Teaching 21 Thinking Skills for the 21st Century: The MiCOSA Model

Teaching 21 Thinking Skills for the 21^st Century: The MiCOSA Model, gives K-12 teachers, administrators, staff development coordinators, and school psychologists practical, hands-on help for developing students’ thinking skills across the curriculum and shows educators how to help students use the information they gain to solve problems and innovate new solutions in today’s diverse and challenging classrooms and world. The book details 21 essential and critical thinking skills, using case examples from real classroom and multiple video clips to illustrate the concepts, and includes over 100 classroom strategies to augment and support the examples of the mediation presented in the MiCOSA Model.

Table of Contents

PREFACE

PART I:  CONTEXTUAL AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS

CHAPTER 1.    THE MICOSA MODEL and ITS 21^ST CENTURY CONTEXTS 

                   Introducing the MiCOSA Model

                   The Key Components of the MiCOSA Model

                   The Twenty-first Century Contexts

PART II:  CRITICAL COMPONENTS OF THE MICOSA MODEL

CHAPTER 2.    PRIOR KNOWLEDGE AND CULTURAL GROUNDING

                    The Power of Personal Narratives

                    Activating and Using Prior Knowledge and Cultural Grounding Motivation, Mediation and Meaning in Diverse

                    Classrooms

CHAPTER 3.   MEDIATING CONVERSATIONS for ENHANCING THINKING

                   The Dynamics of the Mediating Conversations

                   Intent and Reciprocity

                   Mediating Meaning

                   Bridging Thinking

                   Guiding Self-Regulation

                   Building Competence

CHAPTER 4.   THINKING SKILLS for GATHERING INFORMATION

                   Systematic Search

                   Focus and Attention

                   Labels, Words and Concepts

                   Multiple Sources

                   Position in Space

                   Position in Time

                   Precision and Accuracy

CHAPTER 5. THINKING SKILLS FOR TRANSFORMING INFORMATION

                   Goal Setting

                   Planning

                   Comparing

                   Ordering, Grouping and Categorizing

                   Finding Connections and Relationships

                   Visualizing

                   Inferring

                   Cause and Effect -- Hypothesizing

                   Summarizing

CHAPTER 6.    THINKING SKILLS FOR COMMUNICATING INFORMATION

                   Labels, Words and Concepts

                   Precision and Accuracy

                   Appropriate Pragmatics

                   Feedback for Self-Regulation

                   Collaboration

PART III:  IMPLEMENTING MICOSA (needs new title of section)_

CHAPTER 7.    CONTENT, CURRICULUM & STANDARDS: FINDING THE THINKING SKILLS and WRITING OBJECTIVES

                   Locating Explicit Thinking Skills

                   Locating Implicit Thinking Skills

                   Thinking Skills Underlying Common Terms in Standards

                   Finding Patterns in Standards

                   From Standards to Thinking Skills to Content Objectives

CHAPTER 8.   ASSESSMENT AND FEEDBACK

                   What is Worth Understanding?

                   How Do We Assess Our Students’ Understanding?

                   What Teaching And Learning Experiences Inform Student Progress Toward The Objective: Formative Assessment

                   Pulling Together Assessment Components

CHAPTER 9     TEACHING FOR TRANSFER OF LEARNING

                   What is Transfer of Learning?

                   Supporting the Development of Transfer in the Classroom

                   The Bridges: Putting Transfer into Action

                   Bridging for Transfer from Classroom Lessons to Life Lessons

                   Bridging for Transfer: Using Thinking Skills to Develop and Transfer                                     Big Ideas

CHAPTER 10   LESSON PLANNING: PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

                   What is Worth Understanding?

                   How Do we Assess Our Students’ Understanding of That Knowledge?

                   What Teaching and Learning Experiences Inform Student Progress                                      Toward the Objective?

                   Using the Short Form of the MiCOSA lesson Planning Guide

                   Level II and Level III Lesson Planning

PART IV:  ENRICHING TOMORROW’S LEARNING (needs good title)

CHAPTER 11   SETTING EXPECTATIONS FOR SUCCESS (WORKING title)

                   Mediating Resilience in the Classroom

                   Parents as Collaborators: Re-Thinking Parent Involvement

                   Colleagues as Collaborators: School-Wide Collaboration    

APPENDICES

A        Teacher Interview/Questionnaire

B        Student Survey of Thinking Skills

C        Student Graphic Pattern ..... thinking Skills (name ??)

D        Lesson Plan Level I:  Robots_Cause and Effect

E        Lesson Plan Level III Segment:  Themes in Literature and Life