Language And Thinking In School

Oral language manual for parents and teachers of kindergarten and primary children.

This photocopiable resource provides a clear structure to assist teachers, SENCOs, learning support assistants and speech language therapists in developing children's language from the concrete to the abstract. It is based on fifty picture and verbal scenarios that can be used flexibly with a wide range of ages and abilities. Quick, practical and easy to use in the classroom, this programme can be used with individual children, in small groups or can form the basis of a literacy lesson or speech language therapy session. Features: question sheets are carefully structured to promote children's development of inference, verbal reasoning and thinking skills; the three parallel assessments of spoken and written language can be used to assess each child's starting level and then to monitor progress; score forms and worksheets for each lesson are included. The book is particularly useful for children who are recognised as having delayed language skills, specific language impairment, Autism Spectrum Disorder (including Asperger's Syndrome), pragmatic language impairment or moderate learning difficulties. The 2nd Edition is now in full colour throughout and has been updated with a simplified introduction. All illustrations and worksheets will now be available online. Features: full colour throughout; new and revised illustrations; simplified introduction; online resources; illustrations and worksheets.

Until recently, the history of debates about language and thought has been a history of thinking of language in the singular. The purpose of this volume is to reverse this trend and to begin unlocking the mysteries surrounding thinking and speaking in bi- and multilingual speakers. If languages influence the way we think, what happens to those who speak more than one language? And if they do not, how can we explain the difficulties second language learners experience in mapping new words and structures onto real-world referents? The contributors to this volume put forth a novel approach to second language learning, presenting it as a process that involves conceptual development and restructuring, and not simply the mapping of new forms onto pre-existing meanings.

In this book, we try to provide a practical, down-to-earth guide for those who are involved in language learning and teaching. We hope that this book will be a useful reading for those who would like to incorporate higher-order thinking skills (HOTS)-enhancing techniques in their teaching practice. We set out from the position that, although it is hardly doubtful that it is at the heart of education, critical thinking is in reality often not given its due attention in pedagogy, particularly in language education. This book offers readers some practical advice on how to implement HOTS in their own practice. It has been written to take the reader through each technique with the ultimate goal of promoting HOTS step-by-step. In the introductory chapter, we present an overview of the theory behind HOTS, its definition, its relation to Bloom’s Taxonomy, its two dimensions (critical thinking and reflective thinking), and the ideas of some influential thinkers in this area. The subsequent chapters present six HOTS-enhancing techniques that classroom teachers can draw from, namely graphic organizers, critical discourse analysis, argumentation, emotion regulation and emotional intelligence enhancing techniques, reflective journals, and mindfulness-based strategies. As the book draws on a wide-ranging review of literature with exercises for direct use with language learners, we hope that this provides both theoretical and practical support for the teaching process to help language learners become effective critical thinkers. The compilation of the ideas in this book took us a long time, over a decade. Something that takes such a long time requires much engagement and life experience; so did this book.

One of the central questions facing anyone involved in education is can you actually teach anyone to think? To begin to answer this question, it is necessary to know what thinking means. Frank Smith is one of the most influential writers in education today. His work on reading in particular has had a seminal effect on classroom practice throughout the English-speaking world. At the core of all his work has been this issue of the nature of thought. In this book, he analyses the language of thinking and then moves on to look at different aspects of the thinking process: everyday thought, creative and critical thought. Finally he looks critically at the various methods currently advocated for teaching children to think, arguing that learning to think is in the end less a matter of instruction than of experience and opportunity.

Discover why and how schools must become places where thinking is valued, visible, and actively promoted As educators, parents, and citizens, we must settle for nothing less than environments that bring out the best in people, take learning to the next level, allow for great discoveries, and propel both the individual and the group forward into a lifetime of learning. This is something all teachers want and all students deserve. In Creating Cultures of Thinking: The 8 Forces We Must Master to Truly Transform Our Schools, Ron Ritchhart, author of Making Thinking Visible, explains how creating a culture of thinking is more important to learning than any particular curriculum and he outlines how any school or teacher can accomplish this by leveraging 8 cultural forces: expectations, language, time, modeling, opportunities, routines, interactions, and environment. With the techniques and rich classroom vignettes throughout this book, Ritchhart shows that creating a culture of thinking is not about just adhering to a particular set of practices or a general expectation that people should be involved in thinking. A culture of thinking produces the feelings, energy, and even joy that can propel learning forward and motivate us to do what at times can be hard and challenging mental work.

Maintaining English as the sole language of knowledge production and dissemination in universities that enrol students who speak multiple languages, and those students learning other languages, is questionable. This groundbreaking work calls into question the exclusive use of academic English in internationalising higher education teaching and research. By interrogating the dominant assumptions informing the monolingual mindset, Postmonolingual Critical Thinking indicates that academically literate students can capably use their repertoires of languages and knowledge for educational purposes. The case for students’ languages and knowledge having a place in English-medium universities is made through evidence of the uses of Zhōngwén, academic Chinese. Proposing to broaden the scope of languages used for knowledge production and dissemination, this book highlights the educational potential of multilingualism. Postmonolingual Critical Thinking makes a unique proposal: that universities which recruit doctoral students from Asia create education policy practices that enable them to extend their multilingual capabilities. Arguing that by drawing on intellectual resources from their various languages, students construct knowledge of critical thinking in complex, interesting and potentially innovative ways, this book guides higher education institutions in putting this into practice. It outlines a pragmatic approach for universities to explore the potential of multipolar, multilingual education, while being attentive to the tensions posed by assertions of a monolingual mindset. Postmonolingual Critical Thinking has the potential to create great change in a higher education sector which is mired by a monolingual approach to graduate training. This unique and thought-provoking book is essential reading for those in the fields of applied linguistics, comparative education, higher education, international studies, teacher education and translation studies.

Give students the essential thinking skills they need to thrive. Exclusively content-focused teaching may improve test scores, but it leaves students without the cognitive skills for success in an information-overloaded world where deep thinking, collaborative problem solving, and emotional intelligence is essential. In this book, David Hyerle presents case studies of schools and educators who have applied these powerful models, in some case system-wide, to remedy this situation, including: Visual learning tools including Hyerle’s renowned Thinking Maps A language for students to improve their intellectual-emotional behaviors as they learn A system for developing students’ abilities to ask questions in the context of a developing Community of Inquiry