Thinking Skills - Advance Organisers


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<p><a href="home/learningandwork/educationandachievement/cpd/cpd-teaching/cpd-teaching-thinkingskills/thinkingskills-strategies/thinkingskills-advanceorganisers.htm#advanceoverview" > Overview</a></p>
<p><a href="home/learningandwork/educationandachievement/cpd/cpd-teaching/cpd-teaching-thinkingskills/thinkingskills-strategies/thinkingskills-advanceorganisers.htm#advancethinking" > Thinking skills objectives</a></p>
<p><a href="home/learningandwork/educationandachievement/cpd/cpd-teaching/cpd-teaching-thinkingskills/thinkingskills-strategies/thinkingskills-advanceorganisers.htm#advancetask" > Task management</a></p>
<p><a href="home/learningandwork/educationandachievement/cpd/cpd-teaching/cpd-teaching-thinkingskills/thinkingskills-strategies/thinkingskills-advanceorganisers.htm#advancemetacognitive" > Metacognitive plenary</a></p>
<p><a href="home/learningandwork/educationandachievement/cpd/cpd-teaching/cpd-teaching-thinkingskills/thinkingskills-strategies/thinkingskills-advanceorganisers.htm#assessmentforlearning" > Assessment for learning</a></p>
<p><a href="home/learningandwork/educationandachievement/cpd/cpd-teaching/cpd-teaching-thinkingskills/thinkingskills-strategies/thinkingskills-advanceorganisers.htm#advanceexamples" > Examples of lessons</a></p>
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<p><a name="advanceoverview"></a><b>Overview:</b></p>
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<p>An Advance Organiser exercise allows pupils to use their knowledge to see how a new piece of work will develop. They are frameworks which show how a topic is organised and the links between ideas and material. They come in many forms such as spider diagrams: flow charts; stories or anecdotes; study guides or concept maps </p>
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<p><a name="advancethinking"></a><b>Thinking skills objectives:</b></p>
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<ul><li> Make sure you have a thinking skill objective for the lesson</li>
<li> Tell pupils what the objective is at the beginning of the lesson and refer to it throughout.</li></ul>
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<p>The Thinking Skills you can develop through Advance organisers are:</p>
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<ul><li> Information processing: especially where pupils are asked to compare and contrast and to analyse part/whole relationships.</li>
<li> Reasoning: making inferences, deductions and informed decisions</li>
<li> Enquiry: where pupils are asking relevant questions and then planning what to do and research.</li></ul>
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<p><a name="advancetask"></a><b>Task management:</b></p>
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<p><b>A: Groupings:</b></p>
<ul><li> A group of 3 or 4 pupils works well</li>
<li> Make sure that they are sitting on the same table</li></ul>
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<p><b>B: Which Organiser?</b></p>
<p>There are many different ways of presenting an advance organiser. </p>
<ul><li> You might use a piece of text which pupils skim to highlight the key elements for later study or to simply highlight bits that they don&#8217;t understand. Make sure the text is accessible to all.</li>
<li> You could show a film and ask pupils to write down a series of headings which highlight the key purpose of the film.</li>
<li> You could produce a spider diagram which shows the structure of a unit of work and ask pupils to add questions about the topic.</li>
<li> You could give out a partly completed organiser and ask pupils to complete it.</li></ul>
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<p><b>C: Role of the teacher during the task:</b></p>
<ul><li> Make sure that pupils know what the aim of an advance organiser is.</li>
<li> Ask questions about the task and make sure that pupils are focussed on links between the ideas and the material they are going to study.</li></ul>
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<p><b>D: Timings:</b></p>
<ul><li>This will vary according to the task, group structure and complexity of the source. It can take up to an hour.</li></ul>
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<p><a name="advancemetacognitive"></a><b>Metacognitive plenary:</b></p>
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<p>In the metacognitive plenary you need to include questions like:</p>
<ul><li> How can the organiser help you with this topic?</li>
<li> Do you think there is anything missing from the organiser?</li>
<li> What techniques did you use to skim the text?</li>
<li> Could you improve anything you did?</li>
<li> Why do you think an advance organiser is useful at the start of a topic?</li>
<li> Could we have used a different organiser? What sort of organiser would you have preferred? Explain why?</li>
<li> Which subjects would you find an organiser useful for?</li>
<li> How might an organiser help you plan coursework?</li></ul>
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<p><a name="assessmentforlearning"></a><b>Assessment for learning: </b></p>
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<p><a name="advanceexamples"></a><b>Examples of lessons:</b></p>
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<p>Click on the subject button for a list of materials. Each lesson will have a brief summary of how the teacher intended it to be used and copyright free resources. In some instances the teacher concerned has indicated where the resource used might be found.</p>
<ul><li> <a href="cpd-teaching-thinkingskills/thinkingskillssubjects/thinkingskillsscience.htm" > Science</a></li></ul>
<p>Have you prepared a thinking skills lesson that has worked well for you and that you are prepared to share?</p>
<p>If so please complete the <a href="thinkingskillsresourcesappform.doc" > attached form [Word 35KB]</a></p>
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