Framing thought: literacy and thinking tools
Creating order of our thoughts and the information we uncover is critical for all writers. David Whitehead believes that students cannot turn their minds to higher order thinking without the help of tools that give power to their thoughts. Here he explains how one such thinking tool, the Concept Frame, can benefit students.
Literacy and thinking tools are construction tools for the mind. Just as carpenters use tools to construct furniture, literate thinkers use tools to construct new understandings. Just as a screwdriver is built to slot into the head of a screw and rotate it, so too literacy and thinking tools are built for task-specific purposes. Carpenters use more or less sophisticated screwdrivers (ratchet, magnetic, automatic loading) depending on their ability and the specific demands of the task; students, too, can use developmentally appropriate tools for different challenges.
From theory to practice
Consider the following scenario. Josephine, Grade 3, draws a Level 1 Concept Frame tool (see Figure 1) and lists words about birds under each heading. She discusses the frame with her teacher, who reminds her to list additional words as she learns more about birds.
The teacher then models how Josephine might use her Concept Frame to write a bird report, and makes a mental note to introduce her to a Level 2 Concept Frame tool in the near future.
The next time Josephine makes notes while reading, she will use a Concept Frame tool to help her learn; a tool she can now name and knows how and when to use.
Four selection criteria
The selection of a literacy and thinking tool such as the Concept Frame is based on theoretically embedded criteria. Let’s look at the four most important of these in more detail.
1. Teaching/teacher or learning/learner focused
Firstly, we should be able to identify literacy and thinking tools as either teaching tools or learning tools. Some tools will always be teaching tools, while others, like the Concept Frame, are designed as learning tools (although they might be introduced as teaching tools). Both teaching and learning tools can be designed to achieve deliberate and purposeful outcomes with texts, but only learning tools are designed to help students independently achieve strategic outcomes with texts. If a teacher’s objective is to help students acquire subject-specific vocabulary, then simple teaching tools (games and activities) such as matching a list of words to their definitions are useful. But, if the teacher’s objective is to help students become independent literate thinkers, then the emphasis must be on the acquisition of learning tools.
Learning tools equip students for lifelong learning. The difference between teaching and learning tools is, therefore, like the Chinese proverb: Give a family a fish and they will eat for a day; give them a fishing line and they will eat for a lifetime. Teaching tools are like fish; learning tools are like fishing lines.
2. Text-linked
The second criterion acknowledges the relationship between text-types and specific tools. The criterion states that if a tool evokes the same type of thinking as is required to read, write or talk—a report text, for example—then that tool is probably best used when students read, write or talk reports.
The Concept Frame tool is consistent with this text-linked criterion. This tool helps students write report texts because it evokes attribute thinking—students are prompted to list the attributes of objects, events or ideas. In turn, report texts represent the outcome of attribute thinking—they too classify and list the attributes of some thing. Given that both the Concept Frame tool and report texts evoke similar types of thinking, they should probably be used together.
The Concept Frame tool is designed to help students write report texts because different parts of the Concept Frame (see Figure 1) reflect some of the typical linguistic features of this genre. One feature, usually found at the beginning of a report, classifies the topic: Birds are animals that fly. Students can use information from the un-shaded sector of the Concept Frame to write this part of a report.
Next, students can use information in the shaded sectors of the Concept Frame to write the body of their reports. This information might be written as a simple sentence: Birds can chirp. Or, it may be formed into paragraphs that reflect deeper understandings: Different birds have different sounding chirps. They also have different reasons for chirping. Birds chirp to attract a mate. Chirping is also a way to tell other birds to keep away.
3. Brain-friendly
The third criterion is that literacy and thinking tools should be brain-friendly. That is, they should align with how the brain naturally learns (Wolfe, 2001).
The Concept Frame tool works in a brain-friendly fashion because it reflects our innate ability to store direct experiences as concepts. In support of this finding, evolutionary psychologists note that in every human society, people classify plants and animals into species-like groups.
Many psychologists suggest that the brain stores concepts in the form of connected ‘meaning nodes’ (Blaut et al, 2003). These meaningful connections are, literally, networks of nerves for storing what you know—for storing concepts. Because the Concept Frame reflects the way concepts might be stored in these networks, it can be thought of as brain-friendly. The tool does not ask the brain to do something unnatural in order to learn.
4. Developmentally appropriate characteristics
The ‘developmentally appropriate’ criterion aligns with the need for differentiated instruction and for the design of a seamless K–13 curriculum of tools. Developmentally appropriate tools align with students’ intellectual development and experience.
Level 1 tools probably best suit students in grades 1–3 or students using literacy and thinking tools for the first time. Level 2 tools are designed to challenge the thinking of students in grades 4–8 and should suit students who can already use Level 1 tools confidently and independently. Level 3 tools are designed for use in the secondary school or for gifted and talented students, who will probably begin to use a range of tools in combination.
What these three levels do not assume is that grade-level should determine which tool students should use. If students in grade 3 are ready developmentally, they should use Level 2 rather than Level 1 tools. While developmentally appropriate tools provide challenge levels designed to guide teachers in their planning, the levels should never deny students opportunities to think.
For example, a Level 1 Concept Frame (see Figure 1) can be used as a text-linked pre-writing tool to assess and record prior learning as students use each sector of the completed frame to write simple pattern sentences: A bird can …, A bird has …, A bird is …, An example of a bird is …, or a more complete report text.
Level 2 Concept Frames
Level 2 Concept Frames require students to order the information they have put in each sector of the frame. This order will be reflected in the structure of their report text. They might also decide that some information is redundant or irrelevant and signal this with an X beside the word (see Figure 2).
Level 3 Concept Frames
Level 3 Concept Frames require students to generate additional ideas by using the words in the ‘Examples’ sector to construct questions (see bottom right-hand sector in Figure 3).
Students begin with the name of a bird listed in the ‘Examples’ sector, such as ‘eagle’, and add a sector header word (‘is’, ‘are’, ‘can’, or ‘has’) to ‘eagle’ to construct their question. For example, An eagle is …?, or Eagles can …?or An eagle has …?
Then, students record the words that complete the question in the appropriate sector of the Concept Frame. For example, Eagles can … catch rabbits, so ‘catch rabbits’ would be recorded in the ‘can’ sector of the Concept Frame (see point 6 ‘Catch rabbits’ under the heading ‘Can’ in Figure 3).
Level 3 Concept Frames also require students to group information. Figure 3 illustrates how groups have been made for ‘bad’ things birds can do, and for examples of birds that are ‘meat eaters’ and ‘grain eaters’.
The reward
As the developmentally
appropriate criterion reminds us, the selection of literacy and thinking tools should result in tools at three levels of challenge suited to the needs of students.
The four selection criteria provide some basis on which to select literacy and thinking tools. The use of these tools as an integral component of a classroom program should be prized. Not only does the application of thinking and literacy tools such as Concept Frames lead to attractive destinations, but the journey towards these understandings becomes extremely satisfying and motivating for teacher and learner alike.
References
Blaut, J et al (2003). ‘Mapping as a cultural and cognitive universal’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 93, 1, 165–185.
Whitehead, D (2001) & (2004). Top Tools for Literacy and Learning, Pearson Education, Auckland.
Wolfe, P (2001). Brain Matters: Translating the research to classroom practice, ASCD, Alexandria, Virginia.
David Whitehead is a senior lecturer at the University of Waikato, New Zealand.
Carmel Young is a lecturer in history education, School of Policy and Practice, University of Sydney.