Put Thinking to the Test


Book Description

How can teachers use the comprehension strategies put forward in books like Strategies That Work and Mosaic of Thought to help students become not just better readers and thinkers but also better test takers? The four authors of Put Thinking to the Test have spent years pursuing that question and have developed a groundbreaking approach, as their colleague Ellin Keene writes in the foreword to the book:




Put Thinking to the Test


Book Description

Just as comprehension strategies have helped millions of students learn to read like proficient readers, they can also help students think like effective test-takers. The authors show how students can use background knowledge, mental images, synthesizing, monitoring, inferring, questioning, and determining of importance to understand the genre of tests and to think through the problems they are given. Instead of engaging in artificial and disconnected activities to cram for upcoming tests, students learn skills and strategies that will serve them throughout their school careers and beyond. Presenting numerous classroom vignettes featuring students in grades 3-8, "Put Thinking to the Test" includes: (1) examples of the direct application of thinking strategy instruction to test taking; (2) actual work samples from lessons used with students; (3) additional lesson ideas that go beyond the teaching described in the vignettes; (4) detailed anchor charts; and (5) background on how the authors came to understand this work so that a staff, team, or individual teacher can apply these concepts in their own school setting. This book is divided into three sections. Section I, Wondering About Tests, contains the following chapters: (1) Coming to Know Standardized Tests: Walking in Our Students' Shoes; (2) Tests as a Genre: What Makes Standardized Tests Unique; and (3) Increasing Student Stamina: The Role of Workshop Structures in Becoming Successful Test Takers. Section ii, Thinking About Tests, contains the following chapters: (4) Ask Questions; (5) Create Mental Images; (6) Draw Inferences; (7) Synthesize New Learning and Ideas; (8) Activate, Utilize, and Build Background Knowledge (Schema); (9) Determine the Most Important Ideas and Themes; and (10) Monitor for Meaning and Problem-Solve When Meaning Breaks Down. Section iii, Still Learning About Tests, contains the following chapters: (11) q and A--Weaving Thinking Together with Testing; and (12) Integrity: It's All About Being True to Ourselves and Our Profession. References are also included. [Foreword by Ellin Keene.].




Writing Put to the Test


Book Description

This book helps educators improve students’ ability to write clear, coherent essays in response to on-demand writing prompts. While it focuses on students’ abilities to succeed at on-demand writing, it also promotes the teaching of writing as an expression of art and self. For grades 4 -12, it provides examples of responses to narrative and persuasive prompts, and provides savvy advice about what scorers look for.




Putting Design Thinking to Work


Book Description

This book discusses how the methods and mindsets of design thinking empower large organizations to create groundbreaking innovations. Arguing that innovations must effectively tackle so-called “wicked problems,” it shows how design thinking enables managers and innovators to create the organizational spaces and practices needed for breakthrough innovations. Design thinking equips actors with the tools and methods for harnessing the creative tensions inherent in pluralist, often conflicting disciplinary approaches. This, however, requires the transformation of contemporary organizational cultures away from monolithic, integrated models (or identities) toward more pluralist, dynamic and flexible institutional identities. Based on real-world cases from a wide range of organizations around the globe, the book offers managers and innovators practical guidance on initiating and managing the cultural transformations required for effective innovation.




Usability Testing Essentials: Ready, Set ...Test!


Book Description

Usability Testing Essentials presents a practical, step-by-step approach to learning the entire process of planning and conducting a usability test. It explains how to analyze and apply the results and what to do when confronted with budgetary and time restrictions. This is the ideal book for anyone involved in usability or user-centered design—from students to seasoned professionals.Filled with new examples and case studies, Usability Testing Essentials, Second Edition is completely updated to reflect the latest approaches, tools and techniques needed to begin usability testing or to advance in this area. - Provides a comprehensive, step-by-step guide to usability testing, a crucial part of every product's development - Discusses important usability issues such as international testing, persona creation, remote testing, and accessibility - Presents new examples covering mobile devices and apps, websites, web applications, software, and more - Includes strategies for using tools for moderated and unmoderated testing, expanded content on task analysis, and on analyzing and reporting results




Dialogue and the Development of Children's Thinking


Book Description

This book draws on extensive research to provide a ground-breaking new account of the relationship between dialogue and children’s learning development. It closely relates the research findings to real-life classrooms, so that it is of practical value to teachers and students concerned that their children are offered the best possible learning opportunities. The authors provide a clear, accessible and well-illustrated case for the importance of dialogue in children's intellectual development and support this with a new and more educationally relevant version of socio-cultural theory, which explains the fascinating relationship between dialogues and learning. In educational terms, a sociocultural theory that relates social, cultural and historical processes, interpersonal communication and applied linguistics, is an ideal way of explaining how school experience helps children learn and develop. By using evidence of how the collective construction of knowledge is achieved and how engagement in dialogues shapes children's educational progress and intellectual development, the authors provide a text which is essential for educational researchers, postgraduate students of education and teachers, and is also of interest to many psychologists and applied linguists.




Teaching New Literacies in Grades 4-6


Book Description

Upper-elementary students encounter a sometimes dizzying array of traditional and nontraditional texts both in and outside of the classroom. This practical handbook helps teachers in grades 4–6 harness the instructional potential of fiction, poetry, and plays; informational texts; graphic novels; digital storytelling; Web-based and multimodal texts; hip-hop; advertisements; math problems; and many other types of texts. Twenty-four complete lessons promote critical literacy skills such as comprehending, analyzing, and synthesizing information and using writing to communicate new ideas and pose questions. Snapshots of diverse classrooms are accompanied by clear explanations of the research base for instruction in each genre. Ready-to-use reproducibles are included.




Critical Thinking Tests


Book Description




Pedagogy for Conceptual Thinking and Meaning Equivalence: Emerging Research and Opportunities


Book Description

Research in neuroscience and brain imaging show that exposure of learners to multi-semiotic problems enhance cognitive control of inter-hemispheric attentional processing in the lateral brain and increase higher-order thinking. Multi-semiotic representations of conceptual meaning are found in most knowledge domains where issues of quantity, structure, space, and change play important roles, including applied sciences and social science. Teaching courses in History and Theory of Architecture to young architecture students with pedagogy for conceptual thinking allows them to connect analysis of historic artifact, identify pattern of design ideas extracted from the precedent, and transfer concepts of good design into their creative design process. Pedagogy for Conceptual Thinking and Meaning Equivalence: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a critical scholarly resource that demonstrates an instructional and assessment methodology that enhances higher-order thinking, deepens comprehension of conceptual content, and improves learning outcomes. Based on the rich literature on word meaning and concept formation in linguistics and semiotics, and in developmental and cognitive psychology, it shows how independent studies in these disciplines converge on the necessary clues for constructing a procedure for the demonstration of mastery of knowledge with equivalence-of-meaning across multiple representations. Featuring a wide range of topics such as curriculum design, learning outcomes, and STEM education, this book is essential for curriculum developers, instructional designers, teachers, administrators, education professionals, academicians, policymakers, and researchers.




What You Think ADD/ADHD Is, It Isn't


Book Description

ADD/ADHD is not as easily diagnosed or clear-cut as many believe; in fact it very often acts as a masking agent for other underlying, contributing disorders. It’s important that we understand ADD/ADHD better. What You Think ADD/ADHD Is, It Isn’t: Symptoms and Neuropsychological Testing Through Time is the culmination of the author’s years of research involving clinical experience and testing, resulting in the first all-encompassing examination of the ADD/ADHD disorder. Debunking common myths and shedding light upon the way this disorder truly impacts people, this volume: Presents the results of the largest clinical research study for ADD/ADHD, compiling 20 years of testing Distinguishes the inattentive form of ADD from ADHD and additional disorders using neuropsychological testing Provides statistical analysis from neuropsychological evaluations and self-reporting questionnaires from parents, teachers, adolescents, and adults Demonstrates how anxiety frequently masks itself as hyperactivity and increases through the lifespan Addresses the issue of ADHD misdiagnosis Explains the importance of diagnosing additional comorbid disorders that impact medication management and treatment Offers statistics showing the manner in which ADHD symptoms and additional issues affect people differently through the lifespan