There are several tips to deal with students who are not so confident and I’ll share that in subsequent posts. Teachers may also react accordingly to their responses to guide the learning.

At the end of the lesson, teachers must explain the intent of the lesson (i.e. why they had to go through the ordeal of thinking). It is also important at this point to congratulate students for problem solving on their own without our help.

There are caveats for the tip to work successfully;

1. Expectations; Right from the start, make clear your expectations. For example, I would make it crystal clear that in my lessons, there will not be any spoon feeding of answers and they are expected to think and problem solve frequently.

2. Consistency: Being consistent in your approach brings clarity. Students know what to expect and respond accordingly.

3. Build a supportive classroom environment: When they feel safe to try, to fail and to share, they will not stop innovating and thinking out of the box.

4. School wide approach (systemic): This helps students to consistently be thinking from the first to the last lesson. Far too often, whatever they had experienced in one lesson would be undone in another lesson.

I hope you find this tip useful and do share them with friends!