Description
Would you like your students to be so enthusiastic about the tasks you set that they ask for more? Are you looking for teaching materials containing mind-stretching activities that are interdisciplinary, empower students, encourage independence and do all this with good-humoured grace? Challenging Minds is a thought-provoking, intriguing and tantalising collection of mind stretching challenges for able adolescents that offers all these things.
Each of the fourteen activities involves the highest levels of thinking in Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy: Analysing, Creating and/or Evaluating. Metacognition (awareness of one’s own thinking) is emphasised throughout. By reflecting on their processing and the success or failure of their strategies, students are empowered to become better thinkers. Rather than focusing on what to learn, the emphasis is on how to learn, helping students develop the tools needed to function successfully in the information age.
Each challenge poses a problem and asks students to formulate a response. All tasks are open in nature and permit a variety of approaches as well as a variety of final reports. For each challenge, there is a guideline to tackling the challenge, and a set of teacher notes. From Challenge 2 onwards, there is a component asking students to consider their own thought processes. This section is headed ‘Thinking About Thinking’.
Challenging Minds is the perfect enrichment course for able and advanced students, exposing them to cross-curricular, context-based activities that would not be experienced in the usual subject-based curriculum. It’s an ideal way to engage and stimulate your gifted students!
