Summary and Thoughts on "Designing Tasks for Active Thinking and Learning" from Bean's Engaging Ideas (No, I couldn't come up with an original title.)

I actually wanted to do my post on chapter 6, but I was too slow to raise my hand, and I wound up with chapter 7. Glad I did. This has been the most helpful chapter to me thus far. It sparked a whole bunch of ideas that I am going to use in my lab class. I'll talk about those in a bit. First, a summary of chapter seven:

The goal of this chapter is to help teachers design activities and assignments for their classroom that encourage critical thinking. Classrooms are then "problem-centered" rather than "lecture-centered," and students are "active" in their learning instead of "passive" (121). How much do you really learn by just having knowledge "dumped" in your head via lecture and notes? I know I learn more, and understand what I have learned more when I discover the knowledge through my own discussions, writings, and explorations that require me to use my own problem -solving skills.

In a classroom that encourages active thinking and learning, the teacher is not an all-powerful authority figure. Instead the teacher acts as a "coach" and a "guide" (121). "In adopting this role, the teacher presents students with critical problems, gives students supervised practice at solving them, and coaches their performance through encouragement, modeling, helpful intervention and advice, and critiquing their performance" (121). So teachers no longer consume their time planning out their lecture; they instead spend their time planning critical thinking activities for their class.

Bean states that, "the goal in designing critical thinking problems is to convert students from passive to active learners who use course concepts to confront problems, gather and analyze data, prepare hypotheses, and formulate arguments" (122). Bean offers "ten strategies for designing critical Thinking Tasks:"

1) Develop tasks or assignments in which students have to link course concepts with personal experience. That way, students apply the knowledge that they learned in class instead of just trying to commit it to their memory.

2) Develop assignments/activities in which a student has to explain course concepts to someone who does not understand them. This could be useful in helping students who don't understand difficult concepts while also helping the students who do. Every time you teach something to someone, you understand it a little better yourself. That is why I love tutoring!

3) Give students a thesis that they either have to defend or attack. This will help students see that there is more than one side to an issue.

4) Give students a problem that they then have to find the solution for.

5) Give students supporting evidence and make them write the thesis/hypothesis/ or argument that this data supports.

6) Make frame sentences for paragraphs and have the students "flesh" them out by adding in the specifics. This also helps with organization.

7) Design activities centered around "what if's" and allow students to role-play. That way they can look at problems from different points of view.

8) Have students write summaries/abstracts or articles and/or lectures.

9) Have students write a dialogue between two people with two different points of views on a controversial topic.

10) Develop case studies.

Bean 121-132.

I think these are excellent activities because it makes students responsible for their learning. This way they won't be able to get away with, "My teacher's lectures are just so boring," etc. I also think students learn better from "hands on" activities.

ENG 100L

I am going to do the frame paragraphs with my students and maybe even a frame thesis for their critical reflections paper. A lot of them are struggling with what exactly a thesis statement is and how to write them, and they are even more confused about keeping one idea in a paragraph and having that idea support the thesis. I think this could help clarify things for them. I've tried lecturing, but I don't think that works as well. Thank you, Bean. I also changed up their dialogue journals after reading this chapter. Here's the plan:

Dialogue Journals: English 100 10L

These assignments will be the rest of your dialogue journal entries. You may type these assignments, though you are not required to; however, it may be easier to do a word count. In these assignments you don’t have to worry so much about grammar, organization, or structure. I do, however, want you to write in complete, coherent sentences. You will be graded on whether you meet the word count or not, and the quality of your thinking, not your writing. These assignments will help you greatly when it comes to writing your critical reflections paper. If you spend the time on these assignments, writing your critical reflections paper should be a breeze. These assignments will make up a significant portion of your grade, and I will not accept late work. NO EXCEPTIONS. If you’re not in class the day that it is due, find a way to get it to me before 8 a.m. that day.

Class Summaries: Each week you will write a 250 word summary of your lectures/activities in your ENG 100 lecture class. Make sure to include in your summary the most valuable thing you learned that week. Your week ends on Thursday, so you must turn the summary into me the following Tuesday. Your summaries will begin with Week 5.

Writing Center Visit Reflection: After every writing center visit, write a 250 word report answering the following questions:
- In this visit, what was most helpful to you?
- In this visit, what was least helpful to you?
- Did you agree with your tutor’s advice or disagree?
- After the session, what is your plan for revision? In other words, how will you make use of the tutor’s advice?
These reflections will be due the same day as your writing center visit. You will begin this assignment with your 3rd writing center visit.

Writing Experience: Write a 250 word account of your experience writing every writing assignment. Touch on the following issues:
- What was the easiest part of writing this assignment?
- What did you struggle with most writing this assignment?
- What advice do you hope to get from your teacher, peer reviewer, or writing center tutor?
- You can also talk about your experiences peer reviewing.
This will be due one week after you turn in your writing assignment to your instructor.

Instructor Feedback: After you get an essay back from your instructor, write a 250 word report summarizing the following:
- Your expectations. Did you expect to do better on this paper, or were you pleasantly surprised?
- What did you make of your teacher’s comments? Did you agree with them? Were any of them hard to understand?
- After reading your instructor’s comments, what is your plan for revision?
You will begin this starting with WA 2. These won’t have specific due dates, but I will be making sure you are getting them done.

It might sound like a lot, but they need guidance. If I just give them a prompt in class, they don't take it seriously. That is why I put a word count down. Also, the book hasn't been at the bookstore, so they haven't been having to do any reading or homework for this class thus far. I've been lecturing (off the book), and we've been working on peer review. They also aren't doing their WC visits, so if there is a little paper/reflection involved as well, it might motivate them to go. I got these ideas from reading this chapter.