by: Angela Maiers

7 Power Thinking Tools: Keys to Critical Learning

There is no ONE way to define comprehension, but the past four decades have produced for us a substantial body of research on comprehension that exist inside the mind of proficient readers and learners.

We can, with great confidence and conviction, state that proficient learners employ a variety of effective strategies to plan, manage and attain understanding. These cognitive strategies are flexible and must be consciously applied as learners navigate different text, genre, and contents.

The following seven strategies have received the strongest scientific support in promoting and sustaining comprehension.

• Using Schema to Make Connections
• Creating Sensory Images
• Determining Importance in Text
• Monitoring and Fix Up Understanding 
• Inferring beyond literal meanings in text
• Actively Question before, during, and after reading
• Summarizing and Synthesizing Information

Join me in the following series, as we explore these 7 POWER THINKING TOOLS. Together we can teach students to become aware of and efficiently use all that is at their disposal to become powerful and independent readers, writers and thinkers in the 21st century.

Are you ready for this? We can so do this!