AN EXAMPLE OF STRUCTURED THINKING

Judie Mitchell Eumemmering Secondary College

This procedure came from a year 11 class at Laverton. It is an example of Structured Thinking. The description (procedure F10) in Learning from the PEEL Experience is quoted here in full, and is followed by the words of a student - Amy - when she used this procedure to analyze the poem Discord in Childhood.

When you read it carefully, Amy's response is fascinating. She begins with some categorical and superficial judgments as well as an aspect of the poem that she does not understand. As she proceeds through the prompts from the structured thinking checklist, she writes her way to a far deeper understanding. She changes or extends her understandings in at least 8 places. Would she have done this without the checklist?

Structured thinking

This procedure resulted from the students recognizing that when their teachers tackled some tasks they, the teachers, used some high order thinking that the students couldn't do. This led to teachers reflecting on how they tackled these tasks in order to develop a set of steps which the students could use to tackle a similar task. These are not rigid instructions which can be followed mechanically and unthinkingly. They promote the good learning behaviors most students rarely display.

Two examples of this procedure are sets of steps for reading and understanding a poem and solving chemistry problems. These procedures are not specific to one piece of content, although they are specific to a content type. It is vitally important in developing 'structured thinking' procedures that they come from what teachers or other experts really do and not from what we assume they do.

How to read a poem
Write notes, in note form, on these questions. Write whatever you feel or think - don't be concerned about the 'right' answer. Read the poem through to the end twice.

  1. Why do you think the poem has the title it has? Give some possible reasons.
  2. What puzzles you?
    1. Meanings of words? Look up in dictionary.
    2. Meanings of expressions or groups of words? Guess some possible meanings.
      Make up some questions beginning with why and how.
      Make up some possible answers (begin with maybe)
  3. Read each verse carefully (if there is more than one). If the poem is not broken up into verses, answer these questions for every 2-3 lines.
    1. What connections are there between this verse and the title of the poem?
    2. Is there any imagery? Note similes, metaphors, personification. Are there any connections between these and the title? Are there any similar sounds in any other verse?
    3. Is there any rhyme or rhythm? Note any uses of alliteration, assonance, internal rhyme, long and short vowel sounds, repetition and rhyme patterns. Are there any connections between these and the title? Are there any similar sounds in any other verse?
    4. Pick out what you think are the key words or expressions. Are there any connections between these and the title? Are there any links between these words and key words in other verses?
    5. What is a possible meaning for this verse?
  4. Setting Out
    Look at the lengths of the lines and the number of lines in each verse. Is there anything unusual? Is there a reason for the way is set out? Is there any link with the meaning?
  5. Contrasts
    Can you find any contrasts or opposites in the poem, either in images, sounds, setting out or meanings? Is there any link with the meaning?
  6. What is a possible meaning for the whole poem? Does the title make any more sense to you?

A set of steps for solving standard chemistry problems

  1. Read the problem, decide general type, find the task words, note the conditions and any qualifying words.
  2. Check what you have, tabulate data with units and with ? for unknown.
  3. Propose a possible procedure, Steps 1 and 2 often suggest a relevant law/formula/procedure.
  4. Check if this will work. If you substitute all the data, will this leave you with only one unknown? Is this the wanted unknown?
  5. Check qualifying words and conditions, plus exact task and revise or extend procedure if needed.
  6. Do procedure, label values as you calculate them, watch significant figures.
  7. Check answer against common sense and task words.

Considerable persistence by the teacher is needed before these steps become habits for the students, and they see the value of them. The chemistry teacher had many instances of the following exchange:

S: I've checked my answer and it can't be correct (Step 7). What could I have done wrong?
T: You haven't followed Step 2 - tabulate your data ... Now can you see what's wrong?
S: Oh, I didn't notice the units had changed.

An initial barrier is that reading and following the steps themselves seems to represent extra work to the students. However, because the behaviors are so fundamental to independent learning, and occur across subject boundaries, they soon become part of the learners repertoire of learning skills. Like Link Ups, the aim of this procedure is that it should eventually become unnecessary in this from.

Discord in Childhood
D.H. Lawrence

Outside the house an ash-tree hung its terrible whips,
And at night when the wind rose, the lash of the tree
Shrieked and slashed the wind, as a ship’s
Weird rigging in a storm shrieks hideously.

Within the house two voices arose, a slender lash
Whistling she-delirious* rage, and the dreadful sound
Of a male thong booming and bruising, until it had drowned
The other voice in a silence of blood, ‘neath the noise of the ash.

* a woman's raving

Amy's interpretation:

This poem has a curious title and its not relevant to the poem. The poem is about killing and fighting and has nothing to do at all with childhood.

I don't quite get the meaning of an expression - "A slender lash Whistling she-delirious rage."

It might mean a woman screaming at her husband for something that he has done. How is this connected to the title?

The two verses in this poem have absolutely got no connections between the title and the verses. Unless the child is listening to his parents fight and then listens to his father killing his mother.

There is a simile in the second verse. "A slender lash, whistling she-delirious rage." This means that the "slender lash" is really a woman, and the "whistling she-delirious rage" is screaming with anger. The poet takes one thing to mean another.

There are no connections between this and the first verse, except for the use of the ash tree.

Some keywords: terrible whips, shrieks hideously, slender lash, she-delirious rage, male throng booming and bruising, drowned, silence of blood.

People screaming and fighting and one killing the other by beating and bruising and yelling relates to the second verse as it is about violence.

There is no particular reason for setting this poem out, the way that it has:
1st verse fighting of tree against storm
2nd verse fighting of parents - same thing

There is only one connection between this verse and the second verse and that is the use of the description of the Ash Tree. The reason for this is because of a few words i.e. terrible whips (first verse) = booming and bruising (second verse), storm (first verse) = drowned in a silence of blood (second), shrieks hideously (1st) = She-delirious rage (second).

All this adds up to a poem about the violence in a household as people scream, beat and kill and fight.

The reason for the setting out of this poem is simple. The first verse talks about the fighting of a tree against a storm, while the second verse talks about parents fighting. If you put different words in the first verse then you would end up with the sane thing in the second verse.

There is no possible meaning for this poem accept maybe that violence is always in the home.

Copyright © PEEL Publications, 2002