Ideas for Educators
  • Home
  • Idea Blog
  • Bring Anne to Your Site
  • Books & Videos
  • Free Resources

Improving Thinking Skills through Part-Whole Structures

1/29/2020

0 Comments

 
Are your students SPLUMPERS? Derek Cabrera, in Thinking at Every Desk, suggests that students need to combine the skills of SPLITTERS and LUMPERS in order to be successful thinkers. Here is how that played out in one of my lessons this week. 

The lesson learning target was “I can identify the structure of a text passage to help with my comprehension.” Students have been exploring text structures for several lessons and have been taught the key words that might signal a chronology vs. problem/solution, etc. What we noticed is that some students were getting too caught up in the key words and misidentifying the structure. They were SPLITTERS – looking at the part without looking at the whole. 

To help students see the need to look at part and whole, we began by showing them several images – one whole and one a zoomed in part – and had discussion about why it might be important to see both. For example, with a photo of African Stew and a peanut, we were able to talk about peanut allergies as a strong reason to look at parts. With a photo of a chess board, we discussed why the whole picture told a more interesting story than the part. Download images here, if you would like all eight. 

Next, we assigned partners, each being either a SPLITTER or a  LUMPER. The SPLITTER used wikkistix to circle key workds, while the LUMPER read the whole passage. They then discussed what they noticed and decided which text structure it represented. 

We also added gestures and visuals to go along with the thinking process. Download those here. 

This concept can be applied to so many things we teach!
 "All knowledge has a part-whole structure, and therefore to understand it, we must see the part-whole structure of each and every idea we encounter."
​D. Cabrera

​Even the U.S. Army considers this work essential!
0 Comments

    Anne M. Beninghof

    Anne's mission is to improve instruction through collaboration and the sharing of creative, practical ideas for educators.

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    October 2022
    April 2022
    February 2022
    October 2021
    September 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    February 2021
    November 2020
    September 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012

    Categories

    All
    Accessibility
    Accommodation
    Acquisition
    Activator
    Attention
    Automaticity
    Collaboration
    Connections
    Cooperative
    Co Teaching
    Co-teaching
    Differentiation
    Engagement
    Higher Order Thinking
    Inclusion
    Literacy
    Math
    Memory
    Metaphor
    Movement
    Multi Sensory
    Multi Sensory
    Multi-sensory
    Novelty
    Organization
    Planning
    Questioning
    Reflection
    Review
    Special Education
    Special Education
    Summarization
    Technology
    Visual Supports
    Visual Supports
    Vocabulary

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.