NEW THINKING SKILLS

INTRODUCTION:

This is an outline of an introduction to ‘Thinking Skills’ or ‘Building Learning Capacity’. This was used with Year 7 pupils, but could be adapted for any age. The activities are not specific as it will depend on your teaching group. We used resources suggested by the Teacher Learning Organisation.

table of content

Definition of the Skill                                                               3

Purpose for This Skill                                                              4

Examples of This Skill                                                             5

Prerequisites for Using This Skill                                               6

Definition of the Skill

The activities in this unit have been designed to help students of all achievement levels improve their skill at determining cause and effect. For the purposes of this unit, determining cause and effect is defined as the ability to identify the varied and most powerful reasons for, or results of, a given event or previous action. It describes the relationship between two or more events in which one event is the reason another event occurred. Multiple causes and/or multiple effects may be identified for any situation. Some causes or effects are more important or more powerful than others.

Purposes for This Skill

The skill of determining cause and effect can be used in any academic area, career field, or in one’s personal life. Usually people using this skill are trying to find out why something happened or what the consequences of a event may be. They are trying to determine the nature of the relationships between events in an effort to explain why something happened so they can make it happen again, or avoid a situation that is not desirable. Determining cause and effect requires the use of tacit knowledge and previously learned information. It can guide the thinker to specific types of research to help identify the most powerful causes or effects.

Examples of This Skill

Examples of this skill include the following: 1. homeowners who need to find the cause of a wet basement floor; 2. auto mechanics who are looking for the cause of an unusual sound in an engine; 3. students who are considering the effects of the use of microwave ovens in homes; 4. teachers who are looking for the effects of a new hands-on curriculum in science; or 5. store owners who have hired an advertising firm to evaluate the effects of a new advertising strategy.

Prerequisites for Using This Skill

For students to use the skill of determining cause and effect, they must do the following: 1. identify the event or action to be analyzed; 2. determine whether it is more important to find the causes or effects of this situation; 4 3. identify actions or events related to the event in question; 4. use appropriate information gathering techniques to consider all possible causes or effects; and 5. using the data as evidence, determine which causes or effects are the most likely or powerful.