INITIATIVES - Thinking Strategies

Enduring Understandings:

Constructing meaning is an active mental process that occurs within a collaborative, and usually social, context.

• Environment can inhibit or contribute to learning.
• Inquiry and reflection are part of a collaborative culture and lead to application.
• Independence comes when learners control their own thinking and communicate their understanding of a process or content.

Essential Questions:

• Why is an apprentice model of instruction appropriate for learning?
• How does an apprentice model of instruction support learners?
• In what ways do instructional decision, instruction and assessment change if an apprentice model is used?

What is Thinking Strategies?
Thinking Strategies is a yearlong literacy course for implementing the apprentice model for designing instruction and the individual learning needs of students. The Apprentice Model uses systematic assessment to drive instruction within the framework of Readers' Workshop, the district's K-7 literacy model and the state's GLEs. Participants learn to use a variety of teaching approaches, explicit teaching of thinking strategies, community, assessment, and choice to enhance student literacy development.

Who participates in Thinking Strategies?
Registered Teachers, Instructional Coaches and Principals

Who do I contact for further information?
Dr. Pat Mainella
Coordinator, Literacy