ThinkAgain! A Student Experience in Mental Models
Students need engaging hands-on ways to learn critical thinking. This one-day program, with learning stations that you can replicate in your classroom, creates the experiences students need to go from theory to knowledge of how their brains work and make sense of the world.
In the earliest days of I-Think, our goal was to translate the research behind Integrative Thinking into learning for younger students. We were experimenting and testing what experiences were engaging for students. For three years we ran the ThinkAgain! program with the grade 8 students at Branksome Hall and Upper Canada College from 2009 - 2011. The program was describe as: Integrative Thinking is the capacity to think and act productively in the face of multiple and often conflicting perspectives of oneself, the world and others. While most of us like to think we are open-minded, we often struggle to break free from the way we see the world. But is it only by exploring multiple options, models or ideas that we are able to construct truly innovative solutions to the challenges we face.
This day-long program will give students an active opportunity to challenge the way they think about complex problems and learn new tools for broadening their points of view and becoming better critical thinkers. Academic areas of focus include:
Learning to Learn – How does the brain process information? Why do different people perceive similar things differently than us? What can we learn from those who disagree with us?
Problem-solving and critical thinking skills – Are the multiple ways to approach the same problem? What are the processes we go through when we try to solve a complicated problem? Are there more/less effective ways to approach problem-solving?
Our Creative Minds – How does creative thinking help us become better problem-solvers? How can opposing ideas lead us to innovate and create new solutions?
An optical illusion asking what do you see first and can you see the other animal too?
Program Overview
Opening Magician Keynote: “Seeing is Deceiving”
We are big fans of using magic and working with magicians to highlight that what we perceive is not the whole truth. The keynote introduced students to the notion of perception through magical illusions and that what we see with our eyes does not always correspond with all that is actually there. With a keynote, the magician makes the connection to the importance of seeing complex problems from different angles.
This was followed by 4 workshops that student groups rotated between.
The Illusions Room
and have a responsibility to challenge ourselves to see beyond it. Using optical illusions, students explored the idea that in order to solve a complex problem, it’s important to see as much of the full picture as possible. Yet, our brains are quite selective about what information it notices. In this activity, we explore some of the ways the brain prevents us from seeing all there is to see by examining optical illusions and get taught how to perform magic as a gateway to discuss what the audience misses.
Building the Tallest Tower
This activity focuses on the need to test and iterate on ideas. Solving a complex challenge requires an ability to clearly think through a strategy, as well as, a willingness to revise and reshape that plan. In this room, students practice working in teams to solve a complex challenge by building the tallest tower out of spaghetti that must hold a marshmallow on top. Students will have the opportunity to build with their team, but also to learn from the work of other teams and revise their models based on what they discover from others. Research around this activity can be found in this TED Talk from 2010.
The Impressions Room
Students examine how we get stuck on first impressions based on entrenched, incomplete mental models, and that those models inform our behaviour. Students are guided through two activities exploring how our beliefs about people influence our behaviour. In the first students are shown pictures of people and asked questions about their profession or for what they are famous. For example, have you ever seen a picture of Ryan Seacrest when he was younger? Students then watched a clip from the NBC show What Would You Do where a young white male actor, a young black male actor and a young woman actress explicitly try to steal a bike.
The Issues Room
Once you come to a conclusion about an issue, it’s very hard to see it differently. Humans are great at seeking out confirming data, and need practice to seek out disconfirming information. Students will witness a staged debate exploring radically opposing points of view around the question “Does technology corrupts us?” Students will then explore the value of examining each view for themselves by mining for data that supports each position. Using the Ladder of Inference framework, students will learn how providing data helps to avoid unnecessary conflict and makes room for a richer discussion.
The day ended with teachers facilitating reflection conversations about the day, and bringing this learning into the classroom throughout the school year.
An article about the program was written in The Town Crier.
